Persistent "select date" dialog box

[nagy]

Hi all,

well, I seem to have found a landmine. Hope it's not too big of a challenge for all the experts around here

Anyhow, here's full story:

I've had problems with power consumption from day 1. I've tried every way known to man with two different batteries:

- shutting down via OS
- closing the lid
- power saving mode
- power off via boot menu

All resulted the same - high power usage, like CPU didn't scale down at all. Even so, it responded sluggish few seconds after waking up.

Two days back battery drained completly. After rebooting time and date went bannanas. When I tried to set them right, all i got was a dialog box and that was it - impossible to change or to get rid of it. Only reboot helped. I wanted to report this as a bug.

After reflash, problem stays the same, only it prevents OS from loading properly, as this dialog box pops up after selecting timezone. And won't go away, period.

help

Mitja

PS: pictures

http://users.volja.net/jozekalnik/brick1.jpg

http://users.volja.net/jozekalnik/brick2.jpg

edit: removed IMG tags

 

[Prometheus]

Your Pandora is not in any fashion "bricked" - this term basically means that the unit is broken to the point that it will not even boot.

This date-related issue has come up quite recently. There's a thread about it here which you may want to read.

 

[nagy]

on a sidenote, even after reflash, my nub settings stayed same - which leads me to belive, that reflash has a bug or two. I'll try with an older version (hotfix 0 comes to mind)

 

[nagy]

Hi Prometheus,

my bad, I seem to have overlooked this..

i'll move my post to same thread, so we don't crumble across the board, thanks

Mitja

 

[mali]

^ Prometheus is right, that other guy solved it by removing the battery for a while. No need to flash an older firmware.

 

[nagy]

grrr, can't delete the post...thanks for help, I'll try as you suggested

Mitja

 

[mali]

^ Actually I think you should continue the discussion in this thread since you have other problems with power consumption as well. I'll remove your post from the other thread to prevent cross posting madness

 

[nagy]

Mali, thank you!

Would you be kind enough to change name of the thread, as it is misleading?

greetings from Slovenia

Mitja

 

[mali]

^ Sure, no problem

 

[nagy]

Success...after removing battery for cca 30minutes, calendar pops up and date can be selected...

however, I find it strange, that after reflash, old config and user files are still present on the system - would it be better, if I install OS on SD card, then format NAND and reinstall OS on NAND?

oh, anyone has any idea about power drain?

Mitja

edit: I removed Pandora from charger 35min ago in power saving mode - slider key to the right one time, waited for the screen to go blank, then locked it to the left and closed the lid. Battery states 94%...quite a drop for a "standby" mode, but not for normal usage.

I'll check voltage today, perhaps both batteries are defective, but it's unlikely

 

[Pleng]

Success...after removing battery for cca 30minutes, calendar pops up and date can be selected...

however, I find it strange, that after reflash, old config and user files are still present on the system

That seems very strange. Unless you are talking about configs for the PNDs you've downloaded. If you want to remove those they will be under pandora/appdata on the SD card you downloaded them to.

 

[nagy]

khm, note to self - I guess term RTFM comes to mind!

I flashed the unit this time, works fine, files are removed

well, I guess we can start talking about power drain

 

[mali]

^ First thing you should check is if the battery level drops outside of the Pandora too(check the battery mini-FAQ in the Tweaks Thread).
If you don't find a problem there, you could start to adjust your procedure when leaving the unit. From the wording of your post it sounds like you charge in low power mode, unplug the charger and then flip the power switch once? This means you are back to normal mode. Also lid closing sometimes interrupts low power mode, it should be fixed in HF#4. The lock position is non-functional right now, so you shouldn't use it.

You should charge the Pandora in low power mode with the screen open and then just unplug the charger without doing anything else to test if it still uses too much power. No switch flipping and no lid closing.

 

[tsh]

Thee persistence of the problem iss not a great surprise, since the RTC is battery backed up - it remembers the time even if you take the battery out. So this might be a problem with the firstrun script (it is ALWAYS after a flash that this happens, right?) That script probably insists that you cannot proceed without setting the date to it's satisfaction - but it's check might be bugged. Allowing the time to change seems to fix it.

A possible debug strategy would be to boot from SD (rather than re-flash) and modify the firstrun script to dump it's progress to a file.

 

[nagy]

yeah, I just got a second SD card, so that's my next move - booting completly of SD card.

hopefully battery will hold for more than one night at a time

 

[paddy]

Mitja ..

one of those batteries were from the old unit and was the primary battery in use when the pandora was tested for a short time ,remember i told you i was charging both batteries ? this is becase both batteries lay for around 5/6 days not connected to the pandora so i found when i was getting the unit ready i had to charge them as they had drained ,bare in mind they were only around the 30/50% mark before it all was in its box for a week.

I can confirm one of those batteries should be working perfectly as it was from my old unit and i didn't have the issues you have ,i have no idea about the new battery with the new unit ,so my guess and i would take this advice , send the unit back ,if its killing batteries then its the unit,not the batteries, first however ,please test with a psp battery charger if you have one and overcharge the unit battery ,as in after 100% keep in on charge for an hour or so after and see how you get on as it might be the batteries needing a good charge through.

sorry to say this to you man but welcome to pandora hell ,the reason im out

hope you get it sorted and it IS just needing a big charge.

 

[tsh]

please test with a psp battery charger if you have one and overcharge the unit battery ,as in after 100% keep in on charge for an hour or so after and see how you get on as it might be the batteries needing a good charge through.

Hmmm.. this isn't a clever idea. the charging circuit is supposed to STOP charging when it senses 100%, since these batteries do not like being over charged. It is much better to charge it to 100%, and record the charge % display with it sat powered up and the screen on. Depending on WiFi, you should see 10-15% drop per hour. Cycle it down to about 20-30% and up to full charge, see how long these take.
Shut it off completely after recording the battery %, leave for 12 hours, power up again. The % should be within +/-2% or so.

 

[WizardStan]

Hmmm.. this isn't a clever idea. the charging circuit is supposed to STOP charging when it senses 100%, since these batteries do not like being over charged.

The charging circuit is supposed to drop to a trickle charge when the batter is *full*. Displaying 100% does not necessarily mean it is full. It's possible the gauge says "battery is 100% at X.YZ voltage" when in fact the battery is capable of holding a little bit more. Or less. As time goes on, it will become less. These gauges are supposed to be smart enough to adjust themselves over time, but sometimes they need to be reset, and to do that you let the battery run down, and then you charge them up.
In any event, there should be no harm to leaving the charger plugged in after it reaches 100%. Either the battery will keep charging and the gauge will adjust itself, or the circuit will detect the battery is full and reduce to trickle charge anyway.

 

[nagy]

Paddy, both battery packs got a good punch from PSP charger, so I don't think they're to blame. I admit it's kinda weird, but it's not too annoying

I did cycle both packs - both still held 100% after two days. I think this is merely a bug in the software. After last reflash, I turned off pandora via boot menu and now the battery level dropped about 20% in a day and a half.

I really have to get to the basement, get my multimeter and do a full cycle with measurements. Will do this tonight, first measure second battery in the drawer and we'll see what happens with it during the night.

Worst case scenario is removing battery during the night.

Small price to pay for such a wonderful educational toy h34r:

edit:

@all: how much does your Pandora heat up during charging? I was kinda shocked, when battery got really warm, not hot, but as warm as an ordinary NiCd or NiMH battery gets, when you overcharge it a bit...

 

[Pleng]

Yes mine feel pretty toasty when charging. If you take it around with you on a warm day and leave it on with the lid closed it retains the heat a lot more than I'd have expected. I'm hopping when voltage downscaling and screen-off come about that might sort itself out.