Release SuperZaxxon - Beta 5 released

[hmc]

[Conky] has been pulled from repo so guess being fixed?

Yes, it is.


However, it seems that I should find a fix for my development environment in general first, instead of fixing the ingle application PNDs. So it can take some days.


Something with the library handling is broken.


Daniel

 

[Zink]

I'm trying to save a text file on my USB flash drive, and it behaves really strangely: I can access the USB drive (named "8G Removable Volume") from Thunar, so it is working fine. But when I'm trying to access it from Mousepad's Save As dialog (here it is named "8.0 GB Media") it shows me the message: "Could not mount 8.0 GB Media. Failed to execute child process "gnome-mount" (No such file or directory)". Geany does the same, so it's not Mousepad's fault.

I had this problem on Zaxxon HF6 firmware with all GTK programs.

sudo opkg update

sudo opkg install gnome-mount

solved the problem.


However, in SZ Beta5 this problem should be fixed. I wonder why you experience this problem. For me, this problem does not exist anymore with Beta5.


Daniel

Hmm, I wanted to try it, but now works fine (with the same pendrive). I think I should do at least a reboot before reporting bugs .

Suspend is indeed a lot less battery hungry, yes. It is more or less the same as saving a save state and turning off, and then automatically loading the save state when turning on, so...

So now suspend is better, because sessions don't keep files opened in Mousepad and other programs


EDIT:


Default .pndXmodmap contains no right Control (keycode 105) definition - is this intentional?


.pndXmodmap uses invalid 'NoSymbol' where it should use 'VoidSymbol' - a relic of an older version?


ANOTHER EDIT:


One suggestion: I think the time left on battery should be displayed in a different form, like 4 hours, 2.5 hours (with half of an hour resolution), then if the time is lower than 1 hour: 37 min and so on. This is because I sometimes mistake the timer with the clock (and because the timer doesn't seem to be accurate enough to provide to-the-minute resolution).

 

[Zink]

I would add another edit, but probably most would not notice, so...


Today I wanted to test the battery performance, so I ignored all warnings popping up when it was going near 0%... and my Pandora still worked for about 1 hour and 10 minutes after the meter went 0%! Maybe it would be good to introduce some auto-learning mechanism, so it saves the last battery state (voltage?) before it drops dead, and takes that as 0% for further calculations? Well, maybe not exactly that value, but some percent above, as the value will probably increase when the battery wears. Or maybe my experience is such because my Pandy is new (It has been charged like 3 times only), and that modification does not make sense, because its "below-zero" time will drop quickly in a short period?

 

[WizardStan]

Zink, what you just did was extremely dangerous. 0% is coded at 3 volts in the BQ chip. It runs for a while after dropping below this, sometimes quite a while, but while it is doing so chemical reactions are happening in the battery to produce that energy. A lithium polymer battery starts to crystallize when it drops below 3 volts which can do irreversible damage to the battery. The BQ chip already has the ability to learn, with 3 volts being the absolute lowest it will go. Your Pandora shut down because the battery itself also has a second shut off feature when the voltage REALLY gets low. You should never, ever allow this to happen if you can help it, it is very bad for the battery. Doing it once has probably irrevocably zapped several minutes of total capacity; doing it repeatedly will rapidly destroy the battery. Don't do it again. Seriously. I'm not just talking about the battery not being any good anymore, crystal lithium is sharp and can puncture the battery which results in an oxygen mix that becomes extremely explosive. I don't know how much more I can stress the necessity of heeding every warning that these batteries comes with.

 

[Asmo]

Some behaviour happening for me:


Running OS from SD


When using Mame4all and PanMame under SuperZaxxon Beta 5a, roms that have names in upper case (MILLIPED.zip for example) don't show up anymore in the file selectors for either (whether booting with old or new kernel).


They appear as normal when I go back to HF6.


Known issue?


(apologies if not news)

 

[Neelix]

Speaking of low battery levels, I thought that the pandora was supposed to auto-shutdown at 5%. I just checked the Battery monitor applet on both my pandoras (one of which I recently reflashed to Beta 5a without saving any config files) and the Critical battery action was set to "Do Nothing"


Is there some reason the auto-shutdown option is disabled by default?


- Neelix

 

[hmc]

Zink, what you just did was extremely dangerous.

Given that a spare battery only costs a little over 20€, I would not call that "extremely dangerous", except if the battery can leak, explode or something like that in that case, which - to my knowledge - cannot happen. Please correct me, if I'm wrong.


Daniel

 

[mcobit]

It can. Exophase left his battery on the mains for about two weeks and it bulged up quite a bit. With lithium batteries its better safe than sorry imho.

 

[Zink]

Zink, what you just did was extremely dangerous. 0% is coded at 3 volts in the BQ chip. It runs for a while after dropping below this, sometimes quite a while, but while it is doing so chemical reactions are happening in the battery to produce that energy. A lithium polymer battery starts to crystallize when it drops below 3 volts which can do irreversible damage to the battery. The BQ chip already has the ability to learn, with 3 volts being the absolute lowest it will go. Your Pandora shut down because the battery itself also has a second shut off feature when the voltage REALLY gets low. You should never, ever allow this to happen if you can help it, it is very bad for the battery. Doing it once has probably irrevocably zapped several minutes of total capacity; doing it repeatedly will rapidly destroy the battery. Don't do it again. Seriously. I'm not just talking about the battery not being any good anymore, crystal lithium is sharp and can puncture the battery which results in an oxygen mix that becomes extremely explosive.

So maybe this line on this page should be removed (or updated to avoid misunderstandings):

It's ok to use your Pandora until it runs out of power and shuts down.

I don't know how much more I can stress the necessity of heeding every warning that these batteries comes with.

Maybe a good start would be to make the said warnings to actually 'come with the battery'. I'm serious. I have not seen any warning either with the battery itself (in fact the battery came with no warnings or instructions attached) nor in the Pandora Wiki, telling me that what I just did would be dangerous. I'm not saying that there are no such warnings. Only that maybe they are not where they should be.

 

[hmc]

It can. Exophase left his battery on the mains for about two weeks and it bulged up quite a bit. With lithium batteries its better safe than sorry imho.

Generally I agree, but since even my MacBook battery bulged up noticeably after about 4 years of normal use, so that it almost did not fit into the battery bay anymore, and since Exophase experienced something like that with quite unnormal use, and since - as far as I have read - the firmware has got improvements in order to prevent long-charge problems, I still would not consider this "extremely dangerous".


Looking at the Pandora's battery bay, and considering, how much mechanical stress the mainboard needs to stand due to the key pressure directly applied to the mainboard from the top, a bulging up battery would now have the potential to destroy anything. You would notice it in time, because the battery bay cover would bulge up and let the Pandora wiggle when sitting on a table.


But, again, you are right of course, that it's better to be safe than sorry.


I only wanted to clarify, why I think, that the term "extremely dangerous" is IMHO a bit too strong.


Daniel

 

[Mr_Loon]

the Critical battery action was set to "Do Nothing"

Thanks for the heads up on this, for best practice it sounds like the default settings should be changed to shut down for critical battery levels for future revisions of the firmware.

 

[Zink]

the Critical battery action was set to "Do Nothing"

Thanks for the heads up on this, for best practice it sounds like the default settings should be changed to shut down for critical battery levels for future revisions of the firmware.

Actually it does. Precisely, it displays a message with countdown till an automatic shut down. But the level cannot be configured (nor disabled) in the Battery Monitor.

 

[WizardStan]

It's ok to use your Pandora until it runs out of power and shuts down.

"Out of power" should be assumed to mean 0%. It is ok to run the Pandora until it shuts down at 0%, which still contains a safe amount of energy to keep things safe.

Maybe a good start would be to make the said warnings to actually 'come with the battery'.

You said yourself you ignored the warning that came up about low battery and continued using it anyway. Well intentioned though it may be, your lack of understanding of battery chemistry introduced you to serious risk. And to answer hmc's question, I'm not just talking about having to get a new battery, I'm talking about violent, life threatening explosions. Lithium batteries pack a lot of energy. Overcharging causes puffing. Extreme discharging causes the lithium to irreversibly crystallize, very sharply, potentially puncturing the membrane and letting air in. Adding oxygen to an energetic chemical reaction is usually a bad idea.

Actually it does. Precisely, it displays a message with countdown till an automatic shut down. But the level cannot be configured (nor disabled) in the Battery Monitor.

Right click (tap and hold) on the battery percentage and choose "Properties". The low and critical percentages can be configured. Used to be by default that low would give a text box warning, and critical would run a command ("sudo poweroff" to shut down). Apparently the critical no longer does that, a grave mistake. Also when it reaches 0% it would attempt to shut down anyway, regardless of what the settings are, as final move to save the battery.

 

[diligentcircle]

Don't underestimate the danger of misusing LiPo batteries, hmc.


A YouTuber that I will not name (because I don't like him) once made a video about LiPo batteries, calling them "the world's most dangerous battery", and I was irritated to see people reacting with comments such as "OMG my iphone haz this battery is it going 2 blow up?!" In truth, LiPo batteries are usually perfectly safe for the end-user, assuming that all warnings are listened to and followed. But if you disregard the warnings and do something you're not supposed to do, the battery can easily explode or burn.

 

[Darkknight512]

I very much agree with the above, LiPo batteries are perfectly fine when they are used properly. However they can easily take your life or home if not used properly.


This is something very common in the RC hobby, when someone charges a battery after a plane crash, runs too much current from a battery, charges on the wrong voltage, or charge on a too high current, and sometimes just from dropping the battery.

 

[kuru]

I only did a quick search for ad-hoc and adhoc in this thread, please excuse me if this has already been brought up.


Ad-hoc worked for me on Beta 4. I had to set up the n900's IP and one for the Pandora in the same subnet, then reconnect to the phone and it worked.


Now this procedure fails, I tried it three or four times. Can anybody confirm this?

 

[Zink]

"Out of power" should be assumed to mean 0%. It is ok to run the Pandora until it shuts down at 0%, which still contains a safe amount of energy to keep things safe.

That's why I said or updated to avoid misunderstandings. This is what happened in my case.

Maybe a good start would be to make the said warnings to actually 'come with the battery'.

You said yourself you ignored the warning that came up about low battery and continued using it anyway.

Have you seen that warning? Does it say a single word about explosion possibility, or other dangerous things that may happen to the battery?


Please don't get me wrong. I understand and appreciate your point about danger coming from undercharging the battery. The only thing I don't agree with is your assumption that I have gotten a lot of information about this topic before, which is the opposite of truth. You're welcome to prove me wrong of course, but use valid arguments please .

Actually it does. Precisely, it displays a message with countdown till an automatic shut down. But the level cannot be configured (nor disabled) in the Battery Monitor.

Right click (tap and hold) on the battery percentage and choose "Properties". The low and critical percentages can be configured.

You cannot set 'countdown till the automatic shutdown' as an action to a battery level. That's what I meant.

Used to be by default that low would give a text box warning, and critical would run a command ("sudo poweroff" to shut down). Apparently the critical no longer does that, a grave mistake.

It's probably because 'sudo poweroff' doesn't work there (I tried), because it requires to type in your root password, which is not possible because it runs in an invisible shell. A solution to this could be 'gksudo poweroff', but then it would be a bit ridiculous, because it doesn't inform you what command it needs the root password for .


I think the best would be if we could also choose the timed poweroff dialog (the one that triggers automatically at 0%) in the warning levels configuration.

 

[Zink]

I only did a quick search for ad-hoc and adhoc in this thread, please excuse me if this has already been brought up.


Ad-hoc worked for me on Beta 4. I had to set up the n900's IP and one for the Pandora in the same subnet, then reconnect to the phone and it worked.


Now this procedure fails, I tried it three or four times. Can anybody confirm this?

I just tried to create an ad-hoc network between Pandora and my laptop, and it didn't work. I might have done something wrong though.

 

[Binky]

Presumably it would make the most sense to give the user a warning about explosive batteries when the lid being open and the battery life being below 5% first coincide - else suspend-to ram instead of just using low power mode when the lid shuts to save power, in the hope that the user will be able to do a manual save & shutdown (or get to a charger)


Obviously the battery getting dangerously low should trigger a force-shutdown


---


If anyone thinks this would be a good idea, there should probably be a pandora2 spam thread about this (i.e. consider start a new thread to post comments etc) - but would there be any point including a button-cell compartment (maybe 3 or 4 * LR44), allowing the Pandora to run for a while without a main battery, suspended to ram, while you swapped a new main battery in?


It could also allow solve the problem of being unable to boot properly with a flat rechargeable battery, and avoid problems with random resets because of vibration.

 

[WizardStan]

The only thing I don't agree with is your assumption that I have gotten a lot of information about this topic before, which is the opposite of truth. You're welcome to prove me wrong of course, but use valid arguments please .

I never assumed you had a *lot* of information. If I had I wouldn't have felt the need to give you more information. I did assume that a person wouldn't go experimenting with something they didn't fully understand but I guess that also pre-supposes the knowledge that batteries are really f'in scary when not properly handled, and in retrospect it should be noted that not everyone knows that. So for you and hmc and everyone else: lithium polymer batteries are extremely volatile when mishandled and can result in violent, limb severing explosion. Deep discharge once will be mostly fine. Doing it again and again will result in build up of damaging crystals being formed that will rupture the packaging and potentially blow your hand off while playing PacMan. Lithium is freaky and should not be handled lightly.

It's probably because 'sudo poweroff' doesn't work there (I tried), because it requires to type in your root password, which is not possible because it runs in an invisible shell. A solution to this could be 'gksudo poweroff', but then it would be a bit ridiculous, because it doesn't inform you what command it needs the root password for .


I think the best would be if we could also choose the timed poweroff dialog (the one that triggers automatically at 0%) in the warning levels configuration.

That's really weird. It used to work just fine. I can't remember if maybe it had a different command or if poweroff was added to the sudoers file as nopassword, but either way it used to shut down at the prescribed percentage (5% by default). As I recall, when it reached that 5% it would pop up a dialog saying the critical percentage had been reached. Shortly thereafter the countdown timer would appear, exactly the same as what happens at 0%. My memory is rusty because it's been well over a year since the last time I had reason to hit that dialog. I have no idea why it was disabled for this release but it should really be reinvestigated, it's a very important feature.