CrunchBang Linux

radioactive cheese

New Member

Registered: 2009-09-10

Posts: 9

battery life meter

Hey guys, I've been running CB for probably almost 2 years. I love it. I'm running statler and I seem to have problems with the battery meter. I'm running it on a asus eee 1000h. It's getting a little long in the tooth, the battery only lasts about 3 hours now, but the meter only estimates it has about 2hrs life. I knew it was inaccurate to begin with, sometimes ten minutes will go by and the timer will change anywhere from 5 to 15 minutes, for example. I had always set my laptop to shutdown automatically once the battery got to 1 or 2%, thinking it was actually dead at that point. But then I was curious and set it to not turn off. Guess what? It lasts anywhere from 40 minutes to an hour after the meter says it's at 0%. Does anyone know a way of calibrating it or a more accurate battery meter than what comes with #!?

Unia

#! Octo-portal-pussy

From: The Netherlands

Registered: 2010-07-17

Posts: 4,171

Re: battery life meter

Maybe use conky? Though for me they always showed the same output and when it says it's dead, it is. You could also try different power managers or use this script: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … tray-icon/

When looking for the link above I also found this, related to battery in conky: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/topic … y-warning/

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radioactive cheese

New Member

Registered: 2009-09-10

Posts: 9

Re: battery life meter

Hmm, it may be just my battery isn't reporting it's condition properly. I tried the conky meter, it displayed the same percentage as the taskbar icon. I also checked in ubuntu and winxp and they all report the same estimated time and percentage, but I did not do a battery rundown in either to test. I guess I'll just have to ignore the battery warnings and save often if I'm working on something past the 0% mark. Kind of in the market for a new laptop anyway. Not really sure I want to spend the money though.

GuruX

#! Die Hard

Registered: 2009-01-18

Posts: 527

Re: battery life meter

Yeah, my battery meter (which I think comes from gnome-power-settings) in the taskbar is also inaccurate. I just end up using a conky to monitor uptime instead. And Conky battery percentage seems to be more accurate.

Some scripts read the amount of Wh left in the battery pack. But on my Eee 900, the battery instead reports percentage when that command is executed. Those scripts get really confused with my battery. But I think that this is Eee 900 unique.