Displaying remaining battery time

[bmarkus]

For mobile users it is crucial to know remaining battery time. I submitted two small console tools for 2.x which may help.

acpi

This is displaying information provided by BIOS (if supported). Starting as 'acpi -V' all information displayed. On my Acer notebook it looks like:

Battery 0: Discharging, 86%, 01:47:31 remaining
Battery 0: design capacity 4000 mAh, last full capacity 3759 mAh = 93%
Adapter 0: off-line
Thermal 0: ok, 50.0 degrees C
Thermal 0: trip point 0 switches to mode critical at temperature 100.0 degrees C
Cooling 0: Processor 0 of 10
Cooling 1: Processor 0 of 10

It also indicates charging, but on my machine no remaining charging time displayed.

As usual, displayed remaining time is usually longer than the reale time experienced, but it is up to the ACPI BIOS.


ibam

The Intelligent BAttery Monitor is a more advanced tool. It measures charging and discharging characteristics and stores measurements in home directory. Displayed time is calculated not only info provided by BIOS but its own measurements, therefore more accurate and if you are using frequently learns the machine.

Read docs at http://ibam.sourceforge.net/ for more info.

To get accurate figures save measurement data. If taking full discharging characteristrics don't forget to save manually home directory just before battery is full out otherwise data will be lost.

[Juanito]

The battery life remaining is also a standard conky output

[bmarkus]

The battery life remaining is also a standard conky output

Running conky from the repository on my notebook:



Maybe it can be configured but as it is downloaded no battery time.

[Juanito]

OK, so the default .conkyrc doesn't contain battery data 

But, you can edit .conkyrc to add some/all of the following:

acpiacadapter:ACPI ac adapter state.
acpifan: ACPI fan state
acpitemp: ACPI temperature in C.
battery: Battery status and remaining percentage capacity
battery_bar: Battery percentage remaining of ACPI battery in a bar.
battery_percent: Battery percentage remaining for ACPI battery.
battery_time: Battery charge/discharge time remaining of ACPI battery.

[Onyarian]

I boot with bootcode laptop and with conky this are the results of battery:
discharging:

charging:

full charge and connected:

the code in conky:

${color white}Sistema:
${color white}Tiempo:$color $uptime
${color white}Bateria:$color ${battery BAT1}

[bmarkus]

I boot with bootcode laptop and with conky this are the results of battery:
...

Bootcode laptop? Another top secret hidden code   I do not find any reference to it in the Wiki. Is it used by TC or just Conky?

[curaga]

Bootcode laptop? Another top secret hidden code   I do not find any reference to it in the Wiki. Is it used by TC or just Conky?

It was used in the early series to load battery & pcmcia support. Our hardware recognition has since improved greatly, and those are loaded automatically if needed.

[bmarkus]

Using laptop boot option startup says AC, battery and PCMCIA options enabled. On 2.1 is there any difference running with or w/o laptop option on a laptop? BTW, what are these options?

[curaga]

No difference, if they are needed they are loaded. Unless one counts the boot line as a difference