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+-- Forum: Pinebook Pro (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=111)
+--- Forum: General Discussion on Pinebook Pro (https://forum.pine64.org/forumdisplay.php?fid=112)
+--- Thread: We need more power, Scotty! (/showthread.php?tid=10704)
We need more power, Scotty! - mtnygard - 07-16-2020
I've got the power adapter plugged in, but the battery still heads toward zero.
Admittedly, I'm compiling Haskell, so it's not a typical workload.
But still, it'd be nice to power up enough to keep from going to sleep mid-compile.
Any recommendations? I've already fiddled with NVMe settings and turned the brightness down. Can the PBP accept more power from an after-market adapter?
RE: We need more power, Scotty! - KC9UDX - 07-16-2020
Not without modification.
RE: We need more power, Scotty! - Upokupo - 07-16-2020
To get around the power/battery issue, you can bypass the battery thing entirely. If you look at the schematics of the PBP, you can see that you can disconnect the battery and power it directly from the barrel or usb c connection. It was a pretty straightforward process and easy to do. Just make sure you do disconnect the battery as there are warnings that you will fry it. I've been operating my PBP without the battery connected and has been running great. I did have a few shutoffs (2), but being how everything involved with the PBP is in a beta state from hardware and software, I don't know if it was power or software related and really don't have the time to investigate the cause. I don't like working and have to concern myself with battery percentages to keep it from shutting down. Hopefully, this issue gets addressed in a future iteration.
RE: We need more power, Scotty! - Dendrocalamus64 - 07-23-2020
I never really had this problem. Then I tried Manjaro KDE again, and the battery started going down.
I'd been using a very light-colored theme in Mate, with black text on a white background. When the default theme is murky green text on a moody grey background, the user turns the backlight way up, and then most of that energy is lost heating the monitor.
It's not like a CRT where the electron gun only excites the phosphors you use, and green text on black is energy efficient, since the human eye is most sensitive to green light. With an LCD, the backlight is on regardless, and the more of the screen that is high-opacity, the more light you're wasting.
Whatever desktop environment you are on, go for the black UI elements & text on a white background option, and then turn the backlight down until it still doesn't hurt your eyes, and the power usage should go down.
(Yes, I know you said you turned it down, but you can turn it down more this way. And I never had trouble during long compiles.)
RE: We need more power, Scotty! - mamboman777 - 07-23-2020
Maybe the CPU governor? It'd slow things down, though.