Power Draw

[Heuristics]

Hi,

I got my Pinebook Pro 2 days ago and so far I appear to get slightly less than 2 hours of battery life. I have seen others write that they get 8-10 hours so I am wondering what can be done. energy-rate is between 15-20 W when ony doing light web browsing with the screen at a very low brightness. I have attached a upower -d log. Thanks.

Code:

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_dc_charger
 native-path:          dc-charger
 power supply:         yes
 updated:              Wed Jan  1 08:24:41 2020 (12 seconds ago)
 has history:          no
 has statistics:       no
 line-power
   warning-level:       none
   online:              no
   icon-name:          'ac-adapter-symbolic'

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_rk_bat
 native-path:          rk-bat
 power supply:         yes
 updated:              Wed Jan  1 08:24:51 2020 (2 seconds ago)
 has history:          yes
 has statistics:       yes
 battery
   present:             yes
   rechargeable:        yes
   state:               discharging
   warning-level:       none
   energy:              34.5379 Wh
   energy-empty:        0 Wh
   energy-full:         40.1604 Wh
   energy-full-design:  0 Wh
   energy-rate:         15.9406 W
   voltage:             4.098 V
   time to empty:       2.2 hours
   percentage:          86%
   temperature:         18.8 degrees C
   capacity:            100%
   technology:          lithium-ion
   icon-name:          'battery-full-symbolic'
 History (charge):
   1577867091 86.000 discharging
 History (rate):
   1577867091 15.941 discharging
   1577867085 16.719 discharging

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_universal_usb
 native-path:          universal_usb
 power supply:         yes
 updated:              Wed Jan  1 08:24:41 2020 (12 seconds ago)
 has history:          no
 has statistics:       no
 line-power
   warning-level:       none
   online:              no
   icon-name:          'ac-adapter-symbolic'

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/DisplayDevice
 power supply:         yes
 updated:              Wed Jan  1 08:24:50 2020 (3 seconds ago)
 has history:          no
 has statistics:       no
 battery
   present:             yes
   state:               discharging
   warning-level:       none
   energy:              34.5379 Wh
   energy-full:         40.1604 Wh
   energy-rate:         15.9406 W
   time to empty:       2.2 hours
   percentage:          86%
   icon-name:          'battery-full-symbolic'

Daemon:
 daemon-version:  0.99.4
 on-battery:      yes
 lid-is-closed:   no
 lid-is-present:  yes
 critical-action: PowerOff

[Heuristics]

Sorry, managed to post this thread on the wrong forum. Should be in the pinebook pro one.

[zaius]

I got my Pinebook Pro 2 days ago and so far I appear to get slightly less than 2 hours of battery life. I have seen others write that they get 8-10 hours so I am wondering what can be done. energy-rate is between 15-20 W when ony doing light web browsing with the screen at a very low brightness. I have attached a upower -d log. Thanks.

It should be around half that.  Is anything else plugged into it?  What are your CPU settings?

[Heuristics]

I looked into the CPU settings a little and from what I now understand you need to view the cpu as having two parts that you can set the speed on, previously I thought the speed setting in the desktop applet in the lower right corner set it globally. Adding one more applet and having them set to CPU 0 and CPU 5 appears to do the trick. Setting them both to "on demand" brings power draw down to about 8-10 W. A big improvement but still far from 10 hour battery life (if lucky maybe I will get 4-5 hours with light usage). Setting both to "powersave" means it remains around 8-9 W.

I don't have anything plugged in. Any ideas what else can be done? Thank you.

[chip ling]

I got my Pinebook Pro this week. After I fixed my ANSI keyboard mapping and then I saw this post.

So I decided to do a power consumption test run on my Pinebook Pro.

Objective: very light usage + headless test run
Run time: 10 hours
Result: run for 10 hours and still have 11% battery left

Here is what I did: (I use the "on demand" power scheme)

1. turn off the machine and fully charge the Pinebook Pro overnight before the testing start.

2. Power on the Pinebook Pro, start 2 apps: Power Statistics and System Monitor and let it run. Also start a terminal running the top command.

3. I let the Pinebook Pro idle with the above 3 apps running. After a while the screen switch off.

4. I went to work and logon to my Pinebook Pro via ssh terminal.

5. I continuously check the power level and cpu temperature. (temperation is average at 33.33 degrees C)

6. The battery power level drop 1% after every 7 minutes.

7. After three hours, I wrote another assembly program as below.

Code:

       .global _start
_start:
       mov     r1,#0x25        @ r1 = 0x25
       mov     r2,#0x34        @ r2 = 0x34
       add     r3,r2,r1        @ r3 = r2 + r1
here:   b       here            @ loop forever here

This is an endless looping program, the objective is to use up one cpu core and see how it impact the battery and temperature.

I compiled this program and run it on the background.

I run the "top" command on my terminal and see the program used up 100% cpu. So one core has been fully occupied.

The cpu temperature rised from 33.33 to 46.1 degrees.

I let the program ran for 45 minutes before I killed the process. During the program running time, the power consumption increase to every 1% power drop, took 5 minutes. The temperature also dropped slowly.

I run the "top" command on the ssh terminal until the rest of the test.

Then I let the Pinebook Pro run as headless Linux machine.

After 10 hours, I still have 11% battery left. I stopped the test.

[as400]

@Heuristics this is quite a big power draw that you have. On mine (with nvme drive installed) I have observed power draw as low as 3,58W sometimes.
I am using schedutil cpufreq governor.

[Heuristics]

An update since it's been a while since I started the thread:


After installing (LXDE) Manjaro It became a little better. The battery life indicator will show around 7 hours when first starting the laptop after charging over night with screen low, bluetooth off and cpus on powersave. In real world terms this translates to about 3 hours of writing code and surfing the web. My main worry at the moment with Manjaro is that every time I start it (or log in) it shows two dialogs warning me about critical battery, does anyone else have that and how can I get rid of them?

They say:
"WARNING: Your battery is running low. You should consider plugging in or shutting down your computer soon to avoid possible data loss."
And the other one (this dialog is always right under the first one, it's seen it after closing the first:
"WARNING: Your battery has reached critical status. You should plug in or shutdown your computer now to void possible data loss."

The current upower -d log:

Code:

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_dc_charger
 native-path:          dc-charger
 power supply:         yes
 updated:              Mon 27 Jan 2020 06:18:35 CET (495 seconds ago)
 has history:          no
 has statistics:       no
 line-power
   warning-level:       none
   online:              no
   icon-name:          'ac-adapter-symbolic'

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_tcpm_source_psy_4_0022
 native-path:          tcpm-source-psy-4-0022
 power supply:         yes
 updated:              Sun 26 Jan 2020 07:57:35 CET (80955 seconds ago)
 has history:          no
 has statistics:       no
 line-power
   warning-level:       none
   online:              no
   icon-name:          'ac-adapter-symbolic'

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_cw2015_battery
 native-path:          cw2015-battery
 power supply:         yes
 updated:              Mon 27 Jan 2020 06:26:47 CET (3 seconds ago)
 has history:          yes
 has statistics:       yes
 battery
   present:             yes
   rechargeable:        yes
   state:               discharging
   warning-level:       none
   energy:              39.943 Wh
   energy-empty:        0 Wh
   energy-full:         40.7582 Wh
   energy-full-design:  40.7582 Wh
   energy-rate:         5.99146 W
   voltage:             4.159 V
   time to empty:       6.7 hours
   percentage:          98%
   temperature:         18.8 degrees C
   capacity:            100%
   technology:          lithium-ion
   icon-name:          'battery-full-symbolic'
 History (charge):
   1580102721 98.000 discharging
 History (rate):
   1580102807 5.991 unknown
   1580102802 6.196 discharging
   1580102797 6.340 discharging
   1580102792 6.011 discharging
   1580102787 5.954 discharging
   1580102782 5.883 discharging
   1580102739 5.752 discharging

Device: /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/DisplayDevice
 power supply:         yes
 updated:              Mon 27 Jan 2020 06:26:47 CET (3 seconds ago)
 has history:          no
 has statistics:       no
 battery
   present:             yes
   state:               discharging
   warning-level:       none
   energy:              39.943 Wh
   energy-full:         40.7582 Wh
   energy-rate:         5.99146 W
   time to empty:       6.7 hours
   percentage:          98%
   icon-name:          'battery-full-symbolic'

Daemon:
 daemon-version:  0.99.11
 on-battery:      yes
 lid-is-closed:   no
 lid-is-present:  yes
 critical-action: PowerOff

[xmixahlx]

display brightness has a huge impact. what is your brightness set at?

[bcnaz]

*  I think a part of it is the system learning or calibrating itself when you are starting out.

**  Way Back When, I remember Lucas talking about the system calibrating the battery meter...
 First step was to charge it fully before using it,  not that it would change anything except that it would take longer for the battery predictions to become more accurate, than if you start with a partially charged battery. ( to run it down real low from a full beginning charge for the first few cycles )
I have always run my screen pretty bright, and watching YouTube and surfing I typically get 8 to 10 hours without it shutting down from a depleted battery.
 While watching at high brightness,  I also am usually above 100% on the sound, while watching videos. (Half blind and half deaf)

That may actually help to condition the New battery as well ?

[Heuristics]

display brightness has a huge impact. what is your brightness set at?

Around 20%, meaning one or two notches (button presses) above turned off.