Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Sorry for late respond, but looks like reboot cure the thing, no more errors here.

Too easy, right?

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Yep, too easy. :p

Could cou please post output of
and
and
nevertheless?

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

nothing, empty.

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

OK, but this looks like you do not have bq27x00 loaded at all (lsmod) nor should it get loaded (/etc/modules).
@Estel any idea, what could have been the cause instead?

--edit
not important anymore, but ...
Sorry for typo :(, should have been:

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Same...

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

OK, that just means you have no blacklist (modules to not be loaded).

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

No idea, but if it disappeared after reboot and never returned again + no one else (who haven't loaded bq27x00_battery, this way or another) experience it, I suspect USRERROR failure in main executive process :p

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Quick message...
Can something similar be done to output complete information about touchscreen? Its information includes temperature, as well. It's nifty to be able to know temperature without looking around for a thermometer or alarm clock.
Thank you for bnf.
Best wishes.
__________________
Per aspera ad astra.

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Whoa, wasn't aware of temperature sensor inside touchscreen controller. Frankly, I'm afraid it would tell more about whole device's ground plane temperature (maybe degree or two lower than one reported by battery gauge), rather than ambient one...

Still, it looks interesting, even though i don't have slightest idea where to start, and if/how we can access such info via i2c bus. will try to ask some knowledgeable folks (as you may know from readme and documentation, bnf is based on research and proof-of-concepts/usable tools by ShadowJK). don't get your hopes right, but will check what could be done.

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Estel - and the rest: This should be part of the "Settings", as an application that you were to run every time you changed battery - and maybe even included the possibility of storing the capacity of more than one battery, allowing you to change.

Technology will develop, new batteries will be made that have higher capacity, just as cheap ones will be made without the same production quality and with lesser capacity. Now someone of us should make a GUI for "learning battery characteristics", save these and set the charge HW correctly. Every battery has a specific "profile", both related to discharge capability and charging, sorry, but i have been lectured on this and get this right will have much more impact than odd tweaks.

Your use of names cause amusement: check computer science what "bnf" means (is an abbreviation for, hint: compiler theory..). The reason for this tool is called "evolution" - but that name is taken. Lets try to get the app going. I can do some coding (C/C++, Perl, Shell), but need help with the GUI. Who is willing to help?

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Temperature: 43°C. Current: 75 mA. Combination of ambient temperature (read: heatwave), fan of nearby desktop computer, and on-principle-not-turned-on air-conditioner. No applications running on N900, except cellular GSM connection.

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Sadly, there is no way to write battery data into bq27x00_battery chip - only possible way is calibration. there *is* a way to force learning capacity a little earlier than usual, but it's complicated, time sensitive, and completely not-worth-effort, compared to learning cycle.

So, saving and loading battery profiles won't be possible, due to hardware restrictions.

I haven't had idea about that. In early days, when first version of script was created (read: at least a year, or more, before I decided, that others may enjoy using it too, then moved my a** to package it and share through repos), I was switching between running it and bq27200.sh script. I needed a name that start the same way - so auto-completion via tab will show me both scripts - but is easily auto-completed to the end, with just 2nd letter provided. So, I've added "n" as "new" or "next", and "f" as a random letter. Despite unusual way of creating name, it got used to it, so I've kept it that way.

Unfortunately, I'm not GUI coder at all (or any real coder, if we stick to facts ;) ). I'm all for other projects using BNF code/inspiration to achieve something, or just learn basic scripting by reading it - that's why BNF is very heavily commented in-code - but, it was meant to be ultra-lightweight way of having all major bq27x00 chip information at a glance, bindable to hardware button (allowing use in fullscreen programs too, without minimizing them). So, control panel applet is out of scope for this project.
---

It have been some time, since Pali fixed bq27x00_battery module, and released beta of his and freemangordon's BME FOSS Replacement kit. bq27x00_battery is loaded automatically, as a integral part of replacement solution. Hoever, one problem with bq27x00_battery - from bnf's perspective - is that it blocks access to i2c data. there *is* a way to access it simultaneously, via i2c_slave - but it's complicated, and no one is sure, if perfectly safe. Other than that, fixed bq27x00_battery is blessing, as it allows hassle-free access to most data provided by chip, as sysfs (and less hassle-free access to rest of them, via raw registers).

Some time ago, I've promised to release bnf that will work with bq27x00_battery, if it get fixed/incorporated into BME replacement. Hoever, I'm sure, that not all of bnf users want to jump into replacement bandwagon just yet (it's quite devel'ish in full sense of word) or at all, preffering i2c method (reinob, I'm thinking about you, especially ;) )

So, I've created a new version of bnf, that works for *both* bq27x00_battery, and "old" i2cget method. It determines if user have bq27x00_battery loaded and if yes, use it - otherwise, transparently switches to i2cget method. For ease of maintaining, I've divided it into 3 scripts now - "bnf" which only does module checks, and then, run either "bnf-bq27x00" or "bnf-i2c". Of course, I could still keep it as one file (more than 2x as big as before), but I feel it's more cleaner this way. Also, for those of you, that only use one method, and never plan to use another, you may just delete unneeded file (and/or rename *needed* one to "bnf", replacing controller script).

If When autobuilder and repos ever start really working again, I'll update version in extras-*. Until then, you may download drop-in replacement .tar from this (and opening) post attachment - just untar it to /usr/sbin/, replacing old file.

http://imageshack.us/scaled/landing/407/bnf11.png

Changelog:

• Uses either bq27x00_battery module, or i2cget method, transparently deciding which one is applicable.
• New value - "Average Time Remaining", which shows remaining time, calculated from averaged power usage since last complete charging.
• Minor code cleanup + more things commented for easy code understanding, even for sh beginners.

Happy using!

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

As repositories are up again, bnf 1.2 has been just queued for loading into fremantle extras-devel repository. Changelog:

• Fixed typo in sudoers file (bnf.sh was present, instead of bnf)
• Back in the repos, a they're working again

It's a minor release, which contain changes since last repo version, plus fix for sudoers file - users of 1.1 tar-only release, please update too. All people that experience problems with bnf running as root only (failing from user sudo), should be OK now - there was a typo in sudoers file. I have no idea, why it worked on some devices (including mine), despite that error.

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

I have just returned to my N900 after flirting with some other devices. Installed a new polar 1500 mAh battery. It was charged three times before I found this post while updating the device with all the great stuff people have come up with since I last looked.

Installed bnf. No problem. Followed the excellent calibration post - everything happened exactly as you said.

Now on the second discharge cycle. Full Charge has gone from 2000 mAh (or something - i did not take a screen shot) down to 1782 mAh and I suspect, as you say, that another one or two calibration cycles will bring it down the the real capacity.

My question is: On the charge after the first calibration cycle I was monitoring the device using bq27200, bnf and grepping the battery stats. I unplugged the device when bq27200 and bnf said the battery was 100% full. I did this as I was not sure and could not find any info to the contrary. However the battery stats showed that the battery was only at 66% charge!! The battery was still charging and flashing the orange LED. BUT shortly after being unplugged when I checked again - showed 97%.

So should I leave the charger connected until i get the green LED or should I do what I did and remove the charger when bnf shows that battery to be full (with the expected mV values etc)?

I am not using and special charge scripts like charge21.sh. Just bme. I also could not find a post giving a real insight into the pros and cons of stopping bme and using charge21. (Apart from not having the automatic shutdown happen before you get EDV1 = 1 which i have not had a problem with)

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

What do you mean by "battery stats"? Anyway, when calibrating to *lower* capacity that your LMD/ILMD (like, in your case, single polarcell, from 2000+ mAh), unplugging at green led should be OK. If you would be, OTOH, calibrating from lower to higher capacity, you should monitor via bnf or bq27200.sh and count minutes*mA (like written in calibration post), to avoid getting hit by limit of calibration capacity change.
---

From "different barrel" - I've found some problems with BME + bq27x00_battery combination, when device is plugged in and charging ended already. Nothing serious - it just doesn't work then, due to Pali's bad design decisions about bq27x00_battery sysnodes (When charging ended, bq27x00_battery stops exporting some sysnodes, causing read_erro,r when trying to access them).

Sadly, same happens when battery is uncalibrated and bqx00_battery loaded - for same reasons. Pali seems confident into keeping it that way to maintain compatibility with upstream bq27x00_battery, which I see as plain wrong (sysfs nodes should *always*.report what hardware gives, not censor data, due to someone's idea that it may be good thing).

Workaround for that is to unload bq27x00_battery, when device is not calibrated. Due to it's being PITA, I plan to rewrite BNF again, to only use i2cget, even when bq27x00_battery is loaded - fortunately, I2C_FORCE_SLAVE allows for safe accessing i2c values of bq27x00 chip, even if bq27x00_battery.ko access them already (due to bq27x00_battery module reads being atomic).

This should fix both problems mentioned above.

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

I am going from an old polar batttery (1400mAh) to a new one. The 2000- mAh value was already shown in bnf the first time i ran it and it seems to be going down towards 1500 which would of course be correct.

By Battery stats I mean the info obtained when the command lshal|grep battery

So what i did was correct - unplugging the charger when the bnf showed SOC 100%?

What difference would it make to leave the cahrger connected until the green LED is shown?

As I am technically going from a lower capacity to a higher capacity BUT the phone had this higher capacity (2487 or whatever) stored already and I am now working down from that to the genuine capacity!! Don't know how this situation arose but I think that is the nature of the beast!!

**Additional - found this on page 82 of the battery mod thread "The N900 actually has a chip that can do this capacity measurement and tracking, but it's unused, and the OS shuts down before 6% level at which the chip updates/"learns" battery capacity, so it's stuck at 2048mAh on most N900s. - shadowjk"

Perhaps this 2048 is the value that my phone started with as "default".

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Yes, 2048 is the default value (aka ILMD), which chip have set, if lost calibration data for some reason.

As for that wiki info, it's outdated - we're using exactly this chip for bnf, and kernel-power module bq27x00_battery uses it, too. Whole BME replacement is also using this chip.

BTW, "shutting down before calibration" wasn't entirely true, either. old, vanilla BME used sophisticated algorithm to "guess" when low voltage spikes could affect GSM modem, and shutdown then - so, it wasn't shutting down at certain treesholds. For most intents and purposes, it indeed was shutting down before EDV1, although, with some patience (and masochists nature), it was possible to calibrate with BME running. The bigger capacity/more cells battery had, the more stable voltage was at near edv1, so it was easier with dual cell setup.

Anyway, now those problems are gone - upcoming bme replacement will ensure, that calibration was done, before shutting down.

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Thank you sir. That has completed the lesson!

And, for the benefit of other readers I found Estel's advice based on his being a "fanatic of accurate measurement" when charging - also useful when discharging to ensure the EDV1 value changes before shutdown. Turn GSM off, close all apps, run bq27200 5 in terminal and (this is the twist) if you need to use a bit more charge to get you down to 3248 mV up the screen brightness for a few seconds and then drop it back down to minimum, monitoring the battery charge with the bq27200 5. I found it extremely easy to get the desired 15 second result without bme getting in the way.

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Hi. Installed bnf from repos 3 days ago. it worked at first but now its not working. When i launch it from menu via bnf icon. it shows nothing and when i launch it via terminal it gives me error.

any suggestions ? removing and re-installing doesn't work

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

It fails due to things I've just described - bq27x00_battery module is loaded in your system, and for some reasons, your chip started to report itself as requiring calibration - either device was without battery for a while, or you had more than 32 cycles since last calibration.

Due to - IMO, and in opinion of anyone even remotely related to BME replacement, that I've talked to - bad design decisions by Pali, bq27x00_battery stop exporting few sysf nodes *at all*, when battery isn't calibrated - causing "read errors", despite, that chip itself is still providing proper values. It means, that after 32 charging cycles, perfectly fine data will get dropped all-together.

I tried (and other people too - in fact, there is no one, except Pali, that think current approach is good), to convince Pali that in linux world, sysfnodes should *always* report what hardware reports, instead of censoring it for whatever reasons (not that here we have any good reasons, too). Sadly, he is very stubborn, and no luck here. You may try your luck at pestering him.
---

For now, only workaround is to modprobe -r bq27x00_battery (BNF will switch to i2cget access), or calibrate your battery.


As said, in next version, BNF will switch back to i2c-only access, that will work even with bq27x00_battery module loaded, though (due to I2C_FORCE_SLAVE and bq27x00_battery reads being atomic)

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Quick message...
bnf: SoC: 54%
Calibration needed: 0
Hildon: Battery low
These contradictions are tiresome...
Best wishes.

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Out of curiosity, which one was "right"? What was battery voltage at the moment?

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

I can say that there were many instances of the battery indicator recovering from red "battery low" to green "half-charged" without any actual charging involved. Therefore, I expect that a misinterpretation of battery characteristics is taking place.
What do "IMIN: 1" and "VDQ: 1" mean? And is it possible for a BL-5J battery to have "Charge: 1529 mAh"? With USB cable charging, it reports "Voltage: 4166 mV", "Current: 12 mA".
Thank you. Best wishes.

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

IMIN:1 means, that it have reached last stage of charging/charging is practically finished (current accepted by battery is less than 100 mA, might be as well device power usage). VDQ:1 means "valid discharge quality", i.e. since last full charge (even if it just ended), discharge wasn't interrupted to the point of spoiling discharge measurement, so upon reaching edv1, new battery calibration data might get saved.

All those things are explained in calibration post, linked in my signature :)

As for 1500 mAh - depending on your usage pattern, relative capacity might be around 1500 mAh, but it is unlikely to seen for any variant of genuine Nokia's BL-5J. OTOH, for Scud's or Polarcells, relative capacity of 1700 mAh isn't anything surprising.

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Thank you. I am still using the original BL-5J which came together with Nokia N900 three years ago. If battery problems become too persistent, I will probably buy Polarcell. I am using wires too frequently to be concerned about battery charge, at this moment; six hours is the longest time it would have to survive without charging.
Best wishes.

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Quick question...
What can "SoC: 0%" mean? Charge is 0mAh, too. Voltage and Current are fine: "3819mV" and "4mA" (or "6mA", or "42mA") respectively.
It started happening after the micro-USB port was broken. It might be related to the fact that after the original battery was completely discharged, all the charging is taking place externally, in the charging cradle, and the operating system is shut-down for the duration of battery exchange (two batteries: original-Nokia and PolarCell).
Thank you.
Best wishes.
_________________
Per aspera ad astra...

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

Yes that will be the issue.
It can't calculate without charging the battery in the device.

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

@estel

Quick question. Bnf shows 98% but the phone shows 75% 5 seconds after it was 97%. And my standard battery is 1699mah?

+ VDQ is 1.

Why do they show different values? It needs to be calibrated?

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

VDQ 1 means that it's a "valid" discharge cycle, that could be used to calibrate battery, if you discharge all way down to < than 3248 mV and stay there for at least 15 seconds, without your device shutting down (which, with standard battery, means that you need to either use replacement bme, or [usually] stop BME when getting close to treeshold, or your device may shutdown prematurely). That is, if you don't "invalidate" current discharging cycle, by resetting device or connecting and disconnecting charger (few times in a row, or for too long - short, accidental charging doesn't seem to reset VDQ to 0).

As for 1699 mAh capacity, it is possible that you got such relative one with very low discharge current (i.e. device unised/used rarely during discharge cycle when it got calibrated) and very good battery (polarcell/scud or new Nokia's 1400 mAh Q10 original BL-5J).

Otherwise - and more likely - you just got uncalibrated lately, which means that chip reset to 2048 mAh, and goes down from there with everyy calibration cycle. It means, that you need one or two (depending on real capacity of your battery) more calibrations, 'till chip starts to show correct values.

The above may be - also - a reason why BME goes crazy and shows 75% just after 97%. BNF shows exactly what charging chip "thinks", so you will get more realistic readings from there (although, if chip is, indeed, still uncalibrated, it will "lie" too - you will get something like 20% left, before going straight to 0, upon device reaching shutdown state).

Hope it helps,
/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

@Estel

A follow up question. My battery widget is at 0% but bnf is 63%. Voltage is above 3425 and VDQ remains at one. I think maybe something is wrong with bme? that it is causing this issue? Could bnf have modified it?

RE (Charging) : I charge it at random times, i don't necessary wait till it is low.I like to keep it topped up.

( i am using nokia's bme)

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

That is not the best for the battery - lipo's like neither being drained nor filled-to-the-brim. IIR, from down to15% and up to 85% capacity would do best, or thereabouts. The relatively short-legs of smartphones make that practically very difficult to do.

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

IIRC, heavy industry (trains) use 20%-80% thresholds, but it's indeed about same thing. People still have NiCD/NiMH habits of "refreshing" by full charge.discharge, which are totally inappropriate to LiIon family.

It means - sadly for you - that your battery is closer to 800 mAh, than the 1700 mAh suggested in last post ;)

While being (non)calibrated for 1699 mAh, your chip "thinks" it's at 63% left 'till 3000 mV (0 mAh - it calibrates at 3248 mV, which should mean 6% left), but in reality, it is 3425 mV, so *very* close to end of discharge. If you calibrate this time, you will notice lower indicated value (something like 1300 mAh, probably), but you need few more calibration cycles, until you get the real value. As said, I suspect something like 800 mAh, which means very poor battery performance.

Cheers,
/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

@Estel

Could I make a request for bnf.

Feature that run the script to calibrate the battery etc.

Making it easier then it already is :)

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

IIRC, there is already tool for it (kerio written one?). I haven't implemented this, as I think that artificially "wasting" current misses the point. When you calibrate, you want to use your device as normal as it gets, to have your relative capacity as calibrated value.

f you make current higher than usual, you will get your value rounded down, and during regular usage, you will have to mentally "add" some capacity, when it's down to 6%. The same but reversed, in opposite case. so, IMO, the key is to just - from time to time, when it doesn't require effort - let device discharge to < 3248 mV, after a busy day for device (or few days, as in my case, with ~3300 mAh battery). Once per month, or so (at least once for 32 charging cycles).

Having BME FOSS replacement makes it even easier - you just allow device to gently turn down due to low power, no bme disabling and voltage monitoring (BME replacement ensured, that device will shutdown *after* calibration took place, unless you're pressing it under extreme - like 1A - current draw during end of discharge) things.

Of course, if someone want to volunteer writing a script that matches bnf "architecture" ( ;) ), I'll gladly include it in update, with all credits and kudos - but, myself, I'm not very interested in writing a "forced calibration" script, because, as I said, I think it misses the point of calibration during real-world usage.

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

What tool is out there? Name?
Reason I asked as I used a method u had posted, but in xterm vdq value was 0.

RE: BME I have 3 options installed - Nokia's BME, Alternative and Dummy. I use the first one.

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

No idea, it was never put into repos, just a script as attachment "somewhere" on forum. I vaguely recall kerio creating one such script, and something tells me that there was a joerg_rw's version floating around.

Just keep in mind, that if your VDQ was 0 for any_reason, then script wouldn't help you.

As for "3 options installed" - nope, you got it totally wrong. What you're referring to is set of options in Advanced Power Monitor, which let you choose which algorithm to calculate capacity (based on voltage) you want to use - regular Nokia's BME, Alternative graph by dr_frost_dk, or disable it at all (dummy). All three of them are guesswork, not real calibrated capacity provided by chip.

BTW, using BME replacement and battery applet status replacement, you don't need Advanced Power Monitor at all - in such setup it's obolete.

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

hai estel, can you show me howtos change BNF icon ?
just to please my eyes only :D, i love colour full icon

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

edit the /usr/share/applications/hildon/bnf.desktop file, and point the ''icon'' to any location with your new icon :)

/Estel

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

thank you estel ;)

Re: [Announce] bnf - nifty little tool, allowing to have battery info at glance
 

I really dont understand why it doesnt work for me. I'v searched the forum and its like i'm d only one having this problem. When i type 'bnf' in xterm, I get the message
.Error: Read failed
usr/sbin/bnf-i2c: line 45: syntax error: * 3570 / 20 / 1000
sudo bnf does nothing.