Battery tests, latest, RB (again) and RB batt time left.

[andrewmel]

Yellow, is Rockbox


Battery test conclusions:

New stuff

The battery is now dying after 18 months of heavy use. Time to get a new one....

Rockbox now uses the battery much faster than iRiver firmware.

I also tested the battery time left clock. At the beginning of the test the iRiver indicated that I had 8:41 of battery time left, but that ran out in 6:20, 20 minutes before the end of the test. But if you look at this graph, you will see that it is a nice straight line, indicating that the equation is close, just the slope and the x and y intercepts are a tad out.



Old Stuff

The battery is still pretty good after 15 months of heavy use.
1.25k firmware also gives the battery a real hit.
Jazz equaliser has no effect on the battery.

Video really sucks battery life.
Wow-preset chews battery life.
ogg chews battery life.
Srs chews battery life.
Screen sucks battery life.
Adding more than one of these together really really chews the battery.



Methods

* Rockbox tests will use the same naming conventions as for the iRiver tests. Equaliser none = Default settings. D Rpt is one album cued in a playlist to repeat, with shuffle off. However volumes are given in Rockbox percent. Anti-Skip Buffer 5s. Crossfade Off. Enable Replaygain No. Backlight 5s.

I have had my h320 since mid Aug 04, and use it every day, often for more than 8 hours per day. I have run the battery flat a couple of times and was starting to think that it was running down more quickly so I decided to do a bit of testing.

For each test I charge the player for at least an hour after it says its full.



Results









Tests 1 - 6 Run through a long list of 192 kbs cbr mp3 songs. All tested on 1.06 k October 2004.


Tests 7 - 11 all on video firmware

Test 7 This is on video. I looped through three movies of varying lengths, from 5 mins to 30 mins. 8 Nov 2004.

Test 8 Here is using ogg. I set it to loop through the double Pink Floyd album the wall. Ran this test last night but the player was already flat when I woke, so charged it and ran it again today. This is a surprisingly short running time. 15 Dec 2004.

Test 9 Looped through the double jethro tull live album bursting out, 192kbs cbr mp3 from allofmp3.com. 21 Dec 2004.

Test 10 Looped through a miles davis album encoded in 192 k .wma. I used this album as its the only one I have in .wma. 13 Jan 2005.

Test 11 This is the same as test 1 and is a test of the video firmware, this time using 1.25 K. 1.25 has a bug, now fixed with 1.27. 14 Jan 2005.

Test 12 So comparing this test with test 11 says that 1.25k chews much more battery than 1.20. looping through the Jethro Tull album again. 15 Jan 2005.

Test 13 This test is on my now much older player (15 months). While I am not getting the 14 odd hours I did 12 months ago, I am still getting more than 12 hours. Looks like it will be a while before I replace the battery. 13 Nov 2005

Test 14 First Rockbox test. This test ran out while I was asleep, and was somewhere between 1 and 8:30, not really much of a test. 20 Dec 2005

Test 15 This Rockbox build introduced turning the LCD off when the backlight was off, as well as other changes. This 11 hour figure should be compared with the 12 hour one from Test 13, so it is pretty close. 22 Dec 2005

Test 16. Repeating a directory of 192k CBR mp3 files. Battery is starting to die now. So it isnt just Rockbox.

Test 17. Rockbox Optimised build for the H3xx from 2 Feb 06. I set everything to default when booting, and then selected the theme for the Dark WPS. I repeated a playlist that contained the same album as that used in Test 16. This build of Rockbox is chewing the battery much faster than the iRiver firmware.

I hope that this information is useful to you in choosing how you will make the tradeoff between options you may want and the effects on battery life.

[SoulEata]

1.25k firmware also gives the battery a real hit.
Jazz equaliser has no effect on the battery.

Video really sucks battery life.
Wow-preset chews battery life.
ogg chews battery life.
Srs chews battery life.
Screen sucks battery life.

So, given that I have 1.04US with no rbx, don't watch video, don't use WOW, don't use SRS or OGG, but listen to 128-192k mp3s and occasionally light up the screen, I should have decent battery life for a while then?

[andrewmel]

Your player is about 12 months old? I would have about 14-15 hours then with those parameters.

Maybe U.S. firmware sucks battery life?

Maybe it doesnt like those foreign electrons

a

[SoulEata]

Actually since I RMAed, my player is about... 5-6 months old.

[phusion]

I would love cumulative tests with a Newertech 2200mah battery (or equivilant) under Rockbox or the stock Iriver firmware.

Andrewmel or anyone?

[andrewmel]

Buy and send me the battery, and I promise you 10 tests within 6 months

a

[phusion]

haha, you bet, as soon as I win that $300 million powerball. Heck, i'd buy everyone on MR one as well.

[Febs]

Andrew, Linus made some changes today which he said might impact battery life. This might be a good time for a new test.

[benchMarc]

My H340 is from september 2004. I let it play the whole night trough. It played from 24:00 till 8am. Latest rockbox firmware with original settings. 8 hours playtime isn't really much. I need to test it with the original firmware. Maybe it's because i charged it via USB quite some times. Also, sometimes i don't let the battery get fully depleted but charge it when there's still some time left.

[Febs]

That's the way you're supposed to charge a lithium battery. They have no memory effect; you don't need to let them run down before charging.

[phusion]

Originally Posted by Febs

That's the way you're supposed to charge a lithium battery. They have no memory effect; you don't need to let them run down before charging.

But the bad side of that is Li-Polys only have 175-300 charge cycles or about 1% loss of charge power per month (No wonder everyone's batteries are dying). Li-Ions can get 500-1000! cycles per battery, but there's that lil' bit about them being more liable to explode if mishandled. Oh yeah, they're also about 2X as expensive as Li-Polys.

I think I would rather have a removable pack made up of AA Ni-MHs. Cheap, reliable and easy to replace.

[shof515]

is there an way to make it so the rockbox uses less battery?

[DD]

You can optimise a few backlight settings and disk spin-down times that might buy you a few extra minutes, but you have to remember that Rockbox is still in development. However with the release of v3 looming, it looks as though this is going to addressed...

Originally Posted by 3.0 release schedule

The freeze will be extended if necessary until the following are fully implemented/

* Core functionality (everything that worked in Rockbox 2.5) (Please report missing functionality for supported platforms in the bug tracker.)
* iRiver power consumption issues
* Disable Tag DB / runtime DB and replace with tagcache (runtime DB / song ratings not included in this release)
* Software codec / EQ
* Remote support for iRiver
* All WPS/UI functionality currently in CVS
* Voice Support

[cosmocat]

I'm sorry if my question is out of the current subject (in fact, not so much )

Andrewmel, in your message, you said such a thing : "This Rockbox build introduced turning the LCD off when the backlight was off".
Is it in the cvs buid or in an optimized build? And just for the H300 (I own a H100)? Because I don't find this option and I would like to use it.

Thanks for all in advance.

[sweetspot]

Originally Posted by phusion

haha, you bet, as soon as I win that $300 million powerball. Heck, i'd buy everyone on MR one as well.

Dude, with that kind of money, you might as well just buy iRiver the company, then do something RIGHT with it !

[andrewmel]

Originally Posted by cosmocat

Andrewmel, in your message, you said such a thing : "This Rockbox build introduced turning the LCD off when the backlight was off".
Is it in the cvs buid or in an optimized build? And just for the H300 (I own a H100)? Because I don't find this option and I would like to use it.

That was ages ago. Before the Optimized builds existed.

a

[cosmocat]

Originally Posted by andrewmel

That was ages ago. Before the Optimized builds existed.

a

It was what I was thinking about due to the date of the test build but my question is still available...
Is it still present in rockox and where? on which build?

[andrewmel]

I have stopped testing. As my battery life is now so low I think my results are meaningless.

a

[baobab68]

And you now have an iPod, isn't that right?

Seriously though, I often read this thread to reassure myself that it isn't only me.

Hooray for the RB Feature Freeze...

[andrewmel]

Yep, and I am not bothering to test the battery on the iPod yet as I dont run the iPod firmware and the RB firmware is not mature enough for battery tests to be of much use other than to say that "it doesnt last as long".

a

[baobab68]

Totally OT, but how is the iPod under RB?

I have zero experience with iPod even in it's native incarnation but people have told me that everything is incredibly logical and there's always something new "under the hood" (eg I didn't realise iPod could rate tracks on the fly until someone showed me a screen with stars on it)

The thing about them that really bothers me is, you guess it iTunes - I just don't like software that doesn't give you any control and does things behind your back.

RB removes the dependence on the Apple music management, doesn't it?