Battery life poll redux

[scuderiaconchiglia]

Sorry folks, my first attempt at this poll was rather inept so let's take another stab at it. The data I was trying to gather from this poll was not about the relative battery life between the original firmware versus RockBox. Rather it was about if you are getting VERY POOR battery life from recent RockBox builds, as some folks here are reporting. Further, I wanted to try to help determine if this was isolated to the 20g version or not.

So please respond again to the poll.

Thanks,

Gary

[IceWolf0]

Iv noticed rockbox chugs battery when it starts up, some times i'll have to plug it in start it and unplug it and it will run for a good while. also i had left rockbox on continuously with no idle off and i left it not playing anything. with a full charge it died in 5 hours. that dosent seem right when the OF was rated at 20 hours with a new charged battery. and i can still get about 12-15 hours off the OF. my question is what in the world are the proccessors doing when the player isnt playing anything, the harddrive is off and nothing is happening?

this h10 20gb is about 2 years old i kno thoes batteries are only guaranteed for about 1 year. their supposed to die in like 5 from what i have heard. so how old the battery is has to do with this.

[Mac_h10]

Mine got something about 2hs with RB and 8-9 with OF. Last BIG disadvantage in RockBox...

[kcchan1]

My 5GB H10 dies within 2 hours when I play FLAC.

[Jonno12345]

I'm not entirely sure this poll can work... I could be using equalisers, 200% pitch, listening to any high quality lossless media file, whilst playing games and having the backlight on all the time. I'd be lucky to get like, half an hour .

[wiggin0105]

There is a lot of text below, so if you just want battery stats, just read the bold print.

My h10 (20gb) got more life out of the battery with the OF than even iRiver's stats. Without any of the fancy stuff like equalizer and SRS WOW I could get almost 18 hours of playback of 128kb mp3 files. With the settings I used, (I used SRS WOW but forget the exact settings) I could get about 12 hours of continuous playback. With Rockbox, I don't use any of the audio settings other than a custom stereo width of about 60% (to mimic Crossfeed while using slightly less power) and I boost up the treble/bass to 5/3 respectively. I get about 5 to 6 hours with Rockbox. I'd love to see that get to 9 hours so I could get through my shifts at work, but I still choose Rockbox to the OF.

I have the daily build from June 15th and I love it. The new menu system is so seamless and easy to use (easier than the OF in my view) and having video and games like snood and tetris just kicks so much ass. Interestingly, I get about 6 to 7 hours of playback on video alone, so it shows there is some definite room for playback in audio.

[backinblackaczdc]

aww lucky! I get like 30 min tops
I guess it is a hardware problem

[dizzydevil]

Still I think that the batterypower is a big disadvantage of RB.
I love all the stuff (don't mind about the games and MPGplayer btw) but I get just about 3 hours of continous play. That really sucks so I switched back to OF.
I do SO hope that somene optimizes the code one day...

[Chris Stares]

I use Rockbox on both my H340 and my two H120s as it beats the OF hands-down in all aspects (including battery life). I like it so much, I even made a financial contribution to the Rockbox project.

However, we also have four H10 5GB players in the family (we love irivers! ) but, unfortunately, I still have to use the OF on these due to the battery life issues on the H10. It's probably the same sort of situation as the battery life issue on the H300, with the USBOTG chip sucking the power. Once that was sorted out, the battery life on the H300 under Rockbox shot up and was far better than battery life under the OF. I'm sure it will be sorted eventually, and I'll be able to put Rockbox on my H10s, but for now, I'm afraid I have to stick with the OF for the much better battery life (and to a lesser extent FM radio).

[backinblackaczdc]

i hope this is fixed soon. thanks for the explination!

[backinblackaczdc]

well... my iriver came to the point where having it in the computer dock was using more power than it was gaining. i put it in the dock to copy some files, and my irivers screen flickered and died after like 5 minutes. When its not plugged into the wall, I can get 8 min of playback if i'm lucky.

I can't use it for its intended use anymore, which is why I went and bought a 30gb ipod video to use with rockbox (and maybe ipodlinux)

i'll still check in every once and awhile.. theres a chance ill get a new battery and use it again

[wiggin0105]

backinblackaczdc, I have found batteries for the H10 20gb for about $30 (before shipping) but I obviously have not needed to buy one, yet. Sounds like you need one, though.

Here is a good place to buy one. May also want to try ebay. Make sure you get the right capacity/voltage.

To make sure you disassemble your iriver correctly, check out this thread.

[backinblackaczdc]

hm... thanks for the link! I may look in to that...

[DeadKenny]

H10 6GB here and battery life with Rockbox is definitely low. Lower than 2hrs but enough to get an album's worth, just about two, then it's back on the charger (thankfully I listen mostly at work near a power socket).

Also whilst on battery under Rockbox the H10 is getting quite hot! Doesn't do that with the original firmware. Seems like it's got a lot of disc activity going on which would explain battery drain.

That said I've been playing single track MP3 albums (i.e. entire albums ripped to one MP3), mainly because I'd converted that way for the original firmware to get around the annoyance of gaps between tracks. With Rockbox I don't need to do that so I'm testing converting to individual track MP3s (luckily all my CDs are ripped to flac for my media server so I can convert to whatever I want).

[Jonno12345]

Originally Posted by DeadKenny

H10 6GB here and battery life with Rockbox is definitely low. Lower than 2hrs but enough to get an album's worth, just about two, then it's back on the charger (thankfully I listen mostly at work near a power socket).

Also whilst on battery under Rockbox the H10 is getting quite hot! Doesn't do that with the original firmware. Seems like it's got a lot of disc activity going on which would explain battery drain.

That said I've been playing single track MP3 albums (i.e. entire albums ripped to one MP3), mainly because I'd converted that way for the original firmware to get around the annoyance of gaps between tracks. With Rockbox I don't need to do that so I'm testing converting to individual track MP3s (luckily all my CDs are ripped to flac for my media server so I can convert to whatever I want).

Only two hours? What bitrate are you using? Do you use the equalizer? Do you keep the backlight on a lot?

[DeadKenny]

Originally Posted by Jonno12345

Only two hours? What bitrate are you using? Do you use the equalizer? Do you keep the backlight on a lot?

192kbps VBR Lame encoded.
No equalizer.
Backlight is off except when I navigate the menus, and is set to only stay on for a few seconds. Essentially it's off most of the time.


However I suspect it's down to the length of tracks because I've been playing complete album tracks (one MP3 for an entire album), for historical reasons (original firmware not doing gapless).

I tried individual tracks yesterday and it did seem to last longer. Looking at the scrobbler log of what I played it must have lasted for 3 hours and there's a bit left on the battery, although I find once the indicator is down to half it rapidly runs out.


Still finding the H10 gets hot though with Rockbox.

[Jonno12345]

Deadkenny, could you follow the instructions here:

http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/vie...BatteryRuntime

and post your results? And anyone else who is having trouble with their battery life or finds the % goes down quicker than it should do etc.

[TJHooker]

battery life really improved in the summer! I just got 8,5 hours with a full charge on a 20gb h10. I cant really recall but this is about the same that I got with the original firmware. (I mostly play ~220kbps vbr mp3)

[dizzydevil]

but nothing happened to the poor 6GB Version...

[PaulPosition]

Funny that someone would bring up this thread 'The Minute Before I'd Resurrect It'(tm).

Okay, so over at rockbox.org, Buschel has started testing the PortalPlayer chipset's registers for bits that would disable devices that aren't used. So as to save on battery output.

There really is two parts to it : testing the individual bits (which involves building, patching, building, patching... I must have built and installed about 20 different rockbox.mi4 now!) to know what works and what stop the devices from booting. -- And benchmarking the resulting Test Builds.

For example, there's currently a 'PP5020-test-02' build sitting in the forums at rockbox.org that's waiting to be benchmarked by people with H10s and sansa's. (I'll post a link further down).

So what can you do? Well, benchmark it! While you're at it, you might also benchmark the regular svn build (current build) and/or the OF.

Here's how I usually bench (and the results I got, to get you guys salivating a bit at the prospect of this patch getting committed someday soon) :

1) Benching
- Load up a folder with a few good files, preferably the same format (eg, all mp3 192k) and something like a double-album worth so that it can't all be contained in buffer.
- Charge the device 'till it's full.
- Boot it up with hold on to clear settings, you want a controlled environment.
- Choose a sound level and stick with it through the different benches (I chose -20db)
- Start plugin->apps->battery bench
- Start playing the first file in the 'test' folder, set device on hold so it isn't interrupted, and leave it for a few hours.
- Do not disturb. Wanna know if it's finished? Pick up the earphones and give a listen.

When you do another benchmark (from svn to patched, or vice-versa) then try to have the exact same settings and files. So comparisons become meaningful.

(Here's my latest results)
H10, 5gb
- With svn from two days ago, I got 5:27 runtime. Which was better than I thought. Then again, I guess album_art WPSes spin the disc more often than the default one.
- With the PP5020-test-02 patched build, I got 6:49 runtime.
- With the OF (see below) my old battery gave me 7:15 runtime.
Yep, 6:49 vs 7:15 .. That's almost the same !!

(To benchmark the Original Firmware you could plug your H10's output into your computer soundcard (with a male-male cord) and use windows recorder (or other) to record everything. Then when the player is dead, just look at the soundwave's lenght and you'll know how much time the battery gave you).

Ah, right... the link to the forum post.
All PP502x Targets - Device Disable Testing Build (SVNr16150 & FS#8379 v13)

Please, if you have time to bench, do. Especially if you have a 20gb unit (which have NOT been benched by anyone).

[Rocinante69]

Does anyone know what the mAh rating for the stock battery that came in the H10-20Gb is? Thanks!!

[mcruiskeen]

I installed the build rockbox5gb20080117.z ip advertised in the "Viewports Sim..." thread and ran the battery benchmark I can't remember now whether the volume was set to -25dB or -30dB.

I left it running until the battery died, which was at time 06:47:38!

The previous battery test on my 5GB H10 ran for barely 4.5 hours, so this is almost 50% better.

Très bien!