Support for laptop with multiple batteries

mate-desktop / mate-power-manager

Power management tool for the MATE desktop

https://mate-desktop.org

GNU General Public License v2.0

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Support for laptop with multiple batteries #257

Open phocean opened 6 years ago

phocean commented 6 years ago

Expected behaviour

Some laptops, like recent Thinkpad (like T460), have two batteries (one internal and one that can be swapped).

The user expects the system to report the global remaining power when on battery (works like this in some different DE).

Actual behaviour

Mate-power-manager sees two batteries and report them individually. The user gets only the remaining time reported by the primary battery.

capture du 2018-05-09 18-14-29

MATE general version

1.20.1

Linux Distribution

Ubuntu 18.04

lukefromdc commented 6 years ago

Does anyone here have such a laptop? I do not.

phocean commented 6 years ago

I am not sure anymore if this bug is valid. Let me explain:

I found a box in power settings that allows to display an icon in the notification area. It display another battery icon, which reports the power rightly. It is handled by mate-power-manager.
It appears that the bug I reported is actually in indicator-power, which if my understanding is correct, is not maintained by Mate Desktop, but Ubuntu.

This is very confusing as both entries open the same settings.

Can you confirm ?

Also, I am wondering why this is the default setup (I did a fresh install a few days ago).

Screenshot showing the mate-power-manager applet, seeing 2 batteries but display a correct global remaining power:

capture du 2018-05-11 07-18-24

alexarnaud commented 6 years ago

Maybe @vkareh or @flexiondotorg could provide you an answer on Ubuntu Mate indicator.

Best regards, Alex.

gpsboomerang commented 5 years ago

I also happen to have a ThinkPad T460s, (with Linux Mate 19.04). Something I've noticed which may help. I suspect the hover pop-up box (see attached) and battery details probably not being updated if it's not the battery being used. ie, with 42% I expect ~2 hours, not 15 minutes. PoorBatteryEstimate

gpsboomerang commented 5 years ago

Looking at the Battery Details page a bit longer, I suspect the battery charge rate (29.8W) is being used for the remaining time calculation. Anyone able to confirm this?

BatteryDetails

gpsboomerang commented 5 years ago

BTW, What does the field 'Supply' mean on the above page? Because it indicates 'Yes' for batteries and AC.

cwendling commented 5 years ago

BTW, What does the field 'Supply' mean on the above page? Because it indicates 'Yes' for batteries and AC.

It indicates whether this device is supplying power to the running computer. Apparently devices that provide power to other connected devices could appear here (imagine the battery of a connected phone or so).

All these info come from upower AFAIK.