I read up about battery management, and have been trying to follow the recommendation to charge to 95%, discharge to 20% and repeat. Sadly, the low battery only shows up in the status bar, with no pop-up or audible notification. I get busy working, and the next thing I know, the laptop has powered off because the battery hit its critical low setpoint.
I did some searching, and and found the Gnome Power Manager, that allows you to configure low power settings, and notifications, but it isn’t in the Pure repository.
Looking for recommendations: is Power Manager the way to go, are there other better options?
Thanks in advance
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Hi, if your problem still persists, it would be best if you sent an email to: support@puri.sm
With a description of your problem so that the support team can help you.
Hi @Amarula we did a check and regarding your questions:
Gnome-power-manager should already be installed in your system. You can confirm that by opening the terminal application: Tilix and using the following command:
apt list gnome-power-manager
and pressing enter. It should show something similar to this:
With the information you provided us so far, two things you can try are: install the Gnome-Shell plugin: Battery- status, and check your systems notifications.
1 - To install Battery-Status
The easiest way to do it is by opening the Software application:
Use the search tool on upper right corner and and search for the term: Battery Status
- Press the search result
- Then press install
- You will be asked again if you want to download the gnome extension and install it, press install
After it’s installed you will be presented with the option to open Battery-status settings:
And edit them if you want:
You can see and edit these settings at anytime by using the application Tweaks and opening the option Extensions
2- Checking your notifications system
- Open you settings application
- Select the option
Notificationson the left panel - On the top of your notifications page check if all notifications are enabled
-
If they are not, then activate them.
-
Scroll down the page to see the power notifications button and if notifications are enabled, it should say
on.
- Press the power notifications button to open the settings of power notifications, and see if popup and sound notifications are enabled
Let us know if this solution worked to solve your problem.
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Thanks for your reply @joao.azevedo.
You are correct, when I checked Power Manager is already installed. I had previously verified that notifications are enabled, and all the power notifications are enabled. I also turned on the messages for the lock screen.
I will try installing Battery Status, and let you know if it changes anything.
I would like to point out the helpfullness of this support reply . So solid , clear and complete. Thumbs up . Nice one , keep it up.
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Still not getting any power notifications: not when I plug in, not when I unplug, not when power reaches 100%, not when power drops to a low level, not before it goes critical and turns itself off.
And yes, the support here in the forums as well as from the official tech support email is amazing. Thank you!
@Amarula Thank you for your feedback, we will investigate and reach back to you. One question by the way. Are you able to see the battery percentage in the right side of the top bar?
Sorry for the delay in responding, yes the battery icon and percentage show up at the top right. I tried installing battery status, and it showed up in the top right in addition to the default battery icon, which I found annoying, so I removed it again. Thanks again…
@joao.azevedo is there any update? I am facing the same problem of battery notifications never showing. It’s very annoying when librem suddenly shuts down and looses all unsaved data.
This is an old thread but I have the same problem.
@joao.azevedo, when I search in pureOS store, there is no battery status extension, perhaps because I am not set in English and I have no clue how that name was translated. What is the actual package name so that I could directly install it?
In general, my problem is exactly as described by @Amarula in the 2019 post, my only solution now would be, every time I unplug the power cord, to start a timer to remind me to look at the phone after 3 or 4h and see if it needs to be plugged back on power. This is extremely inconvenient, so either I will leave it on power permanently, or I will find it out of battery.
can you check in settings > power > and at the bottom of the menu the section: show battery percentage.
Thanks for the reply. I see that, it is on and I do see the battery percentage on the top right corner.
However, I don’t know how to be alerted when that percentage goes below some level. A specific LED visual signal (colour and/or blinking style) would be nice, perhaps some sound (although I could miss it, I think the visual signal with the LED would be more useful).
This is one of the problems with necro. I believe that the original problem was with a laptop but the necro post was seemingly about a phone.
I expect that if anyone really wants to get into messing with the LEDs then it will matter which hardware is being referred to. Likewise the exact paths in e.g. /sys/class may depend on the hardware.
However, for the phone, it is easy enough to write a script that does what I need (a sound file played every X minutes whenever the battery is below Y% and not charging).
Stopping charging before it reaches 100% (i.e. at a high set point) might be better handled by the charge controller - once that interface is exposed to the user in a safe and sane way.
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I am sorry about that, I normally search by category, only for phone, seems that I forgot here. I could not find the other thread, thanks to @Quarnero for indicating this, I will try. I guess the sound every X minutes could do the trick, provided the phone does not go off too quickly.
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Thanks for this reply/post! I’m considering this job as successfully completed/solved from Purism side. BPP-L503 battery inside of the Librem 5 is charged until red LED light turns off, turns off at the point when BPP-L503 battery reached 4.20V. I just do not think that anything else needed (nor search here where are my earlier posts touching 4.35V Li-ion battery cells description, as directly correlated).
And in making this reply short, I’m quite/very confident that BQ25890 (Inter-Integrated Circuit 1S 5A buck battery charger Maxcharge™ tech for high input with D+/D−) does its job within the Librem 5 extraordinarily.
Yes, charging will stop at the point determined by Purism, which I’m sure is a safe point. However if you want to override that and stop it earlier then I believe you might have to enter shell commands that are fairly hair-raising.
Yes, 100% may not really be 100%. The point at which it stops, by default, is called 100% - and that’s fine. I am talking about stopping below what it is calling 100% e.g. stopping at 80%.
Unless you really really need that last 20% then you spend a lot of time charging to get that last 20% i.e. diminishing returns.
Only the customer really knows what the usage pattern is going to be in the immediate future and hence whether it is worth waiting all the way to 100% or adequate to stop at 80%.
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@irvinewade, thanks for this very kind explanation as well (as I already and clearly understood your previous post/input/intention)!
I don’t know whether it works but I just run a cron job every X minutes. Said job calculates the battery level and if below a threshold and not charging then it talks to me. Obviously said shell script is limited only by your imagination.
You can find an example script e.g. here: Script to Play a Battery Charge Notification or Warning - #20 by amarok and surrounding discussion.
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