Power Status (was Re: Because LC can't do two things at once.)

[Peter M. Brigham]

Sorry, I left out the "word 1" part. The Unix case should read:

         put url "/sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/" into tStatus
         if tSource = empty then put url "/sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/" into tStatus
         put word 1 of tStatus into tStatus
         return caseSwitch(tStatus,"discharging=Battery","charging,full=AC","*=*")

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig

On Mar 3, 2015, at 10:29 AM, Richard Gaskin wrote:

> Peter M. Brigham wrote:
> > So it looks from your links that I should use "/sys/class/power_supply
> > /BAT0/" for the URL on Unix, and check for "charging" or
> > "discharging" as the first word??
> 
> ...or "full", as I saw last night while testing this.
> 
> So far I'm only seeing one-word values, so using "word 1" would seem a safe choice - good call.
> 
> 
> We have one remaining mystery, however:  my Dell has only one battery, but has no values at /sys/class/power_supply/BAT0/, instead using /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/.
> 
> I've read other cases online where folks find the same thing, but haven't found the definitive rule governing why.
> 
> In my reading I also came across some laptop models (Toshiba came up a couple times) in which the battery firmware doesn't report its info in a standard way, making it more difficult for generalized utilities to obtain it.  But frankly, if an OEM chooses to disregard published standards personally I can't see spending much time accommodating them, so I'm not too worried about such edge cases.
> 
> Given all this, I would feel reasonably safe at this time with the following algorithm:
> 
> First check BAT0/status
> If empty then
>    check BAT1/status
> end if
> If both are empty there's probably no battery
> If a value is found then use it
> 
> I've seen no mention of BAT2 or more, so I feel this should account for a reasonably useful range of contexts.
> 
> 
> My own goal here is to know whether I can feel save performing optional background processing which can improve performance but at the cost of battery life.
> 
> So either "full" or "charging" implies that the laptop is plugged into a wall socket, so I'd proceed with those background tasks.
> 
> And if no battery info can be found at all in either location (BAT0 or BAT1), it seems safe to assume we're not on a battery-powered device, so I'd also proceed with optional background tasks.
> 
> So it's only when the status returns "discharging" that I know a battery is present and that it's not plugged into a wall socket, in which case I should at least let the user decide whether or not to run optional background tasks.
> 
> -- 
> Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World Systems
> Software Design and Development for the Desktop, Mobile, and the Web
> ____________________________________________________________________
> Ambassador at FourthWorld.com                http://www.FourthWorld.com
> 
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