Battery - Odd incident

Just had an odd occurrence with my Star Lite II laptop running Zorin OS 15.2.

The battery percentage was at 24%. I was watching a video on YouTube and suddenly it all went off.

I connected my charger, booted back up and the percentage was 2%.

What the hell was that?

Are you using Gnome desktop (Zorin Core or Ultimate With Gnome)?
That sounds like a upower bug.

How would I know if I am using a Gnome desktop? The laptop is a Star Lite II. The OS is preinstalled, it's definitely Core and not Ultimate. What is an Upower bug?

JamieStarliteMk2 wrote:How would I know if I am using a Gnome desktop? The laptop is a Star Lite II. The OS is preinstalled. What is a Upower bug?

Distros come with different desktop environments, each offering different features and layouts. A lot of it is based on preference- how you wnat things to Look and Feel.
Zorin Core and Zorin Ultimate come with Gnome.
Zorin Lite and Zorin Ultimate Lite come with XFCE.

Star Lite II with OS preinstalled Most Likely comes with Core.
It is a safe bet you are using Gnome.

You can check by opening a terminal and entering

Code:

echo $XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP

My result looks like:

Code:

X-Cinnamon

because that is the desktop environment I am using.


Upower is the app that governs battery usage and reporting remaining time, remaining life etc to the user. It is what Gnome D.E. uses:
http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/bio ... wer.7.html

For bugs:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... apport-bug
Scrolling through the list:
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... ug/1827644
and
https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour ... bug/583271

Using such reports, can you narrow down which one describes your experience the best?

It might take a while for me to read through it all. But can I say for sure it is not a hardware issue? I might just charge back up from 30% for safety.

JamieStarliteMk2 wrote:It might take a while for me to read through it all. But can I say for sure it is not a hardware issue? I might just charge back up from 30% for safety.

Cannot say that for sure, no. There could be a battery issue.
If it turned off when saying 24%- then I would Charge Up the battery from completely dead a couple of times to recalibrate.

That alone may solve your issue.

You would need to run some tests on your battery to eliminate that is a probable cause. But in all honesty, It is not the first thing that I would try... it seems less likely to be the battery on a new Star Lite Notebook than a bug with upower app.

Thanks for your help. Will you know how it goes.

Could also be voltage sag. Voltage sag occurs when a battery can show the capacity but is unable to deliver when actually asked for energy. Lithium batteries typically prefer being brought down to only around 40% (~3.8Volts/cell). Going down regularly to 20% (~3.7V/cell) or lower eventually reduces life. That leads to inconsistent behavior like what you observed.

Sonia my suggested 30% to start recharging, too low?

JamieStarliteMk2 wrote:Sonia my suggested 30% to start recharging, too low?

You will want to run the computer on battery until it dies completely, then fully recharge. Do this a couple times to calibrate upower.

Carmar suggests that after calibration, when using your notebook, to not let the power drop too low below 40% (Or at least by half at 50%) too often.

Is it safe for the OS for it to be allowed to die in mid task?

Additional. Noticed that when it reaches 100%, the charging light outside the laptop turns green and if you hover the mouse over the battery indicator it does not say charged it says Estimating.

Additional. Reached 30% so plugged it in. The % dropped to 28 as soon as it was plugged in. I decided to then unplug it to let it go down to try and recalibrate it.

Hey folks.

I ran a check in terminal and got this.

native-path: BAT0
vendor: Intel SR 1
model: SR Real Battery
serial: 123456789
power supply: yes
updated: Sat 09 May 2020 14:39:39 BST (119 seconds ago)
has history: yes
has statistics: yes
battery
present: yes
rechargeable: yes
state: charging
warning-level: none
energy: 2.128 Wh
energy-empty: 0 Wh
energy-full: 30.4 Wh
energy-full-design: 30.4 Wh
energy-rate: 11.4 W
voltage: 8.134 V
time to full: 2.5 hours
percentage: 7%
capacity: 100%
icon-name: 'battery-caution-charging-symbolic'


What is interesting, is that it says the current percentage is 7 but the icon in the bar at the time said 11%

Sadly Windows is more geared up to notebook batteries, fact of life. There will always be discrepancies from what I have read in the past but wait to be corrected.

JamieStarliteMk2 wrote: voltage: 8.134 V

What is interesting, is that it says the current percentage is 7 but the icon in the bar at the time said 11%

I am not sure if yours is a six-cell pack. I believe that is typically what is used in laptops.
Single cell lithium 20% capacity (lowest permissible and also what they ship at) corresponds to 3.7 volts/cell. Fully charged single cell is 4.2 V/cell. Yours shows ~10% capacity which is ~3.69V/cell. 8.134/3.69 = 2.2 ~ 2. That indicates a two-cell pack (2 x 3.69) in series. If it were a six-cell pack, it should be showing at 3.69V, a total voltage of 6 x 3.69 = 22.14 V at 10% and 6 x 4.2 = 25.2 V at fully charged.

I recommend you don't rely on battery power when using your laptop. However, based on what Aravisian wrote earlier, it could be that your machine isn't measuring the voltage properly. That I do not know about. The calculations above assume all voltages are accurately measured.

PS - for future reference, you can use this data for lithium capacity-voltage relation: https://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showpos ... ostcount=6
PPS - helpful information on prolonging lithium battery life: https://batteryuniversity.com/learn/art ... _batteries

I emailed the logs to the manufacturer who responded thusly:

Hi James,

Thank you for sending over the logs.

I've taken a look at them for you and can advise trying a few things first.

1. Apply all of the available updates.

Open a Terminal Session (Ctrl + Alt + T) and perform the following commands:

sudo apt update
sudo apt full-upgrade

2. Battery reset via EFI Shell.

1. Power on the machine and when you see the Star logo, tap the F7 key several times to bring up the boot menu. (Fn + F7 if function lock is in use).

2. Using the arrow and enter keys - select the UEFI: Built-in EFI Shell option and wait for 5 seconds to allow the startup.nsh script to run

3. Enter the following commands one by one followed by the enter key each time
(please note, capital letters have to be capital letters and spaces will need to be placed where there are spaces)

mm -io 66 1
stall 1000
mm -io 66 81 -W 1
stall 1000
mm -io 66 1
stall 1000
mm -io 62 40 -W 1
mm -io 66 1
stall 1000
mm -io 62 01 -W 1
mm -io 1804 3C00 -W 2

Finally, to power down the machine to complete the reset:

reset -s

If you could then allow the machine to fully charge and then further test to see if this resolves the issue for you. Please let me know if you have any questions regarding these steps, I'd be happy to further advise.

A bit remiss of me - had failed to notice you are using a Star Labs Notebook? If so they should be the ones for advice on this issue.

Yeah, its a Star Lite MK 2.

I followed their instructions and its just done it again and I am reasonably sure my battery was not lower than 30% They did say I had to fully charge the machine and see if it resolve it, so it's now charging back up. Fingers crossed.

Comment:

Lithum batteries not liking going down below 40% - does not bode well for cars with them.


Yet, you do not see any horror car stories about the battery going phut.

Some inconsistency somewhere, surely.


I've seen some car manufacturers that seem to suggest its best to run the batteries between 80% and 20% charge (and don't declare the true 100% value - using instead the 80% as max capacity)

Finston Pickle wrote:Comment:

Lithum batteries not liking going down below 40% - does not bode well for cars with them.


Yet, you do not see any horror car stories about the battery going phut.

Some inconsistency somewhere, surely.


I've seen some car manufacturers that seem to suggest its best to run the batteries between 80% and 20% charge (and don't declare the true 100% value - using instead the 80% as max capacity)

Samsung P530 i3 notebooks came with a piece of software that prevented charging beyond 80%

Talking of Car Batteries (Electric Cars) aren't the solution to pollution as extracting Cobalt causes just as much pollution in it's extraction - it is not the panacea to Oil either - out of curiosity, I searched the net for estimated life expectancy of Cobalt Reserves - only 35 years left - the same life span as a Solar Panel!

Quick question. My laptop has a 240GB Over-Provisioned SATA SSD. I downloaded Psensor and noticed the temperature showing for the SDD is a constant 100c. That can't be right or am I wrong.

JamieStarliteMk2 wrote:Quick question. My laptop has a 240GB Over-Provisioned SATA SSD. I downloaded Psensor and noticed the temperature showing for the SDD is a constant 100c. That can't be right or am I wrong.

100c is really hot. It's preferred to not go over 60c.

My laptop feels cool. Its plugged into a 7-1 Hub which is connecting it to my 22" monitor. It's doing absolutely nothing right now but running my email (Evolution) and this webpage whilst I reply to your message. Its also using a wireless USB dongle to power a duo keyboard and mouse. I am charging the laptop as well as it got to 40%. Why do I get the sneaking suspicion I have a dodgy laptop.