"laptop currently has X% battery life left" apps

mutexe · 02-01-2010, 04:43 PM

Hiya,
Any programs out there I can get to show this on my laptop please? I've searched this forum for "laptop" and "power", but threads are going on about increasing battery life and not actually showing how much battery is left on the machine.

Many thanks in advance,

tom

ps running slack 13 on dell xps m1330, thx.

onebuck · 02-01-2010, 05:55 PM

Hi,

Which DE/WM ?

I've got KDE w/13_64 and the battery monitor shows the battery state/condition along with the AC plug condition.

You need to realize that a monitor of the type that you want will not be a true representation since the load will vary.

mutexe · 02-02-2010, 04:35 AM

Cheers.
Damn, I knew I forgot something. I'm running fluxbox.
I realise it won't be completely accurate, I just want some warning it's getting low, rather than it just powering off

mrclisdue · 02-02-2010, 05:14 AM

I spent many, many months a year or two ago trying to find something that suited my needs and looked nice (to MY eyes...)

A meter or gauge (eg, in conky) wouldn't be sufficient, because if I were deep in thought whilst composing to LQ, I may not *see* that I have 0% battery, and my solution to indeed, finally, make this "The Year of The Linux Desktop!" vanishes before my eyes...(which is probably, actually, a good thing.)

None of the wm docklets, etc *looked* good to me.

I ended up writing a bash script that invoked an xosd display (a varying colour (based on capacity) "meter") that would flash and dance and spur me to save my work, or plug the thing in, or shut it down, etc.

I don't use it anymore (it was slightly fugly script-wise and eyes-wise, but worked almost flawlessly (I'd give it an 8.2 on the dependability scale)), but it's backed up somewhere.

Alas, for me, the simplest solution turned out to be running kde's guidance-power-manager, which places a nifty icon in the tray, has a highly-configurable gui which...well, you'll see - it *should* be all you'll need. The reason it took me so long to find it was that I didn't have kde installed when I was frantically searching, so it was never considered....

cheers,

mutexe · 02-02-2010, 07:13 AM

Thanks for the reply mate. I'll have a look into it. Altho i dislike KDE and always have :/

Thanks again,
Tom

XavierP · 02-02-2010, 07:28 AM

Doesn't GKrellM have a battery monitor? Speaking purely from memory, I am almost convinced it does. If you don't mind adding the app to your desktop, it could do the trick.

manwichmakesameal · 02-02-2010, 07:57 AM

I have these lines in my ~/.conkyrc

Code:

${offset 240}${color slate grey}Battery: ${color white}${battery_percent BAT0}%
${offset 240}${color slate grey}AC Adapter:
${offset 240}${color white}${exec cat /proc/acpi/ac_adapter/ADP0/state | grep state}

I have the adapter state one because my laptop is in my work van most of the time plugged into an inverter and I like to know when I lose power.

mudangel · 02-02-2010, 09:18 AM

tint2 has a builtin battery meter

gapan · 02-02-2010, 09:23 AM

I have libnotify + notification-daemon installed and I have configured gkrellm to run:

Code:

notify-send -u critical -i battery-caution "Low battery: 15%"

when the battery reaches 15%, and

Code:

notify-send -u critical -i battery-caution "Very low battery!"

when it reaches 8%. Both with a repeat of 60 seconds.

dive · 02-02-2010, 09:23 AM

conky can too

allend · 02-02-2010, 09:23 AM

I use WMab on my laptop under WindowMaker with -L 25 (for low) and -C 3 (for critical). http://www.dockapps.org/file.php/id/31

From the command line 'cat /sys/class/power_supply/BAT1/uevent'. (Make an alias for convenience).

mutexe · 02-03-2010, 07:14 AM

Wooohoo! Cheers all, i shall have a play with all of these options tonight.

Thanks again,

Tom

tommcd · 02-03-2010, 09:27 AM

If you prefer XFCE, there is a battery monitor plugin for the XFCE panel:
http://goodies.xfce.org/projects/pan...battery-plugin
There used to be a slackbuild for this at slackbuilds.org. I don't see it there at this time though.

mattca · 02-03-2010, 02:09 PM

the battery level, max charge and ac connection status are updated in text files in /sys/class/power_supply/

if you're not afraid of writing scripts, you could just use that.

mutexe · 02-04-2010, 03:17 AM

Cheers Mattca, that's useful to know.

Tom