Bugzilla – Bug 13818
Controller battery life is reduced with firmware r7084 and higher
Last modified: 2009-09-16 12:48:15 UTC
Since the recent Controller updates in r7084 and higher, my battery life is less than half of what I used to get. On the old firmware (r5508, I think) the bar would still be half-full after 2 hours. Now it is completely dead in less than 2 hours. I always have the Controller in bed while I read for about 2 hours every night. Previously, the battery indicator would be at about the half-way or 1/4 mark when I would turn out the light. Now it's always red by the time I am ready to turn out the light, and several times it has gone to the "please recharge me" screen before my reading time was up. Last night I only got 50 minutes out of it! I have suspend timeout set to the maximum (3600) (otherwise you have to wait a very long time for it to wake up every time you pick it up to skip a song or change volume). I had it set the same way on the old firmware so that should not factor in. A couple others in the forum also said they felt like the battery life is reduced since the new UI was introduced.
I'll quantify the change in battery life post 7.4, thanks Sue.
I did a factory reset to see if it made any difference with the battery life and then spent 10 minutes redoing my settings. After 10 minutes, my battery was already showing only 1/4 charge on the life indicator. I still think it should be compared pre- and post- 7.4, but I'm now starting to think my battery has reached the end of its life since it's getting worse by the day. I bought this Controller on eBay in "like new" condition less than 1 year ago. How do I go about getting a replacement battery?
Sue I'm having a support engineer email you about your battery. Nearly fully drained battery in 10 minutes, I better look at this today!
Thanks, Ross. I just did another test, using Controller as a player. It played for about 15 minutes and then went completely dead. Then putting it back on the cradle for a few seconds and picking it back up showed a fully charged battery indicator.
Sue is this bug specific to using Controller as a player?
(In reply to comment #5) > Sue is this bug specific to using Controller as a player? Oh, no. I just thought I would try that to see how long it would take to fully drain and to see if maybe a quick drain would re-calibrate the battery (as I've seen that recommended laptop batteries).
I don't know whether I can add to this, but I have always had poor service from the batteries in my Duet. The battery supplied with the new Duet would only ever give me one hour of use, if I was lucky, with a following wind etc. I did complain to Logitech, they checked the sales record and sent me a new battery. I also have a Harmony 1000, with the same battery (which by the way is now an expensive doorstop). I am not on the latest firmware for the Duet, so I cycled the batteries between the Harmony and the Duet, but each have only ever given less than one hour playing time and the new battery is the same. (In the Harmony, the battery lasted much longer, although to be fair, it had little use as I found that the family hated having to go through "procedures", they just wanted to press and go, so the battery just powered the unit in "standby mode". I now leave the Duet off most of the time and only use it when I really need it and leave the handset in the charger, when it's off. To my mind this allows the battery to discharge normally and recharge when the charger is powered up. It is a waste of what should and could be a cracking piece of equipment! I hope this is of help, I have always wanted to make more use of the Duet, but the battery time is the limiter here. Dave Martin
David, please update to latest SqueezeCenter software, we've made improvements to battery life that you may not have yet. I did a very basic side by side test, I fully charged two batteries and put them in two Controllers. One controller has 7.4 - 7367, the other 7.3 6038, both were linked to players which are streaming music. I woke both Controllers every few hours, after 24 hours both Controllers were teetering between 1/2 and 3/4 battery. After 48 hours both Controllers were at 1/4 battery. After about 51 hours the 7.4 Controller shows red battery meter but is still usable, the 7.3 Controller was powered off. Powering it back on displays please charge me. Richard please feel free to correct my changes to priority and severity but I think this is less of an issue than we initially thought. Certainly less of an issue than bug 13843 discovered during this test. Sue please update us after you've had a chance to test with a new battery.
It looks like my controller's battery failed after a year using it. It only functions for 5 minutes now. I think it's not good that the battery is completely useless after owning the Duet for a year.
Ross, thanks for this thorough testing. For the sake of completeness, could you do the same for controllers when they do audio-playback all the time? I think this comparison would not only be interesting for the controller, but for the radio as well ?
I received my replacement battery yesterday and it is working great. After two hours, it didn't even register a drop in battery indicator. So the death of my battery just coincided with the drastic Controller changes. Sorry for the false alarm!