Since this morning, the battery-stats package in Debian include an +extended collector that will collect the complete battery history for +later processing and graphing. The original collector store the +battery level as percentage of last full level, while the new +collector also record battery vendor, model, serial number, design +full level, last full level and current battery level. This make it +possible to predict the lifetime of the battery as well as visualise +the energy flow when the battery is charging or discharging.
+ +The new tools are available in /usr/share/battery-stats/ +in the version 0.5.1 package in unstable. Get the new battery level graph +and lifetime prediction by running: + +
+/usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph /var/log/battery-stats.csv ++ +
Or select the 'Battery Level Graph' from your application menu.
+ +The flow in/out of the battery can be seen by running (no menu +entry yet):
+ ++/usr/share/battery-stats/battery-stats-graph-flow ++ +
I'm not quite happy with the way the data is visualised, at least +when there are few data points. The graphs look a bit better with a +few years of data.
+ +A while back one important feature I use in the battery stats +collector broke in Debian. The scripts in +/usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/ were no longer executed. I +suspect it happened when Jessie started using systemd, but I do not +know. The issue is reported as +bug #818649 against +pm-utils. I managed to work around it by adding an udev rule to call +the collector script every time the power connector is connected and +disconnected. With this fix in place it was finally time to make a +new release of the package, and get it into Debian.
+ +If you are interested in how your laptop battery is doing, please +check out the +battery-stats +in Debian unstable, or rebuild it on Jessie to get it working on +Debian stable. :) The upstream source is available from +github. +As always, patches are very welcome.
+ +