Ipod Video 60GB: Poor battery life under rockbox (2 times less than expected)

[Llorean]

Or you could try and figure out which patch fixes the problem, because maybe it's one that could be committed to SVN, so that if LBA48 support is considered for SVN we know what other patches are necessary to make it work well.

Seriously, Rockbox is entirely a volunteer effort by people who've put in hundreds of hours of work.

You could help the knowledge available significantly by just spending a few more days running battery benchmarks.

[penartur]

If i will connect ipod to a pc with a firewire cable (if i will be able to find one), can i measure the current under windows?
I understand that rockbox is a volunteer effort, but another 4-5 days without a player is just too bad.
Of course, if i had another player, i would run usual benchmarks, but this ipod is my only one.

[soap]

Ideally battery benches should be done by isolating changes.  I think you will notice at least all of mine and buschel's do just that.  One bench at stock, and a matching one with one change.
Even though others have done differently at times, there is little value in it.

Second point - the LCD controller sleep work is post 3.2, no?  This alone would easily explain all the battery life differences you have seen.

EDIT:  Yes it was (post 3.2).  This (FS #9890) and FS #8523 (Disable WPS updates when backlight is off) plus the DMA drive patch you applied add up to a quite significant power savings.
And FS #8668 - buschel's GUI boost lowers the base clock to 15Mhz, IIRC - leading to significant power savings on non-boosting codecs like FLAC.

Add them up and I am nowhere near shocked you get near twice the runtime of 3.2
 

[saratoga]

If i will connect ipod to a pc with a firewire cable (if i will be able to find one), can i measure the current under windows?

No, you need to use a multimeter to do that.

[dreamlayers]

If i will connect ipod to a pc with a firewire cable (if i will be able to find one), can i measure the current under windows?

If you want to measure steady state current, I recommend http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/9728 (Note: I wrote that patch.)

If you need to measure rapidly changing current, such as during hard drive activity, then a battery bench is best.  Even a multimeter can't measure the current then; it's a very noisy waveform.

I understand that rockbox is a volunteer effort, but another 4-5 days without a player is just too bad.
Of course, if i had another player, i would run usual benchmarks, but this ipod is my only one.

You don't need to perform a whole battery bench.  A few hours should be enough when the battery life difference is that large.  Overnight would definitely be enough.  Start with a full battery, and later on align the graphs at the beginning, by moving one horizontally relative to the other.  Differences in power consumption lead to differences in slope.

Second point - the LCD controller sleep work is post 3.2, no?  This alone would easily explain all the battery life differences you have seen.

EDIT:  Yes it was (post 3.2).  This (FS #9890) and FS #8523 (Disable WPS updates when backlight is off) plus the DMA drive patch you applied add up to a quite significant power savings.
And FS #8668 - buschel's GUI boost lowers the base clock to 15Mhz, IIRC - leading to significant power savings on non-boosting codecs like FLAC.

Add them up and I am nowhere near shocked you get near twice the runtime of 3.2
 

BCM/LCD sleep is in 3.2.  For example, see:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/MajorChanges
Afterwards I made some tweaks and closed the task, but that should not have affected battery life.

In tests with original iPod hard drives, UDMA saved very little power when playing MP3 files.  I imagine that more power is saved when playing FLAC files.  (I don't think anyone did a battery bench with FLAC.)  Also, with an original hard drive, the transfer rate is limited by the drive.  When boosted, a PP502X chip can transfer data much faster.  Maybe the 240 GB drive can transfer data much faster, and so the UDMA is more beneficial.

FS#8668 should save a significant amount of power when playing FLAC or MP3.  With the patch, normal CPU frequency is 24 Mhz.  Buschel found shorter runtime at frequencies below 24 Mhz:  http://www.rockbox.org/tracker/task/9800#comment27703

[soap]

Second point - the LCD controller sleep work is post 3.2, no?  This alone would easily explain all the battery life differences you have seen.

EDIT:  Yes it was (post 3.2).  This (FS #9890) and FS #8523 (Disable WPS updates when backlight is off) plus the DMA drive patch you applied add up to a quite significant power savings.
And FS #8668 - buschel's GUI boost lowers the base clock to 15Mhz, IIRC - leading to significant power savings on non-boosting codecs like FLAC.

Add them up and I am nowhere near shocked you get near twice the runtime of 3.2
 

BCM/LCD sleep is in 3.2.  For example, see:
http://www.rockbox.org/twiki/bin/view/Main/MajorChanges

My bad, I simply looked at the FS closure date vs 3.2.