Rockbox Technical Forums
Rockbox General => Rockbox General Discussion => Topic started by: iambigjilm on November 01, 2007, 12:07:05 PM
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First time poster (obviously), and I wanted to give thanks to everyone involved with Rockbox, as I have been absolutely loving it for the last week or so I've had it installed on my 4g Ipod. I've got a question that I was unable to locate an answer to using the search though(I'm sure it's been answered, I just can't locate it.)
For the past couple of days I've completely charged my ipod and then used it for maybe an hour or so (battery life shows over 1/2 left after said hour) and then I shut it down and put it away until the next day. However, I've noticed that when I try to turn it back on the next day the battery is completely drained. Is there something I'm missing as to why it would still drain battery power after it has been shut down?
I apologize if this is in the incorrect forum. And if this question has been answered previously would someone please point me in the right direction, as I've searched and searched and cannot come up with an answer.
I love the fact that I can play my flac files on my ipod with Rockbox, and I'm aware that Rockbox is going to use more battery power that the original apple software, but I can't for the life of me figure out why I lose every bit of battery power over night even with the ipod shut off. Thanks in advance.
edit... and yes, I have read the manual and everything I thought would help me locate a solution. If I missed something, again, someone please point me in the right direction.
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1) I don't know if you can, but if so please change your name. If not I am sure the mods can.
2) There did use to be a bug where ipods turned on by themselves, but it was fixed. What build are you using?
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thanks for the reply.
1) i was actually looking to see if i could change it (i woke up on the wrong side of the bed this morning). if it can't be changed then i'll gladly re register under a different name.
2) i'm very new to this, so please bear with me. is there a way to tell which build i'm using w/o having the ipod turned on? (ie. through the files i downloaded?) the reason i ask is that i haven't been able to get it to turn back on since it died this morning (and it has been on the charger for close to 6 hours now.) i'm not worried that it won't turn back on, as it has done this to me every time the battery has completely drained.
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If you still have the rockbox.zip you downloaded there should be a rockbox-info.txt file inside the .rockbox folder in there.
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ahhh, i looked right over it. was looking for a readme.
Target: ipod4g
Target id: 17
Target define: -DIPOD_4G
Memory: 32
CPU: arm
Manufacturer: ipod
Version: r15099-071013
Binary: rockbox.ipod
Binary size: 440008
Actual size: 440000
RAM usage: 848752
gcc: arm-elf-gcc (GCC) 4.0.3
ld: GNU ld version 2.16.1
Host gcc: gcc (GCC) 4.2.2 (Debian 4.2.2-1)
Host system: Linux
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OK,
1) You can change your display name if you go to your profile then account settings
2) You are required to test with an up-to-date build before reporting any problems, as they might have been fixed in the meantime - yours is three weeks old.
There was a bug with ipods turning on for no reason, hence running the battery down, but that was fixed on the 28th Sept. Nonetheless, please try with a current build first then we can take it from there.
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cool, thank you very much. i had no idea that i had an old build, as i just downloaded and installed this about a week ago. i'll update it as soon as i can get it to power back up.
thanks again for your help bigbambi.
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No problem. I deleted a few posts from here as I was talking rubbish and confusing everyone (including myself).
To summarise - iambigjilm leaves the ipod turned off with hold on, so could someone with better knowledge of iPods tell us whether an ipod will just turn back off under these circumstances if the alarm (faulty or otherwise) wakes it?
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update (from work):
Updated to the current build yesterday, charged the ipod to maximum capacity, listened to it for approximately 30 minutes last nght, manually shut it down and switched hold on. Got to work today, switched hold off and attempted to boot into Rockbox and unfortunately got the low battery icon again and it shut down.
I really appreciate BigBambi's help yesterday, and hope someone else out there can help me figure this problem out.
One more detail I failed to mention yesterday. I installed Rockbox about a week ago and had no problems with battery draining until a coupe of days ago. I didn't change anything in that time frame, so I'm really at a loss as to what the problem is.
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That is very odd. We shall have to wait for an ipod guru to come along.
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yeah, i thought it was odd also. now, i,m not going to lie here, but i'm pretty sure that once i had it up and running last night I went into the settings to turn off the alarm set. did i do it? i'm pretty sure i did. however, i'm not 100% positive, so the problem may still be on my end. i've got it charging at the moment, and i'll check it again when i get home this afternoon to make sure that's not the problem. i'm still curios though if it will still power back up (due to the alarm mode being set) even when it's on hold.
i know i said i read through the manual and had tried everything, but i'm beginning to second guess myself. once it's back up i'll confirm that my settings are not what's causing the problem (or confirm that they are what's causing the problem.)
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I am having the same issue but I'm using a newer build. I have no idea what could be causing it.
Target: ipodvideo
Target id: 15
Target define: -DIPOD_VIDEO
Memory: 32
CPU: arm
Manufacturer: ipod
Version: r15390M-071101
Binary: rockbox.ipod
Binary size: 541700
Actual size: 541692
RAM usage: 1618456
gcc: arm-elf-gcc (GCC) 4.0.3
ld: GNU ld version 2.16.1
Host gcc: gcc (GCC) 4.1.2 20061115 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-21)
Host system: Linux
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iambigjilm mentioned that this only started happening a couple of days ago. Once your player is charged again you could test to see if a build from before this causes the same problem. Elbo, did this problem appear around the same time for you as well?
I haven't looked at the alarm code at all and don't really have an opportunity to do so now since I'm at work. But you could always test the behavior by setting an alarm to go off in a few minutes and then shutting the player off and setting the hold switch. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the alarm flags and boots up Rockbox. But it still seems like the idle poweroff should shut the system down again. This battery draining seems very mysterious to me. Does the battery actually get drained, or is this one of those situations where the iPod just thinks the battery is low and refuses to turn on?
One last thought: If the alarm is turning the unit on unexpectedly it might not ever turn back off if playback is set to repeat. However this situation would be easy to falsify since you could just leave it plugged into some external speakers to wake you up if the iPod begins playback unexpectedly. I would also imagine that starting with a full battery you would probably wake up before full battery drain happened under normal playback.
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I just installed Rockbox yesterday. I'm going to see if it happens again tonight (I'll be using my ipod all day on a drive). I didn't set the alarm and it's currently disabled. And the battery is definitely drained (it's not just the ipod saying it's drained).
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Elbo, how do you differentiate between the battery actually being drained and the iPod just thinking that it's drained. The phenomenology will be quite similar (e.g. the player will give you the low battery message and refuse to boot up in both cases).
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Well mine didn't refuse to boot up at first. It booted up, my battery percentage said "1" then it shut off. I plugged it in and it started to charge. I figured that was drained.
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Okay. So Rockbox booted up okay and reported a low battery? That's good to know.
You can also try an older build (maybe a week ago for starters) to see if this is a problem that cropped up recently, as it did for iambigjilm. If that's the case then we can try to narrow down on which revision caused this behavior.
It's also possible that this is either hardware related or depends on some initializations performed by Apple code. I know that a number of iPod users complain of faulty low battery warnings using unmodified Apple firmware also. This could indicate faulty hardware. I have also read reports of firmware upgrades by Apple improving this behavior -- presumably they changed something in the way they initialize the hardware at boot time. I have no idea whether this applies to your case or not.
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iambigjilm mentioned that this only started happening a couple of days ago.
yes, Rockbox had been installed on mine for about a week before this started happening. and no changes were made until after I started having the problem.
But you could always test the behavior by setting an alarm to go off in a few minutes and then shutting the player off and setting the hold switch. I wouldn't be surprised to find that the alarm flags and boots up Rockbox.
I just tried this and Rockbox does in fact boot into the Apple firmware even though hold is on. (I was under the impression that the ipod wouldn't boot up at all when in the hold position. I assumed you had to start the boot and then switch hold on in order to boot back to the apple firmware. Guess that shows me for assuming!)
Now my question is why is the alarm coming on when I have it disabled? (At least I think I have it disabled.) I go to the alarm setting and there are 2 choices...
1. SELECT=Set
2. MENU=Cancel
I know for a fact that I clicked MENU to cancel it last night, but it still displays an alarm time. Is that normal?
But it still seems like the idle poweroff should shut the system down again.
That's what I would think as well. And I actually do have the idle poweroff set to 10 minutes. Maybe I'm missing something here, but if the alarm is set to go off at say... 11PM and hold is on, it would boot into the apple firmware, correct? Afaik, I do not have it set to repeat playback in either Rockbox or apple, so I'm confused as to why it stays on, if that is in fact what it's doing, and draining th battery.
Oh, and I did upgrade to build r15392-071101, so the problem has happened to me with 2 separate builds.
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update
I have confirmed that the reason for my constant low battery was in fact due to the wake-up alarm being set, or at least that's what I'm going with. Since determining that as being the culprit, I have changed the wake-up alarm to go off during the day (if it decides it wants to go off again) so I will be near it to switch it back off, and have had zero problems losing battery power.
I would like to thank BigBambi and Chronon for their help. I feel a little embarrassed that that was what was causing the problem (since I thought I had checked it), but I still don't understand why Rockbox would still boot up even in hold mode. That and the fact that it went off once (and only once) when I had disabled the alarm. No matter, it is now working properly and I am a happy Rockbox user, again!
update #2
It seems I spoke too soon. I checked the battery life just before posting that first update and it showed 95%. I manually shut it down and set it aside until I got a break from work to crank some tunes. Unfortunately the battery has since completely drained. (What?!?! How?!?!) I have no idea. Of course it's completely dead, so I cannot check any of the settings, but I know for a fact that the alarm was not set for this early in the morning, so I'm pretty positive that's not the problem. Oh well, back to square one. :(
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I just wanted to report my experience, and maybe bump this thread back up to the top :) This is about my 4G greyscale, just as for OP.
I have been having this same problem. I never knew about the alarm thing... I haven't had a chance to check that and test again (will do). I've never set the alarm, so I don't know why that would be happening.
My RB firmware is from probably about a month ago, and my vague memory is that this didn't start happening right away, but it took a couple weeks. My symptoms: I shut the thing down - even make sure to see the little "Shutting down" splash message. Put it aside for a long time, and when I try to reawaken, I get a low battery icon for an instant, and then blankness. If I plug it back in, I still don't get any feedback on the screen, but after a while of being plugged in, I can finally revive it by pressing the reboot sequence over and over, and randomly banging on other buttons. By doing the reboot over and over with the two thumbs, it almost feels like I'm giving it CPR :)
I had intended to post here saying I'm giving up on RB because the power management is just not ready for normal use, but now I see this may just be a bug introduced recently. I will check my alarm and do one more test with the current version I'm running, then try upgrading to a daily build and see how it compares.
It worries me a bit to keep doing this, because I think someday the CPR will stop working and it just won't wake up again.
Dave
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yes, check your alarm. i did not set mine in the beginning either, but it seems that that was the culprit. since my last update i have concluded that as long as i do not switch hold on i'm fine. for some reason i only lose power when hold is on. i don't know why, but that's what is working for me now.
i used hold in the past to make sure that it wouldn't turn on if something hit it in my backpack, but now i retain pretty much all battery power when leaving hold off at all times.
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yes, check your alarm. i did not set mine in the beginning either, but it seems that that was the culprit.
Well, I turned my alarm off (explicitly), and things have been going better. Now I don't lose power all the time, but it still happens once in a while (like this morning).
In all this time, I've never actually noticed the 'pod powering itself on unexpectedly. You'd think out of the many times this has happened I would have seen the screen come on (or being on after I had shutdown) at least once. I'm a bit skeptical about the alarm diagnosis, but it's true that after turning the alarm off the power loss problem did seem to get better.
since my last update i have concluded that as long as i do not switch hold on i'm fine. for some reason i only lose power when hold is on.
This is irrelevant for me, since I never use hold. I have a rubber case with a "trapdoor" cover over the click wheel, so I never need hold. And yet I'm having the power problem. And no (for those who might say 'aha' :)), I'm certain it's not that the click wheel is being pressed through the cover. After all this time I've never seen that happen once, in either Apple firmware or RB.
Dave
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oh well. i thought what had helped me may help you.
and unfortunately, i've been having the problem again recently. i charged my ipod tuesday night, but didn't get a chance to listen to it at work on wednesday. i didn't really think anything about it, but when i attempted to turn it on thursday morning at work it was completely dead.
it was fully charged tuesday night/wednesday morning, hold was off, alarm was off, and i didn't turn it on once, yet it was completely dead thursday morning? i love the fact that i can play my flac files on it, but i think i may just uninstall it and start converting some flac to apple lossless in order to listen on the ipod until the battery problem gets fixed or when rockbox uses less battery power.
oh, and on a full battery i can usually only get about an hour and a half, which unfortunately doesn't usually even last as long as some of the live concerts i listen to. :-\
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I am going to jump in here just to say that something is going on since a few weeks ago. Somewhere in early November, I upgraded my rockbox on a ipod video 80GB and weird stuff started happeneing with the power. I would find the battery completely drained coming out of the case, and now it won't charge. I just left it hooked up to the charger all night, and it is almost as if rockbox thinks it is fully charged even though it isn't.
Prior to the upgrade I made in early November (somewhere around the 5th or 6th), I was running a rockbox from earley Octboer and everything worked fine.
I've been playing around trying to get it it to boot into the original firmware to try and get a charge on it, but I keep getting the extremely low battery warning for a few minutes, then it will try to reboot and go back into the low battery warning.
Also, if this is helpful, before the battery fully drained last night, I upgraded to the current build of around midnight EST. Now, I can't even get into disk mode to try downgrading to an older tarball.
(Soap merged two posts. Do Not Double Post in the future!)
SO I plugged it into my dock/charger and got it to boot into the Apple firmware, which is reporting the thing is fully charged even though it isn't. Is this a known issue with Apple firmware? Google hasn't turned up anything for me yet.
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Just thought I'd follow up this thread again..... I've been continuing to test. I am still occasionally having the "battery drain" symptom, although as I think someone above noted, it is a "fake" symptom. I can in fact reboot the 'pod and have it work, with the battery showing roughly (I think) the charge it had when I shut it down. So somewhere there is a signal being sent that the battery is dead even though it's not. I'm quite sure, however, that when this first started happening to me, a simple reboot did not work to fix it (on the other hand, that was probably an earlier software version).
I have been trying to find a pattern in order to clarify this problem, but have not been able to find one. The best I can say is that the likelihood of the fake battery drain syndrome seems to increase the longer I leave the machine without starting it. It does not seem to be related to the amount of charge in the battery. Still, there's nothing reproducible yet.
I would love to work closely with a 4G developer to isolate this bug and put it to rest once and for all. I'm good at doing careful testing :) Please contact me if you're such a developer...
Dave
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Just to confirm that I'm having the same issues with my 4g 40go ipod.
I've not been able to understand when exactly it was happening, but once I see the "no battery" icon during boot process, my ipod shuts down and refuse to do anything else (blank screen, no reaction) until I plug it in again.
Actually, the only real workaround I found is not leaving my flat without charger and cable!
I'll get back to you if I'm able to get some more info...
And thanks for Rockbox: it's so good I'm still using it even if I have this problem since a month or so, when I first installed it! ;)
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tekrotzen, if you are running a build that's more than one month old, you really should upgrade to a recent one. The one I'm running now is about a week old (071207). I can reboot the machine and have it work as normal after one of these "incidents" (and without plugging in). I'd be curious to know if you have the same experience after upgrading.
Dave
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OOO My ipod 3.5g 30GB loaded with the 3.4 rockbox has the same issue. I turn it of from the play/pause button and the other day the battery is depleted. What is happening?!?!
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Lithium ion batteries discharge slowly even when they are not being used.