Rockbox Technical Forums
Rockbox General => Rockbox General Discussion => Topic started by: jmsbwtr on March 25, 2007, 05:17:45 PM
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Hi,
I've just downloaded and installed Rockbox onto my iPod Mini 2G and I am impressed. One thing I would like though is increased battery life... Is it possible in the config or anything to turn off the screen when hold is on? As when hold is on the iPod is usually in my pocket so there is no need for the screen to be on so i may as well save the battery... Are there any other battery saving config options I can use to keep battery life to be as good as possible?
Thanks
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You can turn off the backlight while hold is on, though I'm fairly sure that's the default.
I've found that turning off the screen with hold (Not easy to do, I coded my own theme to do it on the While Playing Screen) only saves you about 15 minutes every 6 hours or so. I've also found that the two biggest eaters of battery are Hard Drive spinup and backlight being on. So, minimize those (by essentially starting your playlist and then never touching your ipod until you want to stop it) and you'll maximize battery.
"Maximum" battery may not be long enough for you, of course. I said "15 minutes every 6 hours" because turning off the screen made my iPod last 6h15m instead of 6h00m :)
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thanks, I might install the theme, although I couldn't find it in the list of themes, would you mind sending me a copy? 1 Other thing, surely if it's just a theme all it does is tell Rockbox not to output anything, thats not the same as turning the screen off completely is it?
Thank
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Monochrome and greyscale displays use very little power. As Yotto said the backlight is the killer.
Some other ways to get longer battery time is to use efficient codecs, and no higher bitrate than neccesary, I'm not sure which codec is fastest on ipods but i think mp3 is faster than vorbis which is in turn faster than aac...
Also disable dirchache if you do not browse files a lot and disable "load to ram" tor the database if you do not browse it a lot.
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And make sure that you arent using the equilizer either.
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Back light has always been turned off as I have known this to be a battery killer, I also knew about the EQ needing to be turned off as both of these are tips on the apple website for their firmware so I guessed the same applies with Rockbox. I didn't realise MP3 saved battery power, luckily I already use MP3 at a reasonably low bit rate, 128kbps, i don't think going any lower is worth the power saving how ever. One other thing, I nearly always select an album to play and then leave it, would I benefit from having a long cache buffer set? As in the manual it says it only wastes battery if you change you choice of music listening frequently.
Thanks
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To have the large buffer thing I think that you need a 60gb video iPod.
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Sorry for not replying earlier, I sleep during most USians' day.
I don't have the theme any more. It was literally a test to see if it could be done, and it couldn't to my satisfaction (there's no way to turn off the progress meter with the hold switch, and the progress meter is worth more than 15 minutes to me) so I scrapped the idea.