Only 1 of 2 Batteries Shown

[Szadzik]

Hi All,

I have been using Battery Bar Pro for a long time now and think it is a great application.

I received a notification that a newer version was released and upgraded earlier today.

The problem I am having now is that even though my laptop has 2 batteries - and both of them are shown in Windows power monitor - Batery Bar only shows one of them. This means that it is only estimating the time for one battery and is totally inaccurate in that.

Is there any setting I need to check to get the other battery to show?

TIA,
Szadzik

[Chris]

What BatteryBar does for dual battery systems is show you the combined status of both batteries. I actually develop and test BatteryBar on a laptop with dual batteries, so I'm certain that it works correctly.

If you remove one of the batteries you'll see that information in the status popup change to reflect the current status of the battery still in the laptop.

So you may have 1 battery with 30Wh remaining out of 50Wh and another with 30Wh remaining out of 30Wh. So that's a maximum capacity of 80Wh with 60Wh remaining, or 75%. However, battery 1 itself is at 60% and battery 2 is at 100%.

The time remaining is also a sum of the time remaining from each battery. So if battery 1 has 1hour remaining and battery 2 has 1.5 hours remaining, BatteryBar will report 2.5 hours of time remaining.

If you upgrade to the Pro version (or just activate the Trial version), then the status popup will default to showing 2 status windows, one for each battery separately. In Preferences, you can turn that on or off. I would suggest activating your trial and testing that new feature.

[Szadzik]

(03-24-2011 01:56 AM)Chris Wrote:  What BatteryBar does for dual battery systems is show you the combined status of both batteries. I actually develop and test BatteryBar on a laptop with dual batteries, so I'm certain that it works correctly.

It used to show the combined capacity of my batteries (118mWh) but not anymore. It now only shows one of them (61mWh)

Quote:If you remove one of the batteries you'll see that information in the status popup change to reflect the current status of the battery still in the laptop.

Tried it and it changed to 57mWh (my internal battery) as when my laptop has two of them it uses the external one first and when it is empty it uses the internal one.

Quote:If you upgrade to the Pro version (or just activate the Trial version), then the status popup will default to showing 2 status windows, one for each battery separately. In Preferences, you can turn that on or off. I would suggest activating your trial and testing that new feature.

As I stated in my original post I use Battery Bar Pro - bought a license a long time ago.

P.S. I am fully aware of how it should show the batteries as it used to show them correctly before the upgrade.

[Chris]

Did you check if Preferences -> Display -> Show dual battery status is checked or unchecked in preferences? The issue could be that it's set to show both batteries but for some reason only the first one is being shown. Try turning off the option and see if that changes anything.

If there is a problem with the dual battery status display, please follow these steps to send me a log file:
http://osirisdevelopment.com/wiki/Submit_a_bug_report

[Szadzik]

Yes, this option helped. It now shows two separate popup windows each for one of my batteries. Looks strange, but at least it works.

[Chris]

If you have any suggestions on a better way to display both batteries, I'm open to suggestions.

[Szadzik]

If anything, maybe stacking the popup windows on top of each other would be better (or at least an option) and maybe stop the popup from appearing for the battery that is dead already?

[Chris]

How do you determine when to stop showing a battery? Different brands switch batteries at different levels. Some go to 10%, some 20%, some 0%. I suppose I could just check if it's below like 20% and not discharging.

[Szadzik]

You wanted suggestions, I gave them.

[Chris]

(03-26-2011 01:52 PM)Szadzik Wrote:  You wanted suggestions, I gave them.

Yeah, I was just thinking it through on how it might work. I think it would be possible. You can post the suggestion in the suggestion forum.