topic title: Battery monitor
Posts: 9
red devil
Joined: 20 May 2008
#1
I'm loving antiX M7.2 but I'm new to Fluxbox and wondered if there's any way of getting a graphical display/applet showing the battery level in my Inspiron laptop.
I know it's possible to add a battery monitor to Conky, but I'd prefer something that sits on the panel or the bar along the bottom.
Thanks in advance.
Posts: 29
sleepyEDB
Joined: 18 Sep 2008
#2
Bump!

I too would like to have a system tray battery monitor so I can see it when I've got GUI apps open fullscreen. I've been Googling around a bit for something that won't require me to install half of KDE or Gnome in libraries, but haven't found much. I'll keep looking, but figured if anyone knew, this would be the place to ask. __{{emoticon}}__


sleepy
Posts: 1,520
eriefisher
Joined: 07 Oct 2007
#3
xbattbar-acpi

It puts a thin bar at the bottom of your screen. Green if plugged and turns red and shrinks if on battery to show use.
Posts: 29
sleepyEDB
Joined: 18 Sep 2008
#4
Thanks erie!

I've installed it and it's running, but something's a bit off. The bar is orange, and when I mouse over it, the text says 'no battery'...but when I pull out the power cord, the laptop stays on and the screen dims, etc.

The BIOS says that the battery needs to be calibrated, so I'll try that overnight tonight and see if it helps.


sleepy
Posts: 1,081
OU812
Joined: 29 Sep 2007
#5
You could try installing"gnome-power-manager" from the repos. It does pull in a modest amount of depends, though. Here's a link:


========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnome-power-manager/"
linktext was:"http://www.gnome.org/projects/gnome-power-manager/"
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" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false

john
Posts: 29
sleepyEDB
Joined: 18 Sep 2008
#6
Thanks OU812!

I've installed gnome-power-manager, and it is working great. It only pulled in about 5 or 6 other gnome packages which isn't too bad since monitoring battery life is kind of important on a laptop. __{{emoticon}}__

erie-

The BIOS battery calibration was successful, but xbattbar-acpi is still orange and the mouse-over text still says 'no battery'. I didn't see anything too helpful in the conf file either. Thanks anyway for the suggestion! __{{emoticon}}__



sleepy
Posts: 1,081
OU812
Joined: 29 Sep 2007
#7
Cool! Glad to help. I had it running once or twice on my old laptop.

john
Posts: 2
blingenfelter
Joined: 18 Apr 2010
#8
Hi,

I tried both methods suggested here, but nothing shows up on my screen. Anyone had any success with getting a battery monitor to work on antiX?

Ben
Posts: 1,228
secipolla
Joined: 15 Jun 2008
#9
rokytnji, a forum fellow, has posted something about displaying the battery status in Conky.

post11876.html#p11876
post9766.html#p9766
post9201.html#p9201
Posts: 2
blingenfelter
Joined: 18 Apr 2010
#10
Hi,

I have xbattbar installed, but when I installed it, I got a 255 error, and when I mouse over it, all I ever get is"AC on-line: battery level is -1%" whether I have the power cord plugged in or not.

Weird.

Ben
Posts: 1,228
secipolla
Joined: 15 Jun 2008
#11
blingenfelter, I don't have a laptop but you could try to set it up in Conky (if you use it):
========= SCRAPER REMOVED AN EMBEDDED LINK HERE ===========
url was:"http://mepislovers.org/showthread.php?t=26272"
linktext was:"http://mepislovers.org/showthread.php?t=26272"
====================================

or you may try the following line in ~/.icewm/preferences

Code: Select all

#  Show APM/ACPI/Battery/Power status monitor on task bar
TaskBarShowAPMStatus=1 # 0/1
Then restart IceWM for it to take effect (Menu > Exit.. > Restart IceWM)

-edit- these are the apm options in /usr/share/icewm/preferences (copy them to ~/.icewm/preferences so it's easier to edit):

Code: Select all

#  Show APM/ACPI/Battery/Power status monitor on task bar
# TaskBarShowAPMStatus=0 # 0/1

#  Show APM status on task bar in time-format
# TaskBarShowAPMTime=1 # 0/1

#  Task bar clock/APM uses nice pixmapped LCD display (but then it doesn't display correctly in many languages anymore, e.g. for Japanese and Korean it works only when a real font is used and not the LEDs
# TaskBarClockLeds=0 # 0/1

#  
# ApmFontName="-*-monospace-medium-r-*-*-*-140-*-*-*-*-*-*"

#  
# ApmFontNameXft="monospace,Bitstream Vera Sans Mono:size=12"

#  Background of APM monitor, leave empty to force transparency
# ColorApm="rgb:00/00/00"

#  Textcolor of APM monitor
# ColorApmText="rgb:00/FF/00"
I think you should also uncomment the color lines. And there are specific lines for battery:

Code: Select all

#  Delay between power status updates (seconds)
# BatteryPollingPeriod=10 # [2-3600]

#  List of battery names (directories) in /proc/acpi/battery to ignore. Useful when more slots are built-in, but only one battery is used
# AcpiIgnoreBatteries=""