[ffe] Power indicator does not combine multiple battery status

Specification updated. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Power?action=diff&rev2=30&rev1=29> "If a device has multiple batteries and uses only one of them at a time, they should be presented as separate items inside the menu, but should be totalled for the purpose of the menu title."

For me the situation is even worse: Since 12.10 the power indicator displays my laptop battery and my MOUSE battery (Belkin bluetooth mouse) as second battery. Unfortunately it always chooses the mouse battery for display in the panel.

This is of course completely useless, as I want to see how long the laptop battery lasts, not how long the mouse battery lasts. It seems to be impossible to select which battery to display in the panel?

I don't know if my problem should be defined as "new" bug as it seems closely related to the old one here?

(PS: reported this to bug #1026432 also)

Just installed 13.10 on my laptop with two batteries (previously running Gentoo). Got worried when battery seemed to be draining much faster than Gentoo/Gnome, but realised it was basing it's calculations on a single battery. It just went from "0%" to "98%" as the laptop switched between batteries. Both were present in the dropdown, as in the initial bug report. Any news?

Still occurs in trusty.

> For me the situation is even worse: Since 12.10 the power indicator displays my laptop battery and my MOUSE battery (Belkin bluetooth mouse) as second battery. Unfortunately it always chooses the mouse battery for display in the panel.
>
> This is of course completely useless, as I want to see how long the laptop battery lasts, not how long the mouse battery lasts. It seems to be impossible to select which battery to display in the panel?

Selecting the mouse battery over the desktop battery is by design iff the mouse is reporting it will run empty sooner than the laptop. From the spec:

> "The menu title should tell you at a glance what you need to know most: what device will lose power soonest (and optionally when), or otherwise which device will take longest to charge, optionally how long it will take, and optionally its current charge level. More detailed information can be accessed inside the menu itself. "

I will add my comments, Charles, you say this is by design, but it is a design flaw. The battery gets down to about 5 minutes remaining, and stops discharging. That means, it will ALWAYS show 5 minutes remaining in the panel, but it is really only discharging from the second battery at that point. It..never...goes.....away.

I forgot to mention this is a laptop with two batteries that I am speaking of. My bug got closed as a duplicate of this one... #1290623

Rob, the choice of selecting the mouse battery over the laptop battery in the use case in omeil's comment #3 is by design, since the specification is to choose the battery that will be empty soonest.

However, I believe that's a separate issue from the two-laptop-batteries case reported by Mathieu here and by you in bug #1290623. It makes sense to combine two laptop batteries into a totaled representation; it doesn't make sense to do that for a laptop battery + mouse battery. :)

So, I sat down to code on this yesterday and realized there are still cases where I'm not sure what the Right Thing is.

The spec's revised form says to total together multiple batteries iff "a device has multiple batteries and uses only one of them at a time" but judging from Rob's upower dump yesterday <https://launchpadlibrarian.net/169021213/UPowerDump.txt> another valid use case is two laptop batteries that are both discharging.

My thoughts on it:

* If the laptop has two or more DISCHARGING batteries (Rob's case), we could use an average of their percentages and the maximum of their time-remaining values.

* Otherwise, if the laptop has one DISCHARGING and one or more IDLE batteries (Mathieu's case), we could use an average of their percentages and the sum of time-remaining.

* Otherwise, if the laptop has one CHARGING and one or more IDLE batteries, we could use an average of their percentages and the maximum of the CHARGING time-remaining values.

* Otherwise, if the laptop has both CHARGING and DISCHARGING batteries at the same time... first off, I'm not sure this is a meaningful use case? What icon would we use? :) We could use an average of the batteries' percentages and either not report a time, or use the maximum of the DISCHARGING time-remaining values.

* Otherwise, do not average batteries together in the header.

Punting back to mpt for a second opinion on this. ;)

That previous summary doesn't handle the two batteries charging, which should be a common occurrence. Let's try that again:

* If the laptop has two or more DISCHARGING batteries (Rob's case), we could use an average of their percentages and the maximum of their time-remaining values.

* Otherwise, if the laptop has one DISCHARGING and one or more IDLE batteries (Mathieu's case), we could use an average of their percentages and the sum of time-remaining.

* Otherwise, if the laptop has one or more CHARGING or IDLE batteries, we could use an average of their percentages and the maximum of the CHARGING time-remaining values.

* Otherwise, if the laptop has both CHARGING and DISCHARGING batteries at the same time... first off, I'm not sure this is a meaningful use case? What icon would we use? :) We could use an average of the batteries' percentages and either not report a time, or use the maximum of the DISCHARGING time-remaining values.

* Otherwise, do not average batteries together in the header.

I thank you for your help on this. It's always nice to get confirmation that you aren't crazy when bugs like this happen. :) Yes those options sound nice, and I believe KDE handles this in similar ways.

Specification updated. <https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Power?action=diff&rev2=58&rev1=56>

Thanks Charles&Matthew. That's somewhat a non trivial change and border line a feature (though a bugfix in spirit I think), doing a ffe from the bug just to get some review from the release team before landing that

Status changed to 'Confirmed' because the bug affects multiple users.

This bug was fixed in the package indicator-power - 12.10.6+14.04.20140328-0ubuntu1

---------------
indicator-power (12.10.6+14.04.20140328-0ubuntu1) trusty; urgency=low

  [ Charles Kerr ]
  * If there are two batteries detected, combine their percentages and
    their time-remainings as per the revised spec. (LP: #880881)

  [ Lars Uebernickel ]
  * Use com.canonical.indicator.basic menu item for device items That
    menu item can handle non-square icons. (LP: #1263228)
 -- Ubuntu daily release <email address hidden> Fri, 28 Mar 2014 16:10:45 +0000

Unfortunately the fix is still not working on my Thinkpad X240 on trusty :-/ Any hints?

Hi - I confirm what SG said. In the lenovo x240 the remaining battery life of the two batteries is not summed up. Moreover, it appears to me that the remaining time displayed is too low.... After a full charge, I get 1h 30min in one battery and just over two hours in the other. this laptop is supposed to run for 8 hours.... Thanks for your help

I don't feel like this is fixed.

I have two batteries: one has 1 minute left and the other one 21. Now I get a notification that I have 5 minutes left. I am confused....

Kai, please report that as a separate bug.

Filed follow up bug here: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/indicator-power/+bug/1493462

same bug for me on my x240 with ubuntu gnome 15.04. The combination of the two batteries seems to be not working properly - battery life is very low and the power indicator does not combine the two batteries.

Similar thing on a T460s. It seems the joining of the two batteries is not really done. I currently have one battery with 0:07 left and another with 1:37 and the total result is shown as 1:37. It seems the summing up has regressed.