CF Battery Drain

[tprime76]

Which driver, the Sony nx73 CF driver or the ERUWare driver, keeps the battery usage down. I kind of recall someone mentioning that one of the drivers drains the battery faster when the card is in the slot. I am considering purchasing a CF card, but don't want to remove it, because it drains the battery, when I am not using it.

[aussie_nx70v]

as far as i can tell the eruware driver does not impact on the battery level at all.

ive been using it since day one....

[rob_squared]

It actually drained my clie from 100% power to 33% power after 1.5 hours of mp3s while playing AcidSolitaire. Does that seem normal?

[kantana]

What was your battery usage before you used the CF card? Different brands of CF card use different amounts of power. In general CF cards will use MORE power than MS but different brands will have different draws on the power. I use PQI F1 40x which are supposed to have on eof the lowest power draws on the market. I had a 128Mb Taiwanese brand that would drain my pda dry in a couple of hours.
Try with different brands.

[ccelada]

Originally posted by rob_squared
It actually drained my clie from 100% power to 33% power after 1.5 hours of mp3s while playing AcidSolitaire. Does that seem normal?

I think that's normal... of course, it depends on your brightness setting, wich i think is what impacts battery life the most.  I guess you would have seen the same effect playing MP3s off a Memory Stick

[Eddy]

If you plan to leave the CF inserted full time, IMHO, Eruware is better. You can leave the card inserted & just simply choose to mount/ unmount the card with one click & not have to physically remove any hardware from the CLIE.

This is what I'm doing, and even leaving both the CF mounted & MS running, I don't see much difference in battery drains. I'm using SanDisk 256MB CF Card with Eruware driver.
Regular CompactFlash cards don't drain much power, I think only like the CF with microdrives (because of the tiny spinning motor) will drain power alot faster. :)

Plus, if you need to take snapshots, movieREC, then click "unmount" with the eruware driver, then you're back to using your MS right away. (without having to take out any cards from the unit)
Well, choice is yours. :D

[n2ifp]

The CF cards have a sleep mode. Some cards draw more, some draw less, provided they go into the sleep mode.

If a CF card doesn't enter the sleep mode properly, yes, it can run down the battery in no time. I had seen this a lot in the PiTech days when beta testing the MemPlug for Handspring Visors.

Additionally some CF cards can draw more power than a memory stick, or some can actually draw less.

When acquiring a CF card, there are few parameters that can be looked at. Size, speed, sleep current, and current used in read/writes.

[rob_squared]

Originally posted by ccelada


I think that's normal... of course, it depends on your brightness setting, wich i think is what impacts battery life the most.  I guess you would have seen the same effect playing MP3s off a Memory Stick

That's good to hear. I'm glad its not adversely effecting my battery life opposed to MS.

[sonyclie]

I am currently using a Kingston 1 GB CF and I noticed quite a big drain on my battery. I keep the CF mounted all the time. Can anyone using the same CF give any comments?

[Guest]

Originally posted by aussie_nx70v
as far as i can tell the eruware driver does not impact on the battery level at all.

ive been using it since day one....

Are you sure? I use a 512MB Transcend card with Eruware`s driver and it drains my battery pretty quickly. I am not very happy with the Eruware driver anyway. Not using it a lot recently...

[n2ifp]

What makes you think it's the EruWare driver?

[Eddy]

Originally posted by n2ifp
What makes you think it's the EruWare driver?
What makes you think it's not? Just kidding Larry, as you know I love my Eruware driver. :D

[rolands]

Not to resurface this old thread, but...

I recently bought a PNY 256Mb CF and am using the hacked NX73 driver. I have had no problems with battery drains.

If it charge it to 100% and leave it off, it still shows 100% at the end of the day.

I do only get about 2 hours of movie-watching before the battery level drops below 30%. I did notice that if you continue watching your movie while it's above the 30%, you can continue watching even below the 30%. But if you stop the movie, you're SOL.

Roland

[tprime76]

I ended up using the hacked driver with (I think it was CliePet's) unmount utility. Since I only use my CF card for multimedia, it works out great. Thanks for all of the input on this. This board continues to amaze me with all of the information and help.

[Eddy]

yep, for now, CliePet's 3-bit has been working like a charm, with the 30% battery warning prompt. I noticed the same case as Rolands, if I just leave the movie playing off the CF Card, you can actually get down to around 13% before the CLIE cuts off access to the CF Card.

Also you might want to look into Hans latest revised version of the ImageConverter Tool, if you set the frame-rate to 12fps, then your movies will runs alot smoother off the CF Card & less likely to freeze up, resulting in soft-resets. I've been using the 12fps setting for quite a while and I've experienced less freeze up with MoviePlayer! :D

Cliesource discussion thread:
http://www.cliesource.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&postid=317150#post317150

Direct download of the latest version with "Reset to default" button.
http://home.arcor.de/gnassel/imagec.zip

[pharmnatr]

I have an NX70 with a Sandisk 1Gb CF type 1 card. Ive noticed a substancial increase in battery drain. I've turned my beam off, lowered the brightness and set auto-off to 30 seconds. Anyone have any other ideas how to maintain battery life?

[Eddy]

hum...
pharmnatr, I've started to see a higher battery drain with my NX70 currently. But then that also includes more playback of the videos when I'm bored. Or playback of MP3s which I don't usually do before. & going into the file Manger alot, organizing data on the CF/MS would also increase the battery drains. Not sure yet.:(

I do keep my backlight set to around 10% only. Since I don't need it so bright. I keep the beam active though. I still manage to last for 2 days without a charge on an average basis. :)

[n2ifp]

Originally posted by pharmnatr
I have an NX70 with a Sandisk 1Gb CF type 1 card. Ive noticed a substancial increase in battery drain. I've turned my beam off, lowered the brightness and set auto-off to 30 seconds. Anyone have any other ideas how to maintain battery life?

Other than removing the card, not really. You can peuruse other cards that may have a lower current drain when it's in the sleep mode.

[Eddy]

sleep mode? as in zzzZZZ. LOL :D

[Mas]

hmm....I click up the HOLD button on my nx70v when im playing mp3's. I hope that means that it indeed does turn "off" the screen while the mp3's play in the background. Doesn't seem to kill power that bad (tho ive never tested it either...i carry with me a battery powered charger)

[martindale]

I seem to be getting rmuch more rapid battery drain also. At first I thought this was merely a matter of the CF card. But now i"m not sure it's cause and effect. I tried a full charge and left the NX off overnight and had the indicator show 83% in the morning followed by more higher than normal drop in charge. Is it possible that those of us who bought the NX early in the game are arriving at battery death already?

[Mas]

wow...gotta be the card in that case...im using a PCI 256mb 40x -er and I did that last night...was at full charge in the morning

[rolands]

Another update with my CF (PNY 256MB) and my NX70...

It's been about 4-5 days since I've fully charged it. I have hardly used it (i.e. it's been off). The CF card has been in it the entire time. The battery still show 100% today.

Maybe I just got lucky.

rolands

[n2ifp]

They all draw a miniscule amount, or at least that's the game plan. Looking at various OEM specs, they do vary from maker to maker.

[Megadeth]

is possible that this issue will be solved with some of the patchs released for the NX70V ?, i don't shure if i read something about that before the first eruware release, (it was in relation with a problem with the LAN card)

[n2ifp]

The CF card as well as the MS are always drawing power. How much it varies depends on the cards. Even when in the sleep mode.

[mr_gkyc]

FWIW, I have a Kingston 512Mb and a Viking 256Mb CF card. I use them with my NX70 in conjunction with a SanDisk 128Mb MS and I don't see any abnormal battery consumption. Mind you, I've only owned the NX70 for about a week before I got all the cards so I don't have any appreciable amount of experience of a totally "empty" NX70. However, I can definitely say that my fully charged NX70 with all cards plug in still registers 100% the next morning.

I also decided to lookup the specs for my cards so here they are:

Kingston 512Mb CF:
Sleep/Standby Current 100 uA (typical)
Read/Write Current 45 mA (typical) 75 mA (max.)

Viking 256Mb CF:
(can't find)

SanDisk 128Mb MS:
(can't find)

For comparision, here are Lexar's specs for their MemorySticks:
Average ~4.5mA
Stand-by ~130µA

Lexar's MemoryStick Pro:
Average Write ~20mA
Stand-by ~130µA

Lexar's CompactFlash:
High Performance Read Current 65mA at 5V; 50 mA at 3.3V rms
High Performance Write Current 65 mA at 5V; 50mA at 3.3V rms


George

[A-OnE]

Even with a microdrive in all night I still can wake up in the morning and its 100%, I guess it doesn't spin in idle.

[Egalus]

Why should it spin in idle mode?
Surely it does not, but if it spins it needs to much precious battery power.

[cliener]

when the cf magic driver was introduced in the "news" thread I think. there was a comparison on battery life and cutoff. ayasin said the cf magic cut off at 15%. I think this would still vary with cf card though, and clie type.

[cliener]

Yeah, it is on page 6 of the PDAscent news release. Still, I would think card type and clie type make a lot of difference too.