[RESPONDED] (REQUEST) Add battery charging limit START

Hi @Michael_Schmid ,

that’s literally the first thing I wrote in my OP :smiley:

Hello,
would it be possible to improve the current battery charging limit that can be set in the BIOS?

But if you read carefully, the point of this feature request is to allow us to set a START charging threshold, which is currently not possible (BIOS or otherwise)

The charge count ?

a) Many smaller charges make no difference they just add. 50 x 1% is the same as 1 x 50%
b) The count is also irrelevant in that all that is relevant is the degradation of the battery for ‘longevity’. The count is not a parameter that is used for such.

Many smaller increases stress the battery less and theoretically the battery should last longer.

A different option would be to have a low point where charging does occur so as not to stress the battery by having to charge so much. i.e. Charge between 50% and 80% only.

I am literally requesting that “low point” you talk about, I thought my OP was clear enough.

Also I don’t understand why you assert point a), but then make an argument for avoiding charging so much at the end. It’s a bit contradictory to me.

I agree with the need to avoid charging so much, hence disagree with your point a).

Or at least, let’s say that with a START AND STOP values configurable, my Dell XPS with a 50-something mAh battery was still at 99.something % battery health after 1.5 years. And this was with a START - STOP of 40% - 80%.

So I have proof that START + STOP limits, together, do wonders. Not so sure that STOP alone is as effective as having both.

Yes but you then focused on the 1% or small charge as being an issue with cycle count etc. So I was just elaborating.

None of it was a suggestion, so yes charging only 1% or 50% may seem totally at odds but they were used just to point out issues, not as a choice.

Battery charge sets the rate. I have found, by collecting data of my own battery, in that case for my mobile phone.

Charging when the charge is 50% or lower adds stress, probably heat from a high charge, whilst up to 90% seems OK.

  • I try to keep my phone between 50% and 80+%
  • I have my Framework set at 78% charge and don’t worry about the low as it is nearly always plugged in, so there range of charge is most often very little.

Here is a link to graphs of my charging and charge state for a 55Wh, 21 month old battery in my i7-1165G7

http://217.155.51.23/newdevices/framework/battery/graph.php

There’s a link to details via a table which I have updated multiple times a day

Yes that would be nice BIOS feature, on my work laptop I set up a systemd-unit so that my preferences get applied at boot time, so I do not have to set it manually. But then again neither can I set the charging limit. So that was the only solution anyways.
But also we should be grateful that our framework laptop allows us to change the battery and we don’t have to sell our kidneys for the repair.
Yes E-Waste is horrible and there is ways too much of it. We should take care of our batteries, but it is a part that wears, like breaks on a car.

And I am, trust me. I was furious at Dell because my honestly otherwise perfect and still in top form XPS only came with 16GB of soldered RAM. Clear example of planned obsolence, except that in this case I was partly responsible since I knew what I was buying (but then again, at the time of purchase there weren’t really many options without soldered RAM…and today it’s probably even worse, thanks Apple!).

What I want to say is that I appreciate FW for what they’re doing and I clearly wanted to VOTE WITH MY WALLET this time around.

But that shouldn’t be an excuse to not keep improving.

And since the STOP limit is already implemented, I really don’t think it takes much to implement to STOP as well.

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Some of these things should be possible with a bit better set of tooling around the EC controller. There is a very similar project for the lenovo_legion laptops which use an EC similar to the one in the FW - i’ve pointed @DHowett at it in the hopes some of the bits might be able to be re-used.

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To be fair, however, a start limit will require changes to the embedded controller firmware before we can even consider publishing it to userland :smile:

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I’d be all for additional functionality like this.

Given that the EC bios generation is relatively trivial and see some folks with the intel FW’s doing some fun things with theirs ; would it make sense to have Release and ‘Experimental’ set of EC images?

The current Release looks pretty minimal ; and unlike the BIOS I think the EC is pretty much open core base right?

I would rather it just have passthrough, so if I am connected to the charger, and battery is above the charging limit, it just runs off the cord, and not try and charge, unless that is already what it does, but thats not been my experience with any laptop, or what it sounds like framework does from others comments.

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That’s an interesting extra feature request, but please open a separate topic for that.

It still won’t solve the issue of the many micro charges if you disconnect often at 80%, use for just half an hour on battery and then plug it back in. Rinse and repeat and over a day you got yourself 10 micro charges of 5% instead of a single one from 30 back up to 80.

It’s legitimate to request both gestures, but please don’t derail my feature request.

The start + stop limits have proven their value with my previous laptop, resulting in less than 1% battery wear over more than one year of usage. I know what I’m saying :wink:

I’m just gonna leave this here.

Hi Loell, what are framework’s criteria to determine if enough users want this? Maybe I can create a poll or something to collect more feedback/interest?

I really really want to see this implemented and since you added a stop limit I don’t think that implementing a start one is so much extra work.

Our batteries are starting to collect useless mini-charging cycles that add wear and reduce their life spans. Could you please somehow prioritize this and add this to the roadmap already?

Thanks :pray:

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+1 …

wasn’t there another thread where this was requested and someone from framework team responded they were working on it?..

edit: here

Thanks, but that’s only for exposing to the OS the currently available STOP limit.

Not to add support for the START limit :wink:

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I appreciate it, but I am just an enthusiastic community member and not Framework Computer staff. :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hello @Loell_Framework ,
do you know if there’s any chance of this feature request making it into the roadmap?

Thanks :slight_smile:

Hello, any updates on this, by any chance?

I have to say, I’m a bit disappointed with the slow/missing developments on behalf of the FW team.

For a company that makes upgradability their main motto, 4 months later this laptop hasn’t evolved one bit in terms of firmware.

Also no possibility to control battery charge limit and keyboard backlight from user space.

I’m disappointed.

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