Cfrtjryk

So, I got a new battery for my laptop, and right from the get go, I'm having problems.

The battery came almost entirely discharged from the manufacturer. I plugged it into my computer and the batter would report that the charge rate is 0, and hence would never reach "fully charged"

After a couple minutes and having X11 crash, I'm now at this (upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/battery_BAT0):

  native-path:          BAT0

  vendor:               Hewlett-Packard

  model:                Primary

  power supply:         yes

  updated:              Fri 21 Oct 2016 08:28:33 AM CEST (106 seconds ago)

  has history:          yes

  has statistics:       yes

  battery

    present:             yes

    rechargeable:        yes

    state:               charging

    warning-level:       none

    energy:              17.8704 Wh

    energy-empty:        0 Wh

    energy-full:         24.192 Wh

    energy-full-design:  95.04 Wh

    energy-rate:         0.0996923 W

    voltage:             15.947 V

    percentage:          73%

    capacity:            25.4545%

    technology:          lithium-ion

    icon-name:          'battery-full-charging-symbolic'

So the battery is charging, the energy capacity is only about a quarter of what it was designed (even though the battery is only a couple days old), it sits at 73%, and the charge rate is so small, it doesn't even report how much it'd take till fully charged.

Now, I know you can kinda "calibrate" a battery, by charging it for a couple hours, then letting it run flat, and then charge it up again.

This doesn't seem to be the right way to do, though. I'm wondering if I can't access the smart data directly, via the SMBus.

i2cdetect -l reports:

i2c-0   smbus       SMBus I801 adapter at 8000          SMBus adapter

i2c-1   i2c         NVIDIA i2c adapter 0 at 1:00.0      I2C adapter

i2c-2   i2c         NVIDIA i2c adapter 2 at 1:00.0      I2C adapter

i2c-3   i2c         NVIDIA i2c adapter 3 at 1:00.0      I2C adapter

i2c-4   i2c         NVIDIA i2c adapter 5 at 1:00.0      I2C adapter

So, I tried probing SMBus (i2cdetect -r 0):

WARNING! This program can confuse your I2C bus, cause data loss and worse!

I will probe file /dev/i2c-0 using read byte commands.

I will probe address range 0x03-0x77.

Continue? [Y/n] y   

     0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f

00:          -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

10: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

20: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

30: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

40: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

50: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

60: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- 

70: -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --                         

This is quite strange to me, does that mean there's nothing connected to the bus?

No matter which address I'm trying to dump, the result is always the same:

i2cdump 0 0x03 (all other valid addresses produce the same output):

No size specified (using byte-data access)

WARNING! This program can confuse your I2C bus, cause data loss and worse!

I will probe file /dev/i2c-0, address 0x1a, mode byte

Continue? [Y/n] y

     0  1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9  a  b  c  d  e  f    0123456789abcdef

00: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

10: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

20: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

30: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

40: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

50: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

60: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

70: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

80: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

90: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

a0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

b0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

c0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

d0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

e0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

f0: XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX XX    XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

That's how far I got.

The system gets it's battery information from somewhere, but I can't figure out how and from where.

As for the I²C / SMBus access to the battery: no idea if I'm doing something wrong, or it's impossible like that.

I'd like to know how to access smart battery data, how to set it (presumably with i2cset), and possibly how it's formatted (what data encodes which information, etc.)

acpi -V is even more confused:

Battery 0: Unknown, 73%

Battery 0: design capacity 6600 mAh, last full capacity 1680 mAh = 25%

Adapter 0: on-line

(design capacity reported incorrectly, etc.)

Last bit of information I can come up with, is dmidecode output:

Handle 0x0010, DMI type 39, 22 bytes

System Power Supply

    Location: OEM_Define0

    Name: OEM_Define1

    Manufacturer: OEM_Define2

    Serial Number: OEM_Define2

    Asset Tag: OEM_Define3

    Model Part Number: OEM_Define4

    Revision: OEM_Define5

    Max Power Capacity: 75 W

    Status: Present, OK

    Type: Regulator

    Input Voltage Range Switching: Auto-switch

    Plugged: No

    Hot Replaceable: No

You can see all these "OEM_Define2", etc. strings in there, that aren't telling much.

dmidecode -t connector reports:

Getting SMBIOS data from sysfs.

SMBIOS 2.4 present.

The Smart Battery Specification (SBS) bus is not directly accessible from the OS. It is however, possible to communicate directly with the battery via a USB-I2C adapter connected directly to the battery pins.

EDIT:
https://media.blackhat.com/bh-us-11/Miller/BH_US_11_Miller_Battery_Firmware_Public_WP.pdf

EDIT 2:
I personally managed to talk directly to the battery using a Raspberry PI's i2c pins and the commands you mentioned.

There is nothing wrong with the gauge; your battery is defective so you need to just return it and demand a replacement. A 4 cell li-ion battery has a fully charged voltage of 4.2 x 4 = 16.8 volts. The fact that it is sitting at only 15.9 and not taking hardly any charge indicates at least one cell is damaged.

The fact that the smi and acpi data are incorrect indicate that the manufacturer of this laptop just could not be bothered to build it right, so I would return it for a refund if possible and not buy from them again.

Are you sure it's even a smart battery? The one in my HP Pavilion isn't.

And where you got the battery matters. It took me 3 or 4 tries to get a working battery for my Dell buying cheap batteries. I finally had good luck at http://drpowerglobal.com/drbattery/ but that was years ago, now I've worn that one out.