Release Pandora System Info


Thanks for the upgrade, anyway it reports the wrong SuperZaxxon version... I have the 1.54 but it tells "SuperZaxxon R1.53"
 
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Yes, I'm not going to try to detect the actual current SZ version. I'm just hoping that in future updates, /etc/op-version automatically gets updated.
 
awesome pnd, very very useful. The only complaint i have about the new version is that there's no more Nyan-cat theme, my 2 year old daughter is most disappointed. she misses seeing his "rainbow poo" on the progress bars as she calls it. Any tips on preserving battery health? The newest of my batteries is down to 78% of design, and my much older one is about the same. Perhaps this is down to the fact i'm unable to use the official charger i have as i was sent the wrong plug for the AC adapter, so i have to use an unofficial PSP charger instead. Maybe i should get the "travel pack" from dragonbox and possibly a new battery (but then i'd have 3!).
 
@monkfish, the nyancat theme is still there, but you have to read the README file to find out how to activate it :)
 
Minor bug reports:

Network Tab: Only partially aware of USB WiFi adapter

The numbers change (downloading, uploading, etc) accordingly, but the state ("WiFi: disabled"), hint ( "Toggle with SPACE") remains unchanged.

Sudo permissions (for changing CPU/RAM speed) causing flickering password prompt window

The password prompt window flickered as hell (look like infinite loop).

Pressing ESC, then triggering the sudo-requiring action again (i.e. incrementing CPU speed via ">") triggered the dialogue again, this time stable (no flickering).

Inquiry:

What about my proposal for setting custom comments into the timeline log?
 
How much does the power consumption vary between

1) internal-wifi and 2) wifi-via-USB-adapter

in a) wasteful B)  powersaving operation?

Stats anyone?

Here are my stats:

Power usage of OpenPandora's internal WiFi versus USB WiFi adpapter

(USB WiFi adapter: Edimax EW-7811Un, IEEE 802.11b/g/n, 150 Mb/s — Router: D-Link DI-524, IEEE 802.11b/g, 54 Mb/s)

  • While active transmissions, the internal WiFi (966 mW) and USB WiFi (900 mW) consume about the same power.
  • In idle mode the internal WiFi (30 mW) consumes considerably less, as for external WiFi, both the idle USB-host (160 mW) and the idle USB-WiFi (240 mW) consume more, giving a total of 400 mW for idle USB WiFi.
  • While idle operation on the USB WiFi, occasionally there is an increase of 300 mW lasting only very shortly (data link layer, I guess).
Note: How did I get these numbers? I ran sysinfo. Assessed my Pandora's base consumption — 700 mW from using: CPU @ 800 Mhz OPP5, BT/USB/WiFi all off, screen on low brightness, power-LED with brightness 32/256, 2 SDs inside, XFCE window manager, Terminal window (for wget tests), sysinfo showing power tab) — and then created the other situations (enabling internal-WiFi/USB-host, plugging adapter in/out, running WiFi idle/active), and calculated the difference to the previous situation, and considered it as the consumption for this device or activity.
 
Minor bug reports:

Network Tab: Only partially aware of USB WiFi adapter

The numbers change (downloading, uploading, etc) accordingly, but the state ("WiFi: disabled"), hint ( "Toggle with SPACE") remains unchanged.
This is also true of any other network interface used. I've noticed the same thing with my USBnet connections, but didn't really see it as an issue as that was not a wifi based connection.
Sudo permissions (for changing CPU/RAM speed) causing flickering password prompt window

The password prompt window flickered as hell (look like infinite loop).

Pressing ESC, then triggering the sudo-requiring action again (i.e. incrementing CPU speed via ">") triggered the dialogue again, this time stable (no flickering).
I would add that this seems to be triggered by making multiple changes before approving the first change.
- Neelix
 
>Sudo permissions (for changing CPU/RAM speed) causing flickering password prompt window


The password prompt window flickered as hell (look like infinite loop).


Pressing ESC, then triggering the sudo-requiring action again (i.e. incrementing CPU speed via ">") triggered the dialogue again, this time stable (no flickering).
I would add that this seems to be triggered by making multiple changes before approving the first change.
@Neelix: Could be that I pressed <> multiple times, and that sysinfo kept that in its input queue and the prompt dialogue then popped up several times, thus the flickering.

@_wb_: I have good faith that you can track down that bug!  :D
 
@monkfish: As Binky said, the nyancat is still there, it's just made into an easter egg. It was too annoying to have to go through the nyancat each time you wanted to switch back from the bright theme to the dark one.

About the battery health: sysinfo just reports the number it gets from the gauge chip. This chip is not very good. E.g. it is supposed to notice when you swap batteries, and it is supposed to keep track of the stats (health, nb of recharge cycles) of two batteries, and to be able to detect which one is inserted. But this does not quite seem to work; the last time I swapped batteries it still thought the old one was inserted, and I could charge it to something like 105% of design charge and 125% of "full" :)

@porg: Thanks for the bug report about the sudo dialog - I'll look into it. Shouldn't be too hard to fix.

The non-internal-wifi network stats: I've never used anything other than the internal wifi, so I haven't tested anything else. Sysinfo takes its info from a crude shell script that basically does "iwconfig", with some awk and grep stuff to put things in the right format. Maybe you can try to modify the script (it's rather ugly though) to fix problems with usb dongles.

Custom comments in the log: I do like the idea, but it's quite a bit of effort to implement this and it's probably not going to be used by a lot of people. Maybe I can come up with a quick & dirty zenity implementation of such a feature.
 
I'm glad the Nyan-cat is still in there, it keeps my daughter happy on long car journeys AND annoys the wife, so double win!
 
Comment function: Quick and dirty solution for prototyping would be already very appreciated!

If the comment feature does not integrate into the UI, but rather pops up a Zenity window, I am fine! Then the comment is at least inserted at the right line (=most recent timestamp) in the CSV.

The second part is to plot those comments at the correct position in the graph. (Had to do this by hand with external tools with all my graphs so far). Would help a lot! Either 90° or 45° text orientation, the start of the text field being aligned to the event in the graph the text describes.
 
Bug report: ALT ("Start") key triggers WiFi toggling in all tabs thus prevents you from pressing ALT-TAB (switching to other programs)

To my amazement when I switched to Terminal where I ran wget for WiFi testing purposes, via ALT-TAB I noticed WiFi going off, and after trying a little that ALT toggles WiFi in all tabs.

I guess this is not by design. In the "Network tab" there's the hint "Wifi: Toggle with SPACE". (Does not mention "ALT"!)

Praise: At first in addition to realizing that "ALT key bug" it also felt a little strange that SPACE toggles WiFi globally (=in all tabs), but on a second thought it made sense: If you want to see the impact of WiFi on other parts of the system (CPU, RAM, BATT).
 
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Feature suggestion: At startup the status line shall be shown for the default timeout length (4s)

Currently the status line "Logging <off|enabled>. Interval: <N>s" is only shown merely a second, too short to re-assure oneself.
 
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Praise: New power breakdown plot — great!

So satisfying to see if suggestions get implemented that well! Thanks _wb_!

New as of which version? Must be quite new, noticed only recently.
 
This works splendid for me now since I upgraded my firmware.

I do not own a solar powered Pandora either  B)
 
I'm working on an update. Besides fixing some of the above issues, there are also some new features:

- The storage panel (which shows the SD cards and RAM/swap gauges) is now split in two panels: one for the RAM, which now also shows the sizes of the largest processes, and one for "Storage", which shows the SD cards and also the NAND and USB drives if you any is inserted. You can press SPACE in the Storage panel to toggle USB host.

- CPU panel is slightly more detailed: it distinguishes between system/user/iowait, also in the graph.

- You now only need to enter the root password when it is really needed: not for cpu frequency changes, wifi toggle, usb toggle. It's still needed for system bus frequency changes and wifi powersaving toggle though.
 
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