[Veemo]

I finally bought a 5.5g iPod and I'm having a problem with battery life.
 
once it's charged it reads that the battery is fully charged but it only lasts a short time. it will continue to read "full" for a few minutes, then it will shut off without warning, and without changing the battery indicator from full. Once I boot up again it immediately tells me that the battery is drained, and shuts off again. If I leave it alone to play music then it doesn't happen, only if I start browsing though menus and such. everything works fine in the Apple firmware, rockbox seems to be the culprit. 
 
Is anyone else familiar with this problem? I love the sound and storage of this thing, but this is very frustrating!
 
Thanks for the help!
 
Veemo

 

[andrewberge]

I can relate to the second problem. My old 5.5G's battery lasts 15 minutes.
 
I, uh... I think it's dead, man. You probably need to replace the battery.

 

[Veemo]

That's what I was afraid of, but I was curious about why the battery didnt show any change until after the thing crapped out. Rockbox displays battery information based on the actual condition of the battery, not a timer or something.
 
Anyway, if this is the case, where is a good source for a replacement battery? And can I get a longer lasting one (more mAh)?

 

[andrewberge]

Last i checked you could get a higher capacity battery for about $15 off eBay (in Canada, anyway).
I don't remember the details, though, sorry.

 

[Veemo]

Ok, I just let it charge a while, plugged in, and listened to a whole album. Once it was finished, I looked at the player and it had about 90% battery left (guessing from graphical indicator). I started playing around with the settings, with no music playing, and after a minute or two it shut down again. started up again and got the usual "no battery, shutting down" warning. 
 
Any ideas now? 
 
My next test will be to boot in apple firmware and see what happens. The guy I bought it from didn't mention any battery problems, and seemed like an honest dude. He was running he original Apple OS, so i think RB may be the culprit.

 

[Veemo]

Well last night I queued up a ton of music in apple mode and this thing played through it no problem. at least 6 hours of music, I'm not sure cause I just left it playing in the living room while i slept. it turned off once the music was over, but there's still battery left. 
 
So to recap: Plays fine in Apple firmware, but if I fiddle with settings or browse music files in Rockbox it randomly crashes and thinks there's no battery left. What?

 

[doublea71]

If you post your queries on the rockbox website, they're usually pretty helpful there. Here's a website where you can buy anything you may need for an ipod....www.rapidrepair.com
All kinds of bits and pieces to repair or mod your ipod. You can even ship it to them if you need extensive tinkering. If you're using flac files, it is more taxing on the battery then with lossy files.

 

[plasmoic]

very strange...did you try reinstalling RB?
the only problem for me is, though quite rare, the software skips some tracks...
never crashed, just froze or responded with quite a lag when tried to play
24/192 flacs
 
 

 

[doublea71]

I don't remember exactly how to change the settings, but there are optimal settings when you use rockbox. You definitely want the screen to go into sleep mode as soon as you're not using it. I'd go to the rockbox website and the developers will tell you exactly how to change the settings to optimize battery life. If there is a firmware problem, they'll be able to advise you on that, too.

 

[Veemo]

Thanks for the replies everyone, I'll be sure to ask around on the RB site. I have reinstalled RB several times, with no change. I should  point out that when I say it shuts off after a short while I mean less than 2 minutes, even with nothing playing. 
 
Just earlier I listened for a few hours with Apple OS, then restarted in RB and had about 20 seconds before the "battery died" and it shut off. after a couple of minutes I booted up again in Apple OS and listened for a few more hours, with nearly full battery. What is going on here?

 

[doublea71]

you can't play 24/192 on rockbox from what I've been told. i tried to play 24/96 on mine and I would get a gap w/o sound about every 10 seconds. you can't play high bitrate files on rb - a developer told me that that can cause playback problems, so that's probably the source of frustration right there. stick to 12/48 max and it should be fine.

 

[Veemo]

As I said, this happens with nothing playing. typically it crashes before I can find a song to play.

 

[doublea71]

try pulling all of the 24/192 stuff off of your player and see if that works...or perhaps reboot after you pull them off, and then give it a go. any luck on the rockbox website?

 

[andrewberge]

Quote:

you can't play 24/192 on rockbox from what I've been told. i tried to play 24/96 on mine and I would get a gap w/o sound about every 10 seconds. you can't play high bitrate files on rb - a developer told me that that can cause playback problems, so that's probably the source of frustration right there. stick to 12/48 max and it should be fine.

I had that problem with ordinary 16/44 FLAC files. I'm almost sure it was the hard drive that couldn't keep up with the higher bitrates, that's what it felt like, anyway.
Of course, i didn't really know what a buffer was back then, so i probably had the settings wrong

 

[Veemo]

I don't know what bitrate my FLAC files are in, but this seems to be related to menu browsing, mostly. Last night I listened to all of "Glenn Gould, The Goldberg Variations" without a hitch, once I decided to put on another album it crashed, again showing battery at >50%