Homebrew a homebrew that tells you how much battery life you have

[triple-sevenz]

^^ wat it said up there. i just bought my ds and im trying to charge it only when i really need to. with the ds, its kinda hard to tell if its really low or not since the red light only comes on when its 30% (or at least i think it does). is there a homebrew application that can tell you the percentage of battery life your ds has left? before the ds, i had a psp (come to think of it, i still do), and i could look at my battery life using cwcheat or thru the system settings. on the ds, i kind of miss this feature. also if there is no such homebrew, is it at least possible? i have a friend who knows a lot about coding and making homebrews and stuff and i was wondering if i should ask him to make one but i just wanted to see if there was already one out so i wouldnt have to waste his time. thanks for any info.

 

[fischju]

On batteries: It is best to run it all the way down, then charge it all the way up.

 

[triple-sevenz]

yea i kno. see im trying to avoid that as much as possible, but im usually playing my ds at work and most of the times i dont use it all the way up by the time i get home. so im at home debating should i charge it or should i just leave it and see if it will last for tomorrow and it sucks to have it die during a good game. my boss doesn't mind me playing my ds at spare time but im not allowed to charge my ds at work (dunno why).

 

[Trippy]

Methinks you should be doing work @ work.

Seriously tho, I haven't heard of one.

 

[daboss23]

i'd like to see that homebrew!!!!!!!!!!

 

[Satangel]

This questions has been asked a while ago, and I remember that someone said that the DS isn't capapble of doing that (unlike the PSP)
The DS can only display 2 battery lifes: Yellow, the battery is good and will last for a few hours.
Red, the battery will die in max. a half hour or so

 

[Rayder]

I think there would have to be circuitry in the DS to measure battery life before a program could be written to report it. The circuitry in the DS only has two stages for battery life; Green for good and red for low battery. Nothing in between, as far as I know. It's a bummer to be sure, but that's how it is.

What I do is charge it every night whether it needs it or not....unless I didn't play it that day, in which case charging is unnecessary. Never had a problem with the battery life by doing that, and my black DS lite is a USA launch version. (I bought it about 5 days after black DS lite's were available in the USA)

From what I remember reading about Lithium Ion batteries, they actually LIKE being charged back up frequently. So just charge it whenever you aren't using it.

While Lithium Ion batteries don't have the problems that the old NiCAD batteries did, they don't like it if you run them to the point where the DS shuts off on you. They also mention in the DS manual that you shouldn't leave them plugged in during a thunder storm. Extreme temperatures can hurt the battery as well as it getting wet. Try to avoid those things and you should be good.

No matter what you do, a lithium ion is only going to last about 3-5 years before it deteriorates and loses capacity. If you start experiencing extremely short battery life, just replace it.

 

[triple-sevenz]

^^ hmm did not kno any of that. well you've convinced me enough to just charge when i think it needs to. too bad that it cant be done though. would have been pretty neat.

 

[LagunaCid]

Fast facts

Li-ion batteries do not suffer from the memory effect. They also have a low self-discharge rate of approximately 5% per month, compared with over 30% per month in common nickel metal hydride batteries (Low self-discharge NiMH batteries have much lower values, around 1.25% per month; they can still hold 85% of their charge, after one year) and 10% per month in nickel cadmium batteries.
QUOTEA unique drawback of the Li-ion battery is that its life span is dependent upon aging from time of manufacturing (shelf life) regardless of whether it was charged, and not just on the number of charge/discharge cycles. So an older battery will not last as long as a new battery due solely to its age, unlike other batteries. This drawback is not widely published.[17]

Bottom line: charge as much as you like; it's going to get old one way or another.

 

[alex]

Do they sell batteries anywhere? I mean, Nintendo really doesn't think one of their handhelds will last more than 5 years by doing this, of course your warranty is long gone by then. Might as well open it up and put in a new battery.

 

[SG]

Why do you have to run that battery down?

It isn't Ni-Cd.

I always plug mine into play so there's often not much charge missing but obviously sometimes a bit as I'm not always at a socket. By doing this I though I would be PRESERVING the battery's life, as then it's not actually using the battery as much. But it does keep going down to say 90% and then back up to 100%.

EDIT: Just read Rayder's post above - good stuff. lostsoul: Google 'buy DS battery'; you should have no problem getting a replacement. When the DS is near its death I'll buy one whether mine needs it or not unless (the DS 2 can do everything that the DS can do).

 

[alex]

When the DS is near its death I'll buy one whether mine needs it or not unless (the DS 2 can do everything that the DS can do).

And run flashcarts! Nintendo gonna try and stop us by giving us firmware updates on the DS. Or an Official Crapcart that will only run certain homebrew like a GnM. That I doubt though.

Well those are my predictions, they should do something GOOD with the DS2!

 

[triple-sevenz]

see i didnt know about the lithium ion battery stuff. a lot people recommended on using all the juice out of the battery before charging on other threads. well w/e. ill just charge when i need to.

 

[chuckstudios]

To elaborate on the possibility of a homebrew app, the DS's power management device provides only a single bit on register 1 to determine battery life. This means that you can only get a 1 or a 0 from the hardware (0 = green, 1 = red). source

 

[Narin]

On batteries: It is best to run it all the way down, then charge it all the way up.

No, with the lithium ion batteries that the DS uses, it can shorten your battery life.

 

[IOwnAndPwnU]

I wish there a was a homebrew for this ...

 

[Gerinych]

I think it's possible. The program first benchmarks DS's life in various situations, like lid closed, Wi-Fi on, volume all the way up etc., then using that data, measure the life. Of course, if you plug it in, the battery's life would be thrown off.

 

[Narin]

I think it's possible. The program first benchmarks DS's life in various situations, like lid closed, Wi-Fi on, volume all the way up etc., then using that data, measure the life. Of course, if you plug it in, the battery's life would be thrown off.

Not exactly possible because the only thing an application can detect about the battery is a single digit, 1 and 0 to tell if the Nintendo DS light should be green or red and not the current level or how much charge is left.

 

[Frederica Bernkastel]

When the DS is near its death I'll buy one whether mine needs it or not unless (the DS 2 can do everything that the DS can do).

And run flashcarts! Nintendo gonna try and stop us by giving us firmware updates on the DS. Or an Official Crapcart that will only run certain homebrew like a GnM. That I doubt though.

Well those are my predictions, they should do something GOOD with the DS2!

Funny you should say that... look up DS-Vision...

And Narin, ever heard about decimal places? I'm NEVER gonna give up the fact of a program (possibly implemented into firmwares) that tells you the battery NEVER!

DAMN... STUPID BATTERY.

 

[DanTheManMS]

Decimal places won't help. Binary doesn't work that way.

The above posters are correct - the DS itself is only capable of reporting two hardware states. For an example of how this can be used in a homebrew application, run lmp-ng when your battery is running low. Or an old version of DSOrganize with the battery plugin (before he removed plugin support).