battery consumption

[Diogo Vinicius Kersting]

Hello Amora Community.

First I would like to congratulation the developers for the great
software which amora is.

I'm using my N95 as a Remote Control. I use Linux and kaffeine.
One thing I've noticed is that most of the time the client application
stays idle (until someone starts talking to me, then I pause, etc) and
the application stays running for a long time (A film can have 3
hours). And the thuth is (at least on my cell phone) there is a
considerable consumption of battery.

So, I would like to check you guys for some suggestions on this issue.

Things I've thinking(I'm no bluetooth expert so forgive-me is I say
some stupidity):

1) Use an alternative type of connection, and only send data when
requested by the user of the client application.

2) The client checks for a certain amount of time idle and then
"sleeps /end" the connection. If action is requested the cliente app
would reconnect automatically.
(the problem would be if reconecting time is bigger than the time I
take to reach my notebook and pause by the keyboard)

[Adenilson Cavalcanti]

Dear Diogo

I will try to address your comments.

> hours).  And the thuth is (at least on my cell phone) there is a
> considerable consumption of battery.
>

Yep! I'm aware of this question since early 2008 when Nokia released
that application for profiling energy consumption (don't remember the
name right now).

I haven't investigated the issue, but I'm somewhat suspecting of the
way I wrote amora mainloop (which will use a lot of CPU even when not
doing anything).

> 1) Use an alternative type of connection, and only send data when
> requested by the user of the client application.
>

What do you mean by 'type of connection'? Wifi X bluetooth? I think
that any connection other than bluetooth will probably suck more
energy from battery (except maybe by USB cable, but it makes no sense
to use a wired connection).

> 2) The client checks for a certain amount of time idle and then
> "sleeps /end" the connection. If action is requested the cliente app
> would reconnect automatically.
> (the problem would be if reconecting time is bigger than the time I
> take to reach my notebook and pause by the keyboard)

Yeah, it would be neat to have a timer and after say, like 10 minutes,
close the bluetooth socket and wait for commands.

The previously connected computer could then be reused to reopen the
connection once the user decided to send any command.

If you are willing to implement this feature, I could help you
explaining how amora client code works. Obviously, you got to known
python as a requisite.

Anyway, feel free to create an issue in amora bug tracker to address
this energy consumption feature (and if possible, add data of that
Nokia energy profiler).
http://code.google.com/p/amora/issues/list

Best regards

Adenilson

[Kersting (BRLix Developer)]

> I haven't investigated the issue, but I'm somewhat suspecting of the
> way I wrote amora mainloop (which will use a lot of CPU even when not
> doing anything).

Do you think is possibly to change the main loop for less CPU usage?

> Yeah, it would be neat to have a timer and after say, like 10 minutes,
> close the bluetooth socket and wait for commands.

I could do that, but first I want to check the main loop.

> Anyway, feel free to create an issue in amora bug tracker to address
> this energy consumption feature (and if possible, add data of that
> Nokia energy profiler).http://code.google.com/p/amora/issues/list

OK, I think I will.

Best regards

Diogo