XFCE battery indicator keeps switching charge state when fully charged

[wessel-novacustom]

Component

Dasharo firmware

Device

NovaCustom V56 14th Gen, NovaCustom V54 14th Gen

Dasharo version

v0.9.0

Dasharo Tools Suite version

No response

Test case ID

No response

Brief summary

When the laptop is fully charged, it keeps switching from Charging to Fully charged.

How reproducible

100% reproducible.

How to reproduce

1. Install an operating system that uses XFCE, like Qubes OS.
2. Make sure that the battery is fully charged.
3. Observe the battery indicator for about 10 minutes.

Expected behavior

When the battery is fully charged, it says Fully charged and doesn't change.

Actual behavior

It keeps switching from Charging to Fully charged.

Screenshots

No response

Additional context

It seems to happen with both USB-C charging and regular DC jack charging.

I'm not sure if this can be fixed by firmware?

Does anyone know how to stop these annoying popups?

Solutions you've tried

No response

[mkopec]

Does it happen with the default battery thresholds of 95-98?

[wessel-novacustom]

@mkopec Yes. So far only tested for Dasharo coreboot+UEFI.

[wessel-novacustom]

Adding screenshots:

This happens while the power adaptor is plugged in and the battery is fully charged, it keeps switching between both messages around every 5 minutes (sometimes even more often).

Also confirmed under Heads (rc5).

[lfinbob]

I see the same behavior on my NovaCustom NV54 laptop with Qubes 4.2.3 using XFCE.
It happens default thresholds and custom thresholds (70-98 in my case) and regardless of charging method (USB-C PD or normal PSU).
Running Dasharo (coreboot+UEFI) v0.9.0.

[PerAstraAdDeum]

This is happening to me as well on Arch Linux with KDE Plasma 6.2.5.

I get constantly changing indicators for charging, also, for some reason, the battery seems to loose power even when the laptop is plugged in the whole time. Battery thresholds are on default.

[filipleple]

So far, I haven't managed to reproduce this on V540TU, Dasharo v0.9.0 and Qubes 4.2.3 kernel-latest. I've waited for ~10min on both DC barrel jack and USB-C, Qubes remained at Fully charged as expected, using both the default and custom thresholds. I will also try on V56.

[wessel-novacustom]

So far, I haven't managed to reproduce this on V540TU, Dasharo v0.9.0 and Qubes 4.2.3 kernel-latest. I've waited for ~10min on both DC barrel jack and USB-C, Qubes remained at Fully charged as expected, using both the default and custom thresholds. I will also try on V56.

@filipleple I'm not 100% sure about the V54, it happens on the V56 Series for sure. You might need longer than 10 minutes.

@marmarek Maybe you have seen this in Qubes OS, too?

[PerAstraAdDeum]

I can confirm this is ocuring on the V54 (Intel-only model). However, I don't know hot to reproduce it. I've been seeing this error for quite some time now, I always thought it'd probably be a KDE issue though.

Maybe it is tied to a certain battery load percentage.

[lfinbob]

I haven't managed to reproduce this on V540TU, Dasharo v0.9.0 and Qubes 4.2.3 kernel-latest.

I run a very similar configuration and confirm the problem:
V54x_6x_TU/V54x_6x_TU, BIOS Dasharo (coreboot+UEFI) v0.9.0 07/17/2024

I think you need to spend around 2 hours on the machine to notice it, roughly

[filipleple]

I've finally managed to reproduce this on V56 with DC jack plugged in. I did a fresh install of Qubes 4.2.3 kernel-latest, and while it didn't happen for a few hours of leaving the platform completely idle, it started to occur when I started applying some stress testing.

It seems to be directly correlated with how much power is being drawn/required by the platform while it's within the thresholds. When I ran the stress test, the "charging" popup appeared. When I turned it off, after a while it went back to "fully charged".

[wessel-novacustom]

Possible workaround for Qubes OS users: https://novacustom.com/forum/d/413-how-to-disable-the-frequent-battery-chargingcharged-notificaiton-under-qubesos

[marmarek]

When it happens under load, isn't that a side effect of using battery to help delivering more power, on top of what power supply provides?

[mkopec]

When it happens under load, isn't that a side effect of using battery to help delivering more power, on top of what power supply provides?

Exactly, it's because of battery power boost. The issue is that the charge and discharge current values are reported in the same current_now sysfs field and it's always positive.

XFCE sees that AC is in and current_now != 0, therefore battery is charging: https://github.com/xfce-mirror/xfce4-battery-plugin/blob/0399ebdbfcca60bf8262ac43617d758deb0b2635/panel-plugin/battery.c#L162-L166

Not sure where the bug is. On my chromebook the current_now value is negative when discharging. On a thinkpad, there is no current_now at all 🤔 Both are using different drivers than the standard acpi battery driver though.

[wiktormowinski]

After applying a proper fix, the issue is no longer reproducible. Dasharo/coreboot#623