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EC firmware feature request: battery charge limiting #420

@mpeter50

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@mpeter50

I wanted to set up limiting the charge level of the battery of my chromebook, so that it may remain useful for a longer time, but it seems currently it may not be possible.

So far I have found out that on Linux systems where the kernel supports controlling how the battery is charged, control and monitoring happens through virtual files of the power supply device class, in the sysfs file system, more specifically these (usually):

  • /sys/class/power_supply/<battery name>/charge_start_threshold
  • /sys/class/power_supply/<battery name>/charge_stop_threshold

<battery name> is usually BAT0, but sometimes slightly different.

Source is the Linux kernel documentation and this issue at a software's (TLP) repository that deals with power management of laptops on Linux systems.

However, on my system installation, these files do not exist, and the only writeable files in that directory are alarm and uevent.
The same is true for a live system I tried, which used kernel version 6.1.2.
After installing TLP from the package manager, running tlp-stat --battery confirms that my device is not supported by this tool. The tool uses a standard Linux kernel mechanism for accessing battery information and control interfaces, so I suspect this also means that battery charge control is currently not supported by the system.


Device model: Lenovo 500e 2nd Gen (Code name: Phaser360S, Board name: Octopus)
Firmware: UEFI firmware 20221129
Kernel version: 5.14.21
Operating system: openSUSE Leap 15.4

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