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Subject: Re: Testers wanted: up to 50% greater battery life
From: TP Diffenbach (rockbox_at_diffenbach.org)
Date: 2003-07-29

Quoting Michael O'Quinn <michael_at_oquinn.info>:

> On Tue, 29 Jul 2003, John Stevenson wrote:
>
> >
> > 4) Your testing would not be 'real life' based,
> > people do not use their player in that way. Might be
> > best to time over normal usage - more people could
> > take part then. The normal stuff such as switching
> > on, off, (which uses more battery power) creating
> > queues and just playing with it, that way you will get
> > a more realistic set of metrics.
>
> That is not true. The purpose of his test is to compare battery usage
> under a controlled set of conditions, and playing the way he described it
> works. He will not be comparing this usage pattern against a more
> "normal" usage pattern. He will be comparing it against other runs of the
> same type, to determine which software has the longest run time compared
> to the other versions USING THE EXACT SAME CONDITIONS FOR EACH TEST.

What Michael O'Quinn said (btw, Michael, your name's in the credits, but last I looked, your apostrophe isn't).

> Tom: You ARE planing to distribute all three versions to each tester,
> right?

Well, no I wasn't. I wanted to do a blind test. Then I'd feel like a real scientist and stuff.

> To get decently accurate results, you should instruct the testers to run
> one test first to fully discharge the batts, then fully charge them, THEN
> run the first valid test to actually collect data.

This is a very good idea. Thanks.
 
> I don't REALLY think this needs to be a blind test. It might not hurt to
> have the user run the first test over when the other ones are done, just
> to make sure the batteries are still behaving the same. This IS a
> different than normal usage pattern, and the battery characteristics may
> change over the life of the test.

Also a good idea.

> That would be five runs minimum: One dummy to prep the batteries, three
> actual tests, and one final test (re-run of the first actual test) to
> confirm the batts haven't changed radically.

I like this.

> Could you make a counter that logs each time a song is played? This would
> make collecting the data a lot easier, and should suffice for your
> purposes. I don't look forward to sitting there with a stop watch.

No stopwatch is required. I'm going to log battery levels, you'll just play your selected album on repeat all.

> If this really works, and doesn't break things, it'll be a very welcome
> enhancement!

Wait. You expect it to /work/?
You didn't notice that I posted this April 1st?

Oh, wait, nevermind. ;) 

-- 
Archos FM has a Rockbox!

Page was last modified "Jan 10 2012" The Rockbox Crew
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