This is a beta version of a performance ticket I'm developing.
Currently it doesn't have any interesting features, just show the battery life percent in a bar chart. If there will be requests, options for changing the appearance will be added.

INSTALLATION:
Download the DSPACKAGE and run it. IMPORTANT: you have to restart DS. The panel can be now added by launching the Performance panel's Properties, clicking Add and selecting Battery Monitor from the list.

If no battery is connected to the computer, it should show 0%.

Please post feedback in this thread. Bug reports and feature suggestions will be happily accepted.

Great work! I'm using dual batteries and will let you know if I see any problems with that. It appears to be reporting the total % of both batteries just like the System tray icon from MS.

My only request would be to second your suggestion of being able to alter the appearance as you can with the other Perf Panel plugins.

Nice work!

This is really appreciated!

He's working on that...the functionality was the first step.

Works nicely. I would eventually like to see an added Details window to see the detailed info about the battery(s) as the M$ Power Monitor does and a difference in the monitor when the laptop is plugged in. Can you change the color or style of the monitor while its plugged in or something?

Regardless it is a GREAT addition to DS. Thanks a lot for all of your work!

~acommonjo

Just putting in my request as it seems that he got the functionality part down pretty well.

~acommonjo

Thanks for doing this GoMa, I have really been waiting for this one.

So far looks good. Install was fine. Others have already covered my comments for improvements, but the functionality is there.

Thanks again!

Coult69

feature request: can you make DS show an alert, when the battery drops below critical. there should be two alerts, one for <10% and another for <5%.

Thanks for the feedback.
Stuffedtiger - I like your idea about the alert window. I'll try to implement it.

in order to fully duplicate the functionality of the windows battery icon, it is not enough to just show an alert. you have to go one step further. when batter reaches a user defined critical level, say 5%, then the computer must automatically go into hibernation, or shut down, or standby, as selected by the user.

is it possible to implement this. in the preferencs panel, ask the user to enter the critical batter % and what to do when it is reached. and then make DS implement that. i think it must be possible. then it will totally replace the windows battery meter.

Something like the attached screenshot. If the user had multiple batteries (I don't) it could be nice to have the details for each showing, not just the total or one of the batteries.

As far as the "plugged in" thing, yes I meant running on AC power. I was just suggesting something to indicate that the battery is recharging or that the unit is running on AC just to immitate the M$ battery monitor from the systray.

As always thanks for the hard work, and great contributions you make.

~acommonjo

Stuffedtiger - I think chamberc is right. The windows applet will always be running anyway, so there's no need to shutdown the computer or whatever. Displaying alerts is a good idea though.
Details window will be implemented. It will show the current power source (AC Power/Batteries) and each battery's power.

Yeah...time remaining would be cool.

I_M, I remember trying to get the time remaining but I think it didn't work correctly. I'll try again.

No biggie...

This panel works great for my laptop. I just unplugged it (even though I am home) to see how it looks. Excellent job. I have been waiting so long for this! Now I have a reason to have DS load on startup, even when I am on an airplane!

GoMa, I have just tried to install the battery perfticket on b73 but it doesn't show among the available tickets the installation went smoothly and I restarted DS. Any suggestion?

Hmm, I have b73 and I do see it. Can you tell me if you have a dir called BatteryMonitor inside %appdata%\Desktop Sidebar\plugins?
Where did you try to add the panel from? Add Panel or Performance Panel Properties (it should be available from the Performance properties)?
Also, do you see BatteryMonitor in Options->About->Plugins?

I already checked the plugins directory and tried to add it correctly from the perf panel properties, but I completely forgot the about|plugins button: there it was, disabled, so I enabled it and it correctly shows now. There's another couple problems, though: it doesn't work with the flash panel and its graph cannot be resized (I use taller bar charts for the perf monitors). Each time DS starts an error appears saying that the Flash control is not installed, but it is; dismissing the dialog then removing and readding the flash panel makes it work again, but on the next restart the error reappears (if you leave the panel on nothing displays inside and you cannot even see its properties). If I disable the plugin, the flash panel works again without removing/readding it.

Size adjustment and graph time are planned for the next version.
I have ABSOLUTELY no idea what can this problem with Flash be!
If you remove the battery perf counter, without disabling it, does the message still pop up?

Yes it does, it looks like something in the plugin is conflicting with the flash panel, even if the graph is not displayed: I'm afraid now it's up to you and yyy to sort the matter out

This is the error message, generated by the flash panel. Keep in min that the Flash ActiveX has been working all along, no download was necessary.

Strange! I'll look into it, although I doubt I'll find something that may cause a conflict. Maybe it's related to the way yyy checks for the ActiveX component, I don't know.

Sure that's weird, I cannot think of anything less related than battery power and flash playing... of course apart from the fact that the more you play flash movies on battery, the less it's going to last

Let's wait for yyy to check things out also, if he has time.

Now that is a really bizarre scenerio. I'm running both with no issues at installation or general usage. But for the life of me, I can't even think of one reason why those two would be in conflict.

Interestingly, I do have this issue, also when having the Battery Monitor disabled. When I try to add the Flash Player panel, and error saying "can't find AxInterop.ShockwaveFlashObjects_1_0_0" pops up.

Still weirder... I made some more tries at enabling the plugin, this time disabling the appcapture and the simple calendar, this time it worked WITH the flash panel Since I had removed both, I reenabled them one at a time; after several tries, it looks like there's some problem between the battery and simple calendar plugins, which makes the flash player unable to load the activex: strange as it sounds, I'm now running everything (basic, outlook, battery, capture and flash) just by disabling the simple calendar.

I've yet to see if it survives a reboot, but it surely stands several DS shutdowns and restarts.

Disabling SimpleCalendar didn't help me.

It DID survive a reboot, after all but now both the capture plugin and the simple calendar are disabled, while before rebooting only the latter had the checkbox cleared I am leaving everything as it is, since I'm not using either at the moment, but I'm still puzzled. Even after more than 20 years writing code (wait, wait, I started as a youngster, don't rule me out as an oldie yet! )

GoMa:

Still loving this panel. Any news on when there might be a new version? Thanks!

Thanks.

A new version is planned in about 2 weeks (don't quote me about this!), I am currently working hard on a printer queue panel (already finished the core functionality). I will have much less time once school starts, which is in 2 days.

GoMa

This thread kind of died at the end of August. Do you have an update to this yet? I like it, however the coloring is backwards ... when the battery is full, the color scheme makes it appear critical, whereas when the battery is low, the color schem suggests everything is normal! You might want to simply reverse the way that it displays this ... as the percentage approaches 0% the meter should reflect this by displaying more color in the box. You could do this by subtracting the value you are currently reporting from 100 when you update the box display (just for the color, you'd still want the actual percentage displayed correctly).

This panel better support skinning on its next version. It will be possible to do what you want.
I'm sorry it's taking so much time, but I have to wait for build 85 because an important bug to this panel was fixed.

Yeah, soon.
I will need some testers with single/multiple batteries. PM me and I'll send you a test mini app once it is finished.

OK, I'll tell you teh truth - this hasn't really gone anywhere in the past month or so. Sorry.
Anyway, I hope I will be able to continue this panel this weekend. I'll work on multiple battery displays in the details window, change the color of the bar when charging/on ac power, change appearance of the bar like other perf counters.
This release would be more resource expensive because I'm going to use WMI to get info about multiple batteries. Do you think I should supply that as an option?

Anyone with a laptop... Please test this app (change its extension to EXE) and tell me what the output was. It should report some info about each of your batteries.

Nobody?

GoMa, I am having trouble downloading the attachment. Says it cannot find the server.

Hmmm, you're right. Here's a zipped version that will hopefully work.
EDIT: this file works for me.

OK. So I ran this both on AC power and on Battery power. The status changes from 2 (AC) to 1 (Batt) when I unplug the computer and it correctly matches my battery percentage as recorded by Windows. However, when I plugged it back in, it did not give me the estimated time to a full charge. It was just blank. I only have one battery, so I don't know if it works for multiple batteries.

Would make sense. My laptop doesn't support a lot of things. Like how my wireless card doesn't report any useful information. Hope my feedback helped you out.

How is this panel coming along, GoMa?

Nothing should really be delaying me from releasing it, just some polishing work to do. Should be releasing during the next week, hopefully.
Anyway, what are you waiting for in this version? Appearance modification? Because IIRC you don't have multiple batteries. Oh, maybe change color when charging? I still didn't implement it...
Everything is on its way.

Yeah, I don't have multiple batteries. I thought there was going to be a details window for the next version. Is that still in the works? Oh, and does it flicker? It didn't stop when I put the build 86 dsidebarpia.dll in with the wireless monitor.

Details window IS in the works, don't really know what you expect... Just wait and see, small features could be added afterwards.