Battery charge manager?

[wfree]

Hello, i've received my Vyper 3 and i noticed that is absent a battery manager utility.

Many producers like Asus, Hp, Msi, etc. have their battery manager that can be configured to keep the charge level between a percentage, for example 50 - 55%, this prevent to have the full loaded battery when the pc is constantly connected to power supply and extend the battery life.

I've searched anywhere but without resoult. Do you know some software that work for TongFang?

 

[FerrariVie]

Hello, i've received my Vyper 3 and i noticed that is absent a battery manager utility.

Many producers like Asus, Hp, Msi, etc. have their battery manager that can be configured to keep the charge level between a percentage, for example 50 - 55%, this prevent to have the full loaded battery when the pc is constantly connected to power supply and extend the battery life.

I've searched anywhere but without resoult. Do you know some software that work for TongFang?

Not sure about the TongFang chassis, but my Clevo has that option in the BIOS, called "Flexicharger". Have you looked in the BIOS?

 

[Scott]

It was in the BIOS of my Octane as well.

 

[wfree]

Not sure about the TongFang chassis, but my Clevo has that option in the BIOS, called "Flexicharger". Have you looked in the BIOS?

Yes, i've looked but nothing of similar.

 

[Scott]

I would send an email to PCS and ask if there is anything of that nature on these systems. I'm pretty sure it's a BIOS function as the charging is of a hardware nature.

Be prepared to wait around a week for a response though. As it's not an urgent request I wouldn't recommend calling as the wait times tend to be a couple of hours right now.

 

[TheMash]

Hi!
The feature you mentioned is very useful and it should be a must in modern systems.
I wish it was on the Vyper.
However it isn't just a software that manages the battery charge.
It has to be implemented at hardware and UEFI/BIOS level and, of course, it costs money to design and implement in the real world.
I've the same machine as yours, bought on August 2020.

I don't think TongFang made a battery manager utility on this kind of machine as it's mainly a gaming laptop and it's designed and intended probably to run almost of the time on AC, for gaming or content creation purpose.

AFAIK there's no such option in the bios (at least on mine). Never read anything about this implemented on the Vyper on the internet and the related Vyper equivalent from other brands.

However on my Surface Book from 2015 the manufacturer introduced this function, called Battery Limit, afterwards, I think it was after 2-3 years since the laptop was introduced.

I really hope there's something to enable this feature on the Vyper!

 

[TheMash]

Do you believe me If I say I've just discovered an hidden function in the Gaming Center to... limit the battery charge?
I've been playing a little bit lately with it and I'm discovering interesting things.

I think I'm going to open a dedicated thread about this feature.

 

[Scott]

Mine is in the control centre too. It's definitely a BIOS feature though. I was having a nosey last night.

 

[TheMash]

Mine is in the control centre too. It's definitely a BIOS feature though. I was having a nosey last night.

Is the laptop model Octane III the one you have tested?

This is on the Vyper III.
Essentially I changed this in the Gaming Center .ini installation file, before running the executable to install it:

BatteryCalibration = 0 (change the value to 1).



I don't even know what it was meant for, but after launching the Gaming Center this appeared and I did some tests using HWInfo.



I've seen a lower charge wattage but the behaviour seems a bit random sometimes. Looking at the charge rate you see it's very low and you expect the charge to stop at some point, before reaching 100%.

Somehow it reached 100% after a while. I have to do further tests to check if it's working.

It's definitely doing something to the charge rate as when I select each one of the three option the charge rate drops to 0W and then start to raise again.
Each option seems to have a different charge rate, with the one on the bottom having the lowest.

Don't know why this feature it's hidden.

What are your thoughts about this, guys?

 

[Macco26]

Nice catch!
Tongfang added this exact feature officially in their newest 2021 chassis, but even there there seem to be a discrepancy from what the picture says:

and what actually does, as another reseller (I took this screenshot from reddit) is saying that the real behavior is this instead:

I haven't yet received my Tonfgang 2021 (I preordered a Ionico by PCS), but sure as hell I'll report you once I discover.

Back to yours, for sure you can see Tongfang put a lot of attention to the charging voltage (reduced), and that's a thing you discovered already. The capacity should top out at 85% they say but don't know if it actually works on your 2020 chassis...
Still, very useful discoveriy with the simple .ini edit.
It might not be perfect but for sure the wearing on the battery should be lowered than without this flag.

 

[wfree]

Is the laptop model Octane III the one you have tested?

This is on the Vyper III.
Essentially I changed this in the Gaming Center .ini installation file, before running the executable to install it:

BatteryCalibration = 0 (change the value to 1).

View attachment 22014

I don't even know what it was meant for, but after launching the Gaming Center this appeared and I did some tests using HWInfo.

View attachment 22015

I've seen a lower charge wattage but the behaviour seems a bit random sometimes. Looking at the charge rate you see it's very low and you expect the charge to stop at some point, before reaching 100%.

Somehow it reached 100% after a while. I have to do further tests to check if it's working.

It's definitely doing something to the charge rate as when I select each one of the three option the charge rate drops to 0W and then start to raise again.
Each option seems to have a different charge rate, with the one on the bottom having the lowest.

Don't know why this feature it's hidden.

What are your thoughts about this, guys?

Exactly what i was searching! Works identically to the software manager of my previous MSI. I'm just enabling and test it!

---EDIT---

Is not necessary to reinstall the GamingCenter, just open registry editor to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\OEM\GamingCenter2 and set the key BatteryCalibration to 1. Then restart the pc or disconnect and connect back the user account.

Anyway after enabling the feature in the GamingCenter it seem not affect the battery charging process. Also setting on the Healthy Mode the battery keep be maintained at 100% from power supply.

For example, i was expecting that the battery was not charged until it reaches the 50% of level then starts charge until 60% and stop again.

 

[TheMash]

Exactly what i was searching! Works identically to the software manager of my previous MSI. I'm just enabling and test it!

---EDIT---

Is not necessary to reinstall the GamingCenter, just open registry editor to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\OEM\GamingCenter2 and set the key BatteryCalibration to 1. Then restart the pc or disconnect and connect back the user account.

Anyway after enabling the feature in the GamingCenter it seem not affect the battery charging process. Also setting on the Healthy Mode the battery keep be maintained at 100% from power supply.

For example, i was expecting that the battery was not charged until it reaches the 50% of level then starts charge until 60% and stop again.

Hi mate!
Glad that you liked it! I'm even more than happy that you discovered a more convenient way to enable this feature, using just the registry editor instead of reinstalling it!
I've discovered that setting by chance and I didn't think about looking for that in the registry

My only concern was the fact that it's implemented in the Gaming Center software but the UEFI/BIOS hasn't been coded for this feature to work, and this could be definitely the case.
I'll test it further in the next days. although I've the same behaviour, it reaches 100% for as well.
I've noticed that the voltage was higher before, it was reaching about 17.1 Volts when fully charged, now it's sitting at about 16.4V.

Anyway, I've noticed few interesting subkeys in your registry picture, which I would like to explore. Especially MyFan3 where I saw you can change the power limits and the fan PWM values.
Interesting!
Thanks mate!

 

[TheMash]

Nice catch!
Tongfang added this exact feature officially in their newest 2021 chassis, but even there there seem to be a discrepancy from what the picture says:
View attachment 22017
and what actually does, as another reseller (I took this screenshot from reddit) is saying that the real behavior is this instead:
View attachment 22018

I haven't yet received my Tonfgang 2021 (I preordered a Ionico by PCS), but sure as hell I'll report you once I discover.

Back to yours, for sure you can see Tongfang put a lot of attention to the charging voltage (reduced), and that's a thing you discovered already. The capacity should top out at 85% they say but don't know if it actually works on your 2020 chassis...
Still, very useful discoveriy with the simple .ini edit.
It might not be perfect but for sure the wearing on the battery should be lowered than without this flag.

Thanks mate!
I wish it was working as intended, seems to be a bit weird and erratic. I've to test it a little bit further. Probably it isn't fully implemented as you said in the 2020 chassis.
The new Control Center it's much better in terms of ahesthetics, it's cleaner and tidier.
Thanks for the pic!

You're right, there's some discrepancy between the description and the capacity in the table below.
Probably they're still fine tuning it and they forgot to edit the text strings for the description.

 

[wfree]

the UEFI/BIOS hasn't been coded for this feature to work

Exactly!

I've noticed few interesting subkeys in your registry picture, which I would like to explore

Yes, there are a lot of interesting keys that should be explored.

 

[TheMash]

Something weird just happened.
The laptop turned off suddenly (don't know if due to undervolt in ThrottleStop).
I think it's more related to battery protection feature that I activated.
When I rebooted to Windows the battery was showing 0% charge and about 14.3V.
This means that somewhat the battery has received less charge than usual, therefore the battery protection worked and stopped charging at some point, but being not fully supported probably it shows 100% of charge while the real is probably lower.
Interesting, I'll investigate it tomorrow.

 

[Macco26]

Did it shutdown suddenly during battery operation or powered from the wall?
If that was the former, you could live with that (the feature works as intended, but problem is Windows reports 100% no matter what, but you are always attached to the wall, right?).
If it was the latter, well, I don't think you can trade your reliability vs the battery wearing...

 

[wfree]

No changes for me. As i said i've setted Healthy Mode, but the battery still remain at 100% with 17.26V as shown also in hwmonitor.

 

[Scott]

Ahh that's totally different from what I was thinking of. The option I was thinking of was not to constantly charge the battery but instead to allow it to lower to around 50% capacity before charging again.

 

[TheMash]

Hi guys,
some updates from the battery limit charging feature.

As I said yesterday the laptop turned off suddenly while I was on battery and after the restart it shown 0%.
Today I've put the laptop on charge and looks like the feature is working as intended (although the percentage reached 100%, but not the total capacity remaining):

I've used the log feature in HWinfo to monitor thoroughly the charge process.
The charge wattage started at about 31Wh from 0% of charge, with a voltage of 16.068V
At 50% of charge it was about cut in half, 14.729Wh and 16.466V.
After that, at 60% of charge the charge rate fell to 0Wh, total of 37Wh of capacity recharged so far.
From that the charge rate fixed at 0Wh, while the capacity increased till 43Wh, as shown in the picture above, as the percentage increased accordingly till it reached 100% and stopped recharging.
Now the wear value of course increased, as you can see in the picture above, as the circuit wasn't able to reach the nominal capacity for the battery.
It isn't something to worry about as it's just a calculation and it should be okay, going back to 0% when turning off battery limit feature.
Something weird happened with values at the end of charge (first column is voltage, second is capacity in Wh, third is percentage of charge):

My Surface Book shows a similar behaviour. While it recognise correctly the charge percentage, the wear value usually increases a lot when I turn on the charge limit feature on it.
Seems something is going on and working!

EDIT: I've checked this registry value as well, I don't remember having ProtectionStage2 key there and also the values were equal to 1, not 2, if I'm not wrong.



Could you please check your registry values as well?
Let me check if I took some screenshot before.
Thanks guys!

Did it shutdown suddenly during battery operation or powered from the wall?
If that was the former, you could live with that (the feature works as intended, but problem is Windows reports 100% no matter what, but you are always attached to the wall, right?).
If it was the latter, well, I don't think you can trade your reliability vs the battery wearing...

Hi Macco,
it shutdown during battery operation, luckily.
Yes, I'm usually plugged to the wall outlet but I like going around in my home on battery doing light tasks.
Seems today it's working as intended, although with some quirks!

 

[wfree]

This are my untouched values in registry: