Random freeze and battery drain

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  • I backed Bangle.js 2 on Kickstarter a year ago as it really seemed like the perfect smartwatch for me. Unfortunately it hasn't as smooth an experience as I had hoped. Partly because my Android phone is locked down by my employer making me unable to use the "regular" version of Gadgetbridge. Instead I'm forced to use the version Gordon has so kindly made available on Play store (thank you! 🙏). It took a bit of waiting, but that was fine. Unfortunately I cannot install any GB plugins. But thanks to the great Bangle app devs, that isn't much of an issue either as there are watch apps the get location and weather data to the Bangle.
    So that's a minor hassle I can live with. A more serious issue, making it hard for me to love my Bangle as much as I would like, is the random freezes and battery drains I experience. I've had this issue for several months. I have tried factory resetting, running with an absolute minimum amount of apps. Still the issue seem to persist. The last week the issue has intensified to the point where I can no longer rely on my Bangle for notifications, as it might drain itself flat before I notice it has locked up again. It will completely freeze, stop updating the watchface and just drain the battery. At some point I notice the clock being way off (hours) and requiring a hard reboot.
    How can I debug this issue, as I cannot connect to the web IDE without rebooting and thus removing the issue and thereby the possibility to debug it?
    Since I cannot update firmware through GB, but have to use the DFU updater, I suspect something has gone wrong with my Bangle. Could it be the flash storage that has become corrupted? I have tried clearing storage too, but that hasn't helped either.
    What should I do to figure out what is draining my battery?
    Thanks in advance and for all your hard work on this wonderful project.


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    • Screenshot_20230507_222308_Banglejs Gadgetbridge.jpg
  • As suggested in this conversation, you can use the 'Power Manager' app's logging features to try and get some indication on what happens.

  • Awesome, thank you!
    I've installed it and enabled logging. Hopefully I'll find the culprit. 🤞

  • BTW you dont need to use gadgetbridge to install apps. You can go straight to the AppLoader page through the standard browser on the phone.

    https://banglejs.com/apps/

    There is a debug setting in the Settings App. Utils / Debug / Log should capture something in log.txt. You would need to look at it through the IDE (after disconnecting with GadgetBridge).

    I have also experienced randon clock freezes. I have seen them mostly on my Pastel and Lato clocks. Both use the Lato font. Its not frequent enough to narrow down. I saw it twice a couple of weeks back, but not now.

    If you are using the health app check what you have set the heart rate monitor to. If it is on always I would expect you battery to run down in a few days.

  • I have been using the bangle.js 2 for a couple of months, mainly for running. One day that I had a huge amount of notifications the battery drained extremely fast. Before that I was already annoyed by receiving notifications in the watch, so after the battery drained I disabled notifications. Does bangle.js 2 have a problem when many notifications arrive in a very short period?

  • I've been thinking along those lines at times as well. Haven't bothered investigating it any.

  • Hi Cthulhu.

    I suppose that Gordon already fixed the notifications battery drain that was affecting you (and all of us).

    https://forum.espruino.com/conversations­/385629/?offset=25#17009482

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Random freeze and battery drain

Posted by Avatar for Cthulhu @Cthulhu

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