I mean, a mechanical timer costs, like, 3 bucks in any currency and lets you set charge and discharge cycles. Add 10 bucks and you have one that you can pilot via REST API.
Yes, but there's 2 sides to that story. It's a free UPS and that's really nice. But then I've seen old batteries degrade and swell. People call it the spicy pillow syndrome. And with two of my older devices, batteries got recalled by the manufacturer. So I'd advise against running these things 24/7 unattended. Either know what you're doing or rip it out before it burns down the building. As a minimum that includes a location made of concrete or bricks and mortar and no burnable stuff in the vicinity. And regular checks on the state of the battery.
u_tamtam@programming.dev 2 weeks ago
hendrik@palaver.p3x.de 2 weeks ago
I believe cycling and constantly discharging and charging a battery is even worse than letting the built-in charge controller do its job and keep the charge. I'm not an expert on battery chemistry, though. All I can say Thinkpads and other laptops have configurable thresholds for quite some time now. And despite me using that for the last 2 laptops, the batteries still go bad eventually. It's supposed to help, and batteries got better, but it's still a thing to factor in.
sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone 1 week ago
It’s best to keep it around 50℅ and let it charge / discharge about 5%, and then charge again. See the research links on charge.org (note the bias: his business sells a dongle, but some computers like think pads come with this functionality built in.)
dogs0n@sh.itjust.works 2 weeks ago
Never heard of that, but I think the risk of a fire outweighs a “free” UPS. Good to know.