Locus draining my battery

UKlocusfan · November 04, 2012, 10:34:48

Hi all.

Long time Locus Pro user and upgraded to 2.7.2 as 2.6.x seemed to be causing Locus crashes.

Anyway, used Locus to log for about 3 hours yesterday and it crashed again.

The main problem I had though was Locus seemed to completely drain my battery. This is strange because no other versions of Locus have ever given me battery troubles before but for some reason, yesterday it really did run down my battery quite severely.

I'll put a few photos on here to show the battery use as I'm sure something isnt right with that amount of power drain.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks in advance,
UKlocusfan

jusc · November 04, 2012, 17:00:52

hmm, there was a problem a few weeks ago, but for today I can´t confirm this. I used Locus version 2.7.2 this morning for 2 hours with my Defy and SGS2. Both phones used less than 20% accu (within the two hours) for track recording and a few controls on the way. But perhaps I can test it tomorrow again.
I would propose to reinstall locus?

UKlocusfan · November 04, 2012, 20:25:01

Hi jusc, thanks for the reoky,
I actually did reinstall Locus this morning and went out logging for another few hours but the same thing happened - my battery was just depleting before my eyes.
I've used Locus enough to know that its never affected the battery like this before.

I dont know how or why I am seeing this big difference in battery use by Locus :-(

Is anyone else mentioning this menion?

Thanks again jusc :-)

Menion · November 04, 2012, 20:38:03

Hi,
no, no one reported such problem for quite a long time. May you please in menu > settings > misc, store your current preferences and send me this? I'll firstly check what non-default settings are you using,

second: what most CPU heavy features are you using? Map rotation, vector maps, track record, GPS, lot of POI's on map together with POI alert? ...

UKlocusfan · November 04, 2012, 20:58:00

Hi menion,
Thanks of the reply - I appreciate it.

I have just pm'd you the preferences file.

The features I was running are as follows: Map rotation, vector map, GPS on, track record, 1 POI showing on map, compass screen to guide to the POI.

I was walking and geocaching at the same time. For the majority of the time the phone screen was off but Locus was logging my route. Every so often I would take the phone out and check the compass screen for the distance to the geocache. Thats about it really.

Just to let you know how bad the draining affected me... I have an Android Wildfire S but use an extended 2200mah battery. Previously - I have been able to log with Locus for about 5 hours and doing the exact same as I did that day. After a full day of regular use and those 5 hours of Locus use included...in the evening the battery would be at around 20% left. On this particular day I posted about though, the battery was down by about 20% just from the few hours of running Locus. That is when I decided to check how much power Locus had actually used as per the screenshots above.

Anyway, I will send the file over now and look forward to hearing from you.
Thanks once again for the message :-)

*PROBLEM:- tried to pm you the file but no matter what extension I use... .pref .jpg .txt .gpx .zip it wont let me attach the file to a private message to you. :-(

Menion · November 05, 2012, 12:00:54

Hi,
there is maybe some limit on attachment on PM for people that don't have too much posts ... suggest to use mailto:locus@asamm.com">locus@asamm.com. There you may be sure, that I don't forget. I'm marking all emails and till they're not responsed, mark remain

anyway, send me your settings please on email. I'll check it immediately

till then, try to think if something change since your usage before. ROM of your phone for example? 3 hours to drain battery is possible anyway. Vector maps + GPS ON + rotation => battery killer, really! Disable map rotation and you'll see big difference. When map rotate, Locus needs to render around 50% more map. Vector map itself require quite a log of CPU and in this case even more. Also map rotation require to have enable internal sensors, so even more power required. Just small info ...

ah and last note: don't trust to this battery meter in Android. I had quite a lot of bad experiences with values it provide. Suggest to use any more trustful program from market

UKlocusfan · November 05, 2012, 12:32:57

HI Menion and thanks so much for the reply again.

I have just emailed the file to you.

I am still unsure why the battery drain is so much as those are the setting I have always used although I have carefully read your reply and have changed a few things in order to test it in the next few days. I do like my offline vector map of England and so have left that as my default map although I have now turned map rotation off. I do need to keep GPS on as it will be logging my walks but I am hoping the map rotation being turned off will help alot... maybe the heavy CPU usage is also to blame for the crash I experienced in 2.7.2 also.

Anyway, I agree the battery indicator in android is poor and I use something called battery solo widget although I will search the market for a more in depth battery readout app.

Well, I hope the emailed file came through to you ok and hopefully there is something in there that may help me out. In the meantime I will disable map rotation and see how that goes. :-)

Thank you once again Menion.

tommi · November 05, 2012, 12:46:56

Just for better general understanding on my side (all questions without GPS, compass, POI alert) and not directly related to UKlocusfan's problem:
- Shouldn't map rotation and vector map usage only affect battery if screen is on?
- Do tracks and POIs on screen affect battery while screen is off?
- How does running Locus as a service
- during screen off affect battery?
- during screen on but Locus not in foreground affect battery?

Menion · November 05, 2012, 13:07:35

all your questions are quite simple and you may check it by your own. I'm of course trying to keep locus do some actions on background as less as possible. So when you disable screen, sensors for ration are disabled, GPS is checking if really needed etc. So there is no one answer on "is locus drain battery when screen off ..." because it depend what you do. If you have enabled Navigation, then Locus do other stuff on background, then when you record track ..

And thanks, for the email, I'm going to check it ...

UKlocusfan · November 05, 2012, 14:03:04

tommi62,
Those are questions I had too.
I completely understand what Menion is saying about large vector maps rotating and using alot of battery, but in my case the maps was only on screen for around 10 minutes out of the 3 hours I was logging... the rest of the time I was using compass to guide to a POI.
With that considered, I wouldnt have thought there would have been much drain on the battery as the screen was off most of the time anyway and therefore I would have thought the only battery consumption would have been for Locus actually running, and also the GPS logging the route with the screen off.

I messed around with running Locus as a service yesterday as I had experienced another crash - but I am unsure to actually try it whilst out walking in case it does require most battery power on a contact level.

Menion:
Thanks so much indeed... I hope the email got to you ok. :-)

tommi · November 05, 2012, 18:09:57

Quote from: "menion"all your questions are quite simple and you may check it by your own

Menion, reason for my questions was not to make you upset, I just made observations few times (but also in the last days) somehow similar to what UkLocusFan reports.
Of course I didn't record a track or had navigation or anything else active thing running but nevertheless ps tool (actually used by https://play.google.com/store/apps/deta ... pumonitor4) reported a cpu load of several percent (I do not recall the exact number) for Locus continuously while it was just "waiting" in the background (hold there with the recently introduced background service). When I opened Locus and closed it again (still "waiting" due to the service) the cpu load for Locus disappeared though I didn't touch anything in Locus.
I would prefer to tell you a concrete scenario under which this cpu load occurs but I'm currently not able to reproduce it.

In the case I observe this again: could a catlog file help?

Menion · November 05, 2012, 19:59:04

tommi, to make me upset, you have to work much more harder, so don't worry (if it's even possible).

Anyway, everything is possible. To handle all these screen on/off, rotate, foreground, background, running these services, these features need GPS always, these only sometimes, these need rotation, some settings into this ... too much possibilities! So I'm saying, that it's of course possible, that any combination may cause troubles.

I just imported your settings UKlocusfan, and there is only one settings that should cause troubles I think. Check Locus in the field with disabled "Always screen On". This settings, require "Wake lock". And wake lock mean, that it try to keep your phone wake up

. It may drain battery if it's incorrectly implemented and maybe in your android version, it may cause troubles. Just to check ...

tommi · November 05, 2012, 20:18:30

No I got the cpu load by Locus in the background again, compared to my previous test which didn't cause cpu load after putting Locus to background I got now a cpu load between 3-11%. The only thing I did in Locus was shifting the map around a bit before I put it to background again...
Screenshot Locus: https://www.dropbox.com/s/vupvsuclxdkj0 ... .54.15.png
Screenshot CPU load: https://www.dropbox.com/s/65gblg1y9ghgj ... .45.48.png

Unfortunately catlog doesn't work anymore as before, I think this has come with the JB update.
I'm not really sure why the cpu load of system process is also high but maybe this is an effect caused by cpu monitoring tool.

Menion · November 05, 2012, 20:46:25

hmm if locus use some CPU, then there have to be some activity. Btw. you run both Locus versions at once? It's highly NOT recommended. Both will access your data databases at once and it may cause troubles. And not only here but will all stored data on card that are used

tommi · November 05, 2012, 20:49:41

Quote from: "menion"hmm if locus use some CPU, then there have to be some activity. Btw. you run both Locus versions at once? It's highly NOT recommended. Both will access your data databases at once and it may cause troubles. And not only here but will all stored data on card that are used

In general I'm aware that concurrent use isn't useful due to concurrent write access to databases but I guess it's not the problem here as both apps are only used as viewer.
Do you think the cpu load comes from concurrent use?
I saw this behaviour also with Locus Pro stand alone.