Undocumented pine64-pinephone-charging.img.xz

[kkofler]

The 0.8 release contains a new file pine64-pinephone-charging.img.xz. Unfortunately, I could not find any documentation for it, and even browsing through the source code, I do not see it mentioned anywhere. Hence my questions: What is that file? How is it generated? And perhaps most importantly, how does it differ from the regular pine64-pinephone.img.xz and which one do I want?

[MartijnBraam]

It's an image for testing, I didn't want to push a new tag because then there'd be complaints that the new release is missing most images.

It's a build with a different kernel config and initramfs that disables the display of the PinePhone and uses the RGB led to show the charging state by blinking different colors. It blinks red if the battery is <5%, it blinks yellow when it's between 5 and 50% and it blinks green when it's above 50%

This is specifically to deal with pinephone batteries that are so low that a normal OS won't boot to charge it. I'll push the changes to a different branch since it's a mess.

[MartijnBraam]

Pushed to https://github.com/dreemurrs-embedded/Jumpdrive/tree/feature/charging

[mcjh-git]

So thanks for the explanation. And your work.
It seems it would be less problematic to have a completely hardware charger with optional inputs from the OS so that at least the battery could charge in situations where the OS is not operating.

[kkofler]

Even if they changed that now, that would not magically fix all the hardware out there, would it?

[kkofler]

(And as far as I know, they do not really plan new hardware revisions to begin with. I think they want to stick to 1.2 now, even if and when they remove the Beta label. Though I may be wrong, since I do not have any contacts inside Pine64.)