JuicePlotter FAQ

JuicePlotter FAQ

A list of not-really-frequently asked questions about JuicePlotter.

KNOWN ISSUES

• Sometimes when you turn off the screen Android will put the device to sleep before notifying JuicePlotter. When that happens, you'll see the plot showing the screen as on when it shouldn't. There's no known workaround to this that wouldn't involve higher battery consumption.
• Sometimes (when available memory is very low) Android will kill the battery stats collecting service. The service will restart itself after a while, but you'll see a hole in the plot (at any rate make sure to exclude JuicePlotter from any task killer app you have installed, or you'll have lots of holes).
• Lemme say that again: if you have holes in the plot, it means that your RAM usage is excessive causing Android to kill the service. Don't blame JuicePlotter - or else!

I don't see anything! What's the deal?

JuicePlotter starts collecting battery information after the first run (or device reboot, whichever comes first). After some hours you'll start seeing a small piece of graph being drawn.


The graph is too confusing! Where's the legend?

A graphical legend might come in a future version.
In the meantime, here's a quick description:

• a whiteish band above the graph line indicates that the device screen was on
• the colored bands below the graph line show the status of the various radio interfaces
• a colored band at the bottom of the graph shows the charging status
• the graph line color itself shows the battery temperature - the redder, the hotter

However, it's pretty easy to infer what the various bands mean - just drag the graph so that the spot you're interested in comes to lie under the middle line: the descriptive text at the top will show detailed information about the device state at that exact time.




This must waste a lot of battery!

Unlike similar apps, JuicePlotter does not poll for the battery status at fixed intervals, possibly waking up the device or other similarly nasty battery-draining activities. Instead it "piggybacks" over broadcasted device events who get recorded when the device CPU is already awake, and interpolates over them. This said, JuicePlotter will inevitably use *some* battery - albeit it's highly unlikely you'll ever notice the difference (conversely, try removing one of those other apps and replacing it with JuicePlotter - chances are you will notice the positive difference).

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