Remove peak meter

[elshiftos]

From what I have read, it would seem that removing the peak meter could increase battery life. Is it possible to remove it from the stock RB theme without having to create a new theme?

TIA

[CrowdAds]

[saratoga]

The stock rockbox theme doesn't have a peak meter.

[elshiftos]

Ok I see my error here - I should have stated this is for a Clip Zip.

I've just tried a clean install of rockbox and bootloader from the Clip Zip sticky in this forum, and it definitely has 2 little blue lines bobbing up and down in time to the music.

[saratoga]

The Clip Zip doesn't have a default theme yet, so I'm not sure what you're seeing. Regardless, installing a theme that doesn't use the peak meter would get rid of it.

[Mikerman]

You also could edit the theme code to eliminate the peak meter--not hard at all to do (don't get daunted by the WPS code website--you can do it, really).

http://www.rockbox.org/wiki/CustomWPS

But really, would a peak meter eat up any appreciable amount of energy? (I really don't know.)

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by Mikerman

You also could edit the theme code to eliminate the peak meter--not hard at all to do (don't get daunted by the WPS code website--you can do it, really).

Yeah but what do you edit? There is no theme included with the Zip build as far as I can tell, so there is no WPS file to edit. I guess theres some hard coded default that gets used if you have no theme at all installed.

[Mikerman]

Ah. I was assuming that there would be a wps file there somewhere. Interesting, the idea of a hard-coded default.

Of course, one could adopt and apply one of the themes that users have developed and just mod it (such as eliminating any included peak meter) to one's heart's content.

[dfkt]

The default fallback skin when no theme is installed is located in /apps/gui/wps.c - so one would have to compile a custom build to change that.

As for the original question, I doubt that removing the peak meters makes a significant difference in battery life, more than a minute or two. As I understand it, Rockbox is smart enough to only refresh the screen when it's on - there's no impact on battery life since the screen is usually off most of the time.

[elshiftos]

Originally Posted by dfkt

The default fallback skin when no theme is installed is located in /apps/gui/wps.c - so one would have to compile a custom build to change that.

As for the original question, I doubt that removing the peak meters makes a significant difference in battery life, more than a minute or two. As I understand it, Rockbox is smart enough to only refresh the screen when it's on - there's no impact on battery life since the screen is usually off most of the time.

Thanks for all the replies.

I can't remember where I read it but I'm sure I saw something about the meter increasing cpu usage and reducing battery life. If it's not a significant amount, I shall say no more on the subject.

By 'default theme' I mean what appears on the screen with a fresh install of RB on the zip - I'm not referring to actual theme files.

I've tried a few themes and clock_zip comes quite close (thanks creator!), but I wouldn't mind getting rid of the clock and increasing the size of the file info font size.

Cheers

[saratoga]

Originally Posted by elshiftos

By 'default theme' I mean what appears on the screen with a fresh install of RB on the zip - I'm not referring to actual theme files.

Yes we realize that. The last remaining task before we mark the Clip Zip a stable target is to port an actual version of the default theme (cabbiev2). Like dfkt pointed out, what you're seeing now isn't even technically a theme, its just a failsafe so that you don't get a blank screen if no theme is loaded.