Battery benchmark script (watt-hours, not mAh)
hotellonely's Python script logs the PMIC's voltage and current every 0.1 s until the console dies, giving a real watt-hour figure for any cell or pack.
What it takes
- Software only
Difficulty 1 of 3 — easy.
Details
Run it in the background, watch battery_output_log.txt, and when the console shuts off you have the energy the battery actually delivered — which matters because the uConsole stops at a floor of about 3.18 V, so a cell is never fully drained and mAh ratings overstate what you get. Results from the thread: two Samsung 35E give 22.5 Wh under a light load and 20.5 Wh under a heavy one; a 10 Ah 9858102 LiPo pouch gave 24–31 Wh under a light load. A light 5–6 W load draws about 0.8 A per 18650 (1.6 A from a single pouch), SDR use 6.5–7.5 W, and a full 25 W load about 3.4 A per cell or 6.8 A from one pack — the number that explains why 3 A LiPo protection boards trip.
Same author as the 10 Ah LiPo conversion write-up; the figures feed the 18650 and 2 × 5,000 mAh entries.
Links
Open at Forum threadRelated mods
Any genuine branded 3,000–3,500 mAh 18650 works, flat-top or button-top; listings claiming much more than 3,500 mAh are fakes.
Michael_Wolf's Lua monitor for clock, power draw, temperature and battery, plus the benchmark showing the backlight is what actually drains a uConsole.
CRANK's 6 × 18650 plan: strip the holders off the battery board, wire two banks of three cells in parallel through bus bars, and house them in a printed back.
CAD check by tiniuclx: three cells physically fit inside the standard case, but only 57.9 mm is free and every off-the-shelf 3-cell holder is about 61 mm wide.
The 21700 version of HG's NVMe battery board fits the stock backplate and roughly doubles runtime: 4 h 31 min of 1080p playback against 2 h 27 min on 18650s.
paragonnov's Debian package remaps the power key to a real screen-off sleep: backlight and LCD off, keyboard unpowered, CPU pinned to its minimum clock.