Registered: Nov 2000
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Posts: 5

Beat Plus battery drain issue

I just got my Beat Plus module in yesterday, and I'm fairly satisified with its functionality. However, there is one problem that could affect its users unexpectedly.

If you are in a program that is using the sound hardware, such as the included Zap! 2016, don't put your Visor in sleep mode and walk away. It looks like the module's shared library doesn't handle the sleep and wake methods to turn off the hardware, so power remains supplied to the sound IC while the device is "off". I completely drained my Prism in about four hours yesterday due to this -- I had been demoing Zap!, and just turned it off, thinking it would be alright.

My tests today indicate that being back at the launcher or another non-sound using application prevents the rapid drain. Hopefully, they can produce an update to the library that shuts things down while your device sleeps.

(Note: this could also be a Zap! problem -- I'll have to write a test program to try this out later.)