After long time I'm announcing BME Replacement project for testing.

This project aims to replace Nokia proprietary closed source software BME which is used for Battery Management on Nokia N900 in Maemo 5 system. It is responsible for charging battery, broadcasting battery status to maemo applications, reporting battery health status, capacity, temperature, charge time, ...

Project is divided into 4 parts:

1. kernel drivers: isp1704_charger, bq2415x_charger, bq27x00_battery, rx51_battery

2. userspace daemon hald-addon-bme which exporting battery and charger information to HAL, checking health status and setting correct LED charging patterns

3. usbmode script & GUI for switching between USB peripheral & host mode

4. maemo compatiblity scripts & libraries:

* fake libbmeipc library which has same interface as closed Nokia library but implemented functions use above new kernel drivers (instead direct RAW i2c access)

* dsme-thermalobject-surface plugin which reading battery temperature from new kernel drivers

* bme-rx-51 upstart script for loading kernel drivers


Kernel drivers are included in upstream linux kernel (version 3.14) and also backported to maemo kernel-power (v52).

Package usbmode for switching between peripheral & host mode is in Maemo Extras repository and thread for discussion here.

Userspace daemons, libraries and scripts are in packages in new bme-replacement repository:

deb http://maemo.merlin1991.at/cssu/bme-replacement/ fremantle free

If you want to test new bme replacement project on top of Maemo 5, you can do it at your own risk. You must have installed kernel-power v52 and after that you can add above apt repository to system. Basic apt-get upgrade should update all packages.

Please note that packages from bme-replacement repository replacing system Maemo packages! And this can cause breaking Maemo system or make it unbootable.

Also using bme replacement kernel or userspace packages could damage battery or phone. Battery Management is critical part of SW and HW! You are using it at your own risk!

Source code is on gitorious: https://gitorious.org/rx51-bme-replacement

Just to note: I'm using it for more than year and I have no problem.