PuliAX and low battery

Routers
1

Hello
my PuliAX (GL-XE3000) is in use since several weeks and I really like it. I configured several wireguard tunnels, which are re-chosen every 10 minutes at random order, combined with DNS over TLS with black- and white lists to give my local devices some kind of privacy. Except for my companies’ notebook, which needs to stay “in the country”, whose MAC address I could exclude from the general VPN settings. I also attached a terabyte SSD with two partitions to the PuliAX’s USB port which are shared via WebDAV and SMB (still experiencing wich is the besser/faster/more reliable protocol for my mobile devices).
This setup is used on a daily basis on the road while doing “homeoffice” on lovely lakes and impressive landscapes. Boring teammeetings in the rising sun over foggy meadows are so much more enjoyable than sitting in grey office rooms with artificial lights :smiley:

The PuliAX is powerd via the 12V outlet of my power station, this outlet can be time-controlled.

So here is my idea: at 5 am, when I get up, the outlet is switched on to power the router and to charge the internal battery of the PuliAX. (btw: in this case the Puli draws 30W of power). The battery is charged within about 2 hours (still experimenting on this), at 7 o’clock I could switch off the powerstation to save the harvested solar power. The battery of the Puli lasts for about 7 hours (still checking on this), so the next charge needs to be at about 2 pm. Charged again for about 2 hrs the battery should last the rest of the day. Listening to podcasts while going to sleep is the last time I need internet and I don’t care when the battery gets empty late at night. Then, again, at 5 am, when I get up, the power is switched on, charges the battery, and so on.

Now my questions: I already read from GL-iNet that there’s some kind of battery management built into the PuliAX, so keeping it on the charging power shouldn’t be an issue of overcharging the battery. But what is programmed when the external power is off and the battery reaching empty state? Is there a minimum threshold detected to properly shut down the system? Are the external drives un-mounted properly? Or is it just a hard power cut when the battery is empty? Is there a command to read the current battery level, to take my own actions when it reaches a threshold?

Thanks in advance.
Greetings

2

It depends on the battery technology. If it’s lithium then you need to catch it before it cuts off or the battery will suffer damage in the long term. Luci may have some kind of control over battery and scheduling.

When the battery runs out of power it will hard cut. Any data in the router will be lost. You risk corrupting the ssd if writing data at the time of the power cut. If the drive has an external supply then it won’t be more than lost data but if the router is powering the drive via the USB only then you’d be safer sharing via a USB hub that has its own power supply to prevent the drive being damaged.

If it was mine I’d have it switched on when using it and on battery when not using it “if” it needs to be on standby. If it needs to be a constantly live connection then only use the battery as failsafe if you have a power outage. The router is 45w max (12v x 3amp). It won’t break the bank to have it permanently on.