I use a small script to display my battery status on screen, when not running X. It displays in my GNU Screen hardstatus line. The shell script looks like this:-

#!/bin/bash

cat /sys/class/power_supply/yeeloong-bat/charge_now | cut -f 2 -d \|

Within my .screenrc file I have added:-

hardstatus on
backtick 1 1 0 $HOME/bin/my-battery.sh
hardstatus alwayslastline "%{=b}%{y}%c %Y-%m-%d%{m} / %1` / %{B}%-Lw%{c}%50>%n%f* %t%{-}%+Lw%<"

Hopefully this may benefit some.

Linux(-libre) > 2.6.32 no longers provides an APM interface and the acpi is also not available on the Yeeloong. This makes it inconvenient to check battery status from the command line.

A quick test shows that Lenny's acpi package builds and runs on the Yeeloong. The only change required is adding mipsel to the architecture list.

Battery status can currently be checked with GNOME's battery monitor, GKrellM or via /sys/class/power_supply/.