Battery Monitor

NB: This was done for lenovo thinkpad T480 but the script can be tweaked for any linux os.

Problem Statement

I usually forget to plugin my laptop charger either because I have forgotten to remove it from my bag or its charging my phone. Linux notification messages are small and I do ignore some messages or end up activating Do Not Disturb hence not seeing the notification and my pc ends up switching off. This has nugged me for quite some time and I decided to find a solution to fix that.

Solution

My solution, checks if battery1 which is the external battery is low. If it is below 10% it ends up suspending the pc and if its below 20 shows you the below alert dialog window.

I would prefer such a pop up alert dialog screen. This is something I can’t miss not ignore.

Found a bash script which I ended up editing abit.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

BATTERY=$(upower -e | grep 'BAT1')

while true
do
  BATTERY_PERCENTAGE=$(upower -i "$BATTERY" | grep percentage | awk '{ print $2 }'| sed s/'%'/''/g)
  CABLE=$(upower -i /org/freedesktop/UPower/devices/line_power_AC | grep -n2 line-power | grep online | awk '{ print $3 }')

  if [[ "$BATTERY_PERCENTAGE" -lt "10" && $CABLE = "no" ]]; then

    pidof zenity | xargs kill -9
    notify-send --urgency=critical "WARNING: Battery is about to die"  "Suspending PC ...."
    sleep 10
    systemctl suspend
  
  elif [[ "$BATTERY_PERCENTAGE" -lt "20" && $CABLE = "no" ]]; then

    pidof zenity | xargs kill -9
    sleep 5
    zenity --error --text="Battery Low, please charge device\!" --title="Warning"
  
  fi

  sleep 40

done

Below scripts starts up the main script when pc boots up, which can also be called from the terminal.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

if [[ -n "$(pgrep -f noGoFF.sh)" ]]; then
  exit
else
  noGoFF.sh&
fi

To set it up, clone the repository, enter the directory, copy all the .sh files to /usr/bin/ directory and link the battMonitor.sh file to autostart directory.

git clone https://github.com/iAmG-r00t/whackyscripts.git
cd whackyscripts/battMonitor
sudo cp *.sh /usr/bin/
ln -s /usr/bin/battMonitor.sh ~/.config/autostart/

You are all set to go. Do enjoy 😄.