Question

Does anyone know of a way that i can monitor battery life of a phone/tablet and trigger a device based on its value? Eg - battery level of the tablet drops to 15% it turns on a smart socket and when it gets to 100% it turns the socket off. I have tried IFTTT but for some reason it wont trigger any ST devices even though they are authorised correctly. I have tasker, webcore (though havent used it yet so would need some instruction) its on a fire tablet and i use wallpanel which can provide sensor information (inc. Battery levels) over MQTT but i dont have a broker and its not something i am clued up on for setting one up.  

Answer 1

I've done this in two ways. Firstly using tasker to send a webhook to webcore, and secondly by using life360 which reports battery level (again into webcore)

Comments

Note that life 360 won't install on a device without gps

---

@rena43 do you have anymore info on how you configured this. I am new to webcore . Happy to go the tasker route .  

---

@pachton8 here's the webcore piston I used. Webcore thinks ifttt is sending the webhook, but in fact it's tasker.  

---

Thanks ill have a go at this later today. How have you gone about setting up the webhook from tasker

---

@pachton8 the webcore condition, when your set it up, gives you a URL. Place that URL in a tasker net/http request using the post method.  

---

@rena43 thanks for your help, the piston was easier than i thought it was gunna be and doing that piston has gave me a basic understanding on how webcore works . Forcing the task in tasker acts as expected, just waiting for the battery levels to get where they need to be to test it fully

---

@pachton8 when I first tested mine I had it bouncing between 80 and 90% charged for a couple of days. :)

---

Another little trick I like is that I get my phone to send a webhook when I plug in or unplug my phone. This sets a global variable in webcore and so when I shut down the house with my goodnight routine it can remind me if I've forgotten to put my phone on charge.  

---

@rena43 oh that sounds good. What do you recieve the notification on if you do forget? I am thinking echospeaks to a speaker for me  Oh the piston for the battery % works flawlessly btw

---

@pachton8 yeah, echo speaks to the bedroom echo. I use an Alexa routine that trips a simulated switch, which causes webcore to report if any contact sensors are open, and also report on those too.  

---

@rena43 any way that you know of to kinda reverse the webhook, basically webcore to send a command to tasker and tasker operate the trigger on the device its on? ST virtual switch ON -> webcore monitors this -> when true send webhook to tasker -> tasker performs action

---

@pachton8 sorry, not something I've tried. At a guess, Maybe you could use a simulated contact sensor to trigger a routine in Alexa which sends a notification to the tablet, which tasker could pick up, but that's just off the top of my head.  

---

@pachton8 actually, with the smartthings app on the tablet, maybe you could send a notification directly?  

Answer 2

Tasker to send a webhook to IFTTT on battery level. IFTTT to do whatever based on that webhook.  

Answer 3

I like where you are going with this, setting the tablet in charge of its own battery level. Clever. But I wonder is that a bit redundant compared to leaving it plugged in? Wonder what the idle power consumption would be compared to your solution. I like the idea though, clever thinking.  

Comments

@pachton8 I might be confused with another platform. free to use, all I need to know. Thanks :)

---

@lebaron Smith i would say (from my very limited knowledge of it so far) it would absolutely be possible. But dont ask me how just yet  

---

@pachton8  I might have a play around when bored under lockdown :)

---

@lebaron Smith its all been on my todo list for ages, now i am furloughed and locked down i have time to play around with it all. Spent the last day or so creating my actiontiles dashboard. Few panels left to polish up then ill be happy . The frame is a cheapy to create a template so i can get some nice wooden frames made up later, mainly to fully hide the charging cable when i wall mount it

---

@pachton8 Nice :) I'm going to attempt using anymote app to create something similar in the near future via http commands. I'll try on my usual tablet to begin with. then look into having an always on screen like you've setup there

Answer 4

I believe there is a device handler for fully kiosk that will do this via ST

Comments

@hague i didnt know this. But managed to get it running via webcore  thanks

Answer 5

I used to do exactly this many years ago for our kitchen tablet. I wrote a simple web endpoint smartapp that would turn a switch on and off, and used Tasker to invoke the web endpoint when the charge reached the low and high limits. It worked fine, but I eventually ditched it for a simple motion sensor to turn on the tablet when we're in the kitchen. This, along with a Google DayDream photo screen saver works for our application. When the motion sensor turns on the plug, I have the tablet configured to turn on and it immediately switches to the photo frame app.