I have an application that gets detailed system information, and I have been able to get the percent of charge remaining but not the percent of the battery itself.
Explanation: As time goes on, the battery slowly gets worse and worse, and some applications, like Dell Support Center on Laptops, display the status of the battery, not the status of the charge, which used to be 100% but now is 90%.
How can I get this value in C# or .NET?
Don't have a laptop to test with, but I'm guessing you could use the WMI class Win32_Battery.
It has two fields that look interesting - DesignCapacity, which tells you
Design capacity of the battery in milliwatt-hours.
and FullChargeCapacity, which has the fascinating note that
Full charge capacity of the battery in milliwatt-hours. Comparison of the value to the DesignCapacity property determines when the battery requires replacement.
So my guess is that you can use WMI to read these two values, and then calculate FullChargeCapacity/DesignCapacity to find the battery health percentage number.
EDIT
Here's a brief example of accessing WMI information using C#. I first added a reference to the System.Management assembly. Then:
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Management;
namespace ConsoleApplication1
{
class Program
{
static void Main(string[] args)
{
System.Management.ObjectQuery query = new ObjectQuery("Select * FROM Win32_Battery");
ManagementObjectSearcher searcher = new ManagementObjectSearcher(query);
ManagementObjectCollection collection = searcher.Get();
foreach (ManagementObject mo in collection)
{
foreach (PropertyData property in mo.Properties)
{
Console.WriteLine("Property {0}: Value is {1}", property.Name, property.Value);
}
}
}
}
}
Also, note that you are basically running a SQL-like query against WMI, so you can vary that if you want. Windows Management Instrumentation Query Language, or WQL, is what you want to search for to learn more about it.
Also take a look at ahawker's answer, it may end up being more helpful if WMI isn't properly capturing the battery data, as he notes.
It seems that you are looking for the values of FullChargeCapacity, DesignCapacity and CurrentCapacity. As someone who has solved this problem before, let me make a few comments.
The first route normally taken would be through a WMI query (Win32_Battery). However, on the test laptops I ran the WMI query (Win32_Battery) against, which included multiple manufacturers, I consistently ran into the problem of FullChargeCapacity always returning zero. Since that didn't work, I re-wrote my solution using Win32 API and was successfully able to get accurate values that way.
Hopefully, WMI will work for you. However, if you experience the same issues I did, here is a summary of the steps required for Win32API.
Use SetupDiGetClassDevs to get a device handle to the battery (GUID_DEVCLASS_BATTERY).
Use SetupDiEnumDeviceInterfaces to get the device data (SP_DEVICE_INTERFACE_DATA).
Use SetupDiGetDeviceInterfaceDetail to get the device path (SP_DEVICE_INTERFACE_DETAIL_DATA).
Use CreateFile with the device path to get handle to battery.
Use DeviceIoControl with battery handle, IOCTL_BATTERY_QUERY_TAG to retrieve battery query info (BATTERY_QUERY_INFORMATION).
Use DeviceIoControl with battery handle, IOCTL_BATTERY_QUERY_INFORMATION and marshalled structs to to retrieve battery info (BATTERY_INFORMATION).
Also see the Enumerating Battery Devices post on MSDN as I found that quite helpful.
I can post my solution if necessary but with all the native struct definitions, it ends up around 500 lines of code.
Example source code: https://gist.github.com/ahawker/9715872
No need to unnecessary complicate things. Try something like:
using System.Management;
PowerStatus pwr = SystemInformation.PowerStatus;
String strBatteryChargingStatus;
strBatteryChargingStatus = pwr.BatteryChargeStatus.ToString();
MessageBox.Show("battery charge status : " + batterystatus);
String strBatterylife;
strBatterylife = pwr.BatteryLifePercent.ToString();
MessageBox.Show("Battery life: "+batterylife);
In this way you can get all of the battery information.
PowerStatus p = SystemInformation.PowerStatus;
int a = (int)(p.BatteryLifePercent * 100);
MessageBox.Show(""+a);
You can use the System.Windows.Forms.PowerStatus class - http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.powerstatus.aspx
WMI worked for me (tested on 3 notebooks of different brands), but I had to use something like this:
new ManagementObjectSearcher(@"\\localhost\root\wmi",
"Select FullChargedCapacity From BatteryFullChargedCapacity");
// use value of resultingInstance.Properties["FullChargedCapacity"]
new ManagementObjectSearcher(@"\\localhost\root\wmi",
"Select DesignedCapacity From BatteryStaticData");
//use value of resultingInstance2.Properties["DesignedCapacity"]
BatteryChargeStatus.Text = SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryChargeStatus.ToString();
BatteryFullLifetime.Text = SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryFullLifetime.ToString();
BatteryLifePercent.Text = SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifePercent.ToString();
BatteryLifeRemaining.Text = SystemInformation.PowerStatus.BatteryLifeRemaining.ToString();
PowerLineStatus.Text = SystemInformation.PowerStatus.PowerLineStatus.ToString();
If you want to perform some operation just convert these string values into the integer.
using System;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using System.ComponentModel;
using System.Data;
using System.Drawing;
using System.Linq;
using System.Text;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Windows.Forms;
namespace batterie
{
public partial class Form1 : Form
{
public Form1()
{
InitializeComponent();
showbattrie();
}
private void Form1_Load(object sender, EventArgs e)
{
}
public void showbattrie()
{
PowerStatus status = SystemInformation.PowerStatus;
textBox1.Text = status.BatteryLifePercent.ToString("P0");
}
}
}
Simple code to get Battery Level in C#
protected void batteryLevel ()
{
var filter = new IntentFilter(Intent.ActionBatteryChanged);
var battery = RegisterReceiver(null, filter);
int level = battery.GetIntExtra(BatteryManager.ExtraLevel, -1);
int scale = battery.GetIntExtra(BatteryManager.ExtraScale, -1);
double level_0_to_100 = Math.Floor (level * 100D / scale);
}
