Controller Charging... Am I the only one who forgets to do this?

[JohnyDL]

Almost every time I've needed to recharge my controllers it's happened because one has run out of battery mid game. I don't like over charging batteries either by leaving them on charge indefinitely or by charging them when they don't really need charging (90%-100%-90%-100% isn't great for batteries), that said when I'm jumping out of VR I always forget to check if my controllers will need charging and then put them on charge when they do

Are there any utilities that will track my controller battery level and then alert me?

It'd be really cool if there was something like "Your next session has a % chance of being halted by a controller battery, you should probably recharge them" as a windows notification where % is the percentile of the predicted battery time when compared to the data collected about uninterrupted play sessions

0% chance means that even if you play the longest you'd ever played in one go (with some margin of error) that the controllers will remain turned on without any problems
100% would mean that even if you have the shortest (not interrupted by controller battery failure) play session that the battery will run out

I'm sure there are a bunch of other factors that could be accounted for, data trends, do certain days of the week have more play time, do certain games use more battery, are the batteries themselves degrading and so predicted failure time needs adjusting etc. that could be turned on and off but even the simplest warning would go a long way to stop some disappointingly short sessions.

[chilli chubb]

I do the same thing for my controllers like I do for my mobile phone or GoPro camera.. it gets charged overnight. I don't think there is an issue of overcharging as most modern chargers simply off by itself after detecting the battery is full. I'm just 3 weeks into VR but I have not encountered a time when my controller's battery went flat while playing (its the wireless adapter's powerbank/battery that always go first) and I seldom play for more than 2/2.5 hrs max. The controller's power LED will always be orange when I finished playing and they get charged overnight. 

[JohnyDL]

I know what you mean but there is a cost to it long term, at least there used to be, for the health of the battery. I guess I'm kinda looking for software to over come my long ingrained habits. 

I struggle to be in VR for more than an hour at a time (though I can do 2-3 hours in one day with an hour break between sessions) but I don't charge anything unless it cries out for a charge, for my phone and controllers this is every 3 days or so, my tablet is once a week or less, I'm on week 6 of VR myself and I think in all that time I've only managed to preemptively charge the controllers twice.

I'd use the power lights if my mind took the half a second to register them as I was exiting VR but I still don't look most of the time even though I've been trying to.

[chilli chubb]

We all have ingrained habits myself included. I know about not doing top-up charges because of battery memory and all such advice but in reality I guess most of us simple charge after usage irregardless of the remaining battery level. I do the same for my mobile devices (handphones, music players, cameras, game consoles etc) all these years and 99% of the time, they either get sold or replaced before any battery problem showed up.  

[JohnyDL]

I often run my devices into the ground and will hold onto something far past when it seems worthless to most people, for example I'm still running a 2009 optiplex for most of my web surfing needs to prolong the life of my gaming machine. So if something can be patched or repaired I'd prefer to keep using it rather than sell it or upgrade it and throw it away when it isn't necessary. Like most modern mobile technologies the batteries are not strictly user serviceable in the Vive controllers so a battery that will not hold a charge is something I will have to deal with eventually.

I appreciate that the most common answer is to suck it up, charge every time you leave VR or every night (depending on use) and ignore the e-waste and/or financial cost when these things need replacing, but neither of these options are particularly appetising on a $100 phone to me let alone a $1000 VR system.

What I'm looking for is only what android devices already provide through apps, a best guess at future usage, my phone for example is at 84% and the battery app I use guesses the next time it will need to charge is in 4 days based on my previous usage, if I think my usage is going to be typical then I don't need to charge it at all and even as I plan to use it for audiobooks or video (not my normal usage pattern) when I go shopping today it will alert me at 30% so that I can stop using it and have enough battery for emergency phonecalls or an Uber. The equivalent is what I'd like from Vive controllers, the controllers are at some battery level (more accurate than 4 green dots and one angry flashing red dot), you'll get some hours worth of play out of them (based on previous use), and a charge level warning when they're getting low (to remind me to recharge them), the only difference is that I want the computer to remember the last battery level the controllers had when turned off and the computer to display this information since the controllers themselves don't have any screens to do that.