1

Hey guys,

Ive been working on a little something to check if laptops are being charged at night using the get-cimInstance cmdlet to get the battery status whether it’s discharging the battery or on AC power.

This is what I put together and in the curly brackets gets exactly what I need and writes it to the csv:

$computers = import-csv ‘filepath’

foreach ($computername in $computers)

{get-ciminstance win32_battery -computername $computers -Property Description, BatteryStatus, SystemName |Select systemname, description, batterystatus | Export-CSV ‘filepath’}

I’m still relatively new to Powershell and may be delving too deep too quick, still im curious. Now, i’m trying to import computer names from a CSV, and thats where I hit my roadblock. I’m not asking for someone to write this for me, but some ideas/info I can play with to get this to work.

4 Spice ups
2

To start with why not pull directly from AD instead of a text file. No maintenance, just point at the proper OU(s). I believe you would just use Get-ADComputer for this.

3

If you import-csv, you access the data via column name. So if you have one column named machines in machines.csv:

$machines = import.csv “\path\machines.csv”
$computers = $computers.machines

Now, let’s fix your loop error:

foreach ($computer in $computers) {
get-ciminstance win32_battery -computername $computer …
}

when you created $computers, you instantiated an array.
inside your loop, you use the first variable which you’re creating in the iteration of your array.

4

you must have a header in csv as computername

$computers = import-csv c:\computers.csv
ForEach ($computer in $computers){
gwmi win32_battery -ComputerName $computer|Select @{n='ComputerName';e={$computer}}, @{n='BatteryType';e={$_.description}},@{N= "BatteryStatus";Expression = {if ($_.batterystatus -eq '2') {"Charging"} Elseif ($_.batterystatus -eq '1') {"NotCharging"}}}|
Export-CSV 'filepath'
}

Ciminstance requires Winrm enabled so used WMI

If there is no header in CSV use get-content instead of import-CSV

1 Spice up
5

Hello and welcome to the PowerShell forum.

When posting code here in this form, PLEASE use the </> tool bar tool to enter the code. It makes it easier to view and that means probably better answers.

6

We do intend on using a separate OU for these computers we want to track so that would be a pretty good idea.

7

@JitenSh

Thaks for that. I knew you had to have a header but it wasn’t reading it for some reason. It reads it with your script but when it writes the computer name to the csv its just gibberish. something I could probably figure out with the materials at hand.

Thank you all for your ideas and assistance.