charger

Higher-level EV charger checker built on Google Places (New) EV charge data.

This skill includes a bin/charger CLI (Node.js) for checking charger availability.

Setup

• Requirements:
• Node.js 18+ (Clawdbot already has Node)
• GOOGLE_PLACES_API_KEY (recommended in ~/.clawdbot/.env)
• Put the CLI on your PATH (example):
• ln -sf "$(pwd)"/bin/charger /home/claw/clawd/bin/charger
• Add a favorite:
• charger favorites add home --place-id

Commands

• Check a favorite / place id / query:
• charger check home
• charger check "Wien Energie Charging Station Liniengasse 2 1060 Wien"
• Find nearby:
• charger nearby --lat 48.188472 --lng 16.348854 --radius 2000 --max 10

Notifications

The recommended pattern is:

1) charger (this skill) produces a clear Any free: YES|NO result. 2) A scheduled job (Gateway cron) runs a small helper that only prints output when it should notify.

Helper script (what actually decides to notify)

This bundle includes scripts/charger-notify.sh.

What it does:

• Runs charger check
• If Any free: YES and the last run was not YES, it prints a single notification line.
• Otherwise it prints nothing.

So: no output = no notification.

State:

• Stores last state in ~/.cache/charger-notify/.state so it only notifies on the change NO/UNKNOWN → YES.

Usage:

• bash scripts/charger-notify.sh home

Example notification output:

• EV charger available: Tanke Wien Energie Charging Station — Amtshausgasse 9, 1050 Wien, Austria — 1/2 available (OOS 0) (updated 2026-01-21T21:05:00Z)

Typical cron schedule (how you actually get Telegram pings)

Cron is the scheduler. It runs the helper script on a timer and sends you whatever the script prints. Because the helper prints only when it becomes available, you only get messages when it matters.

Check every 10 minutes:

• /10 *

If you want me to wire this into Clawdbot Gateway cron (so you get Telegram pings), tell me:

• target (home)
• interval (every 5/10/20 min)
• quiet hours (optional)