Have you ever left an app running only to let it run your battery dry ? Would you like to run a torrent client, but only if you're home and plugged in ? Well, there might be a way, but I need your input !

I wrote a script called Shepherd, which is basically a glorified scheduler (cron) that has not just time, but a power and connectivity axis, too. This way, for any process registered to Shepherd, you can define:

• hours allowed

• connection type allowed (I guess you could define exact connections, but I never got that far)

• power requirements (plugged in, or a minimum % of battery)

• user inactivity (also started to implement, but never actually finished)

I used it for a couple of things... Flipclock (turn on if charging), transmission (turn on if charging and on WLAN between 2AM and 8AM) and killing maps if battery gets below 25%. It's very simple - launches the app if it is not already running and the conditions are met, and kills it if they aren't (but only if they were started by the shepherd app).

It currently does not have a GUI which pretty much makes it unusable for most users, BUT, this is where you have your say ! What would you like to see in Shepherd in addition to what I described ? Can you think up more use-case scenarios ? Do you have ideas how the GUI should look ? (throwing it all on one page would really cramp it's style !)

Do you like/need something like this ? Comments, ideas more than welcome !