How to detect power outage ?

[soitjes]

Hello,

Last week when we came back from holiday we were surprised by a warm fridge because we have had a power outage during our absence. I have a relatively old house and the electrical installation is somewhat sensitive (although recently renewed).

So this gave me the idea that I should be able to detect a power outage, so that I can call the neighbour who can reset the fuse. My home server and router are on a UPS, but that only holds for 20 minutes or so.

Any suggestions on how to detect a power outage ?

Thanks,

Soitjes.

[raymonvdm]

Send an sms from your homeserver as soon as the ups detects a power outage ?

I think you need the following components for this

- UPS (check)
- Server (check)
- Nokia 6230
- Nokia DKU2 usb cable
- Gnokii http://www.gnokii.org/
- Prepay Simcard

http://www.q8i.org/sms-power-failure-notification/

[Akatar]

or..
if you use zwave

220 volt relais
universal binaire sensor

powerout -> relais off -> uni bin sensor report

[AshaiRey]

Or turn on the outside lamp near the from door so your neighbour can see if there is an outage or not.

[raymonvdm]

Although you might actually want to fix the real issue

Some fridges can be hooked up to your alarm system and the alarm company will check whats wrong

[Digit]

But will this result in bills on false positives when someone just forgot to close the door of the fridge?

[soitjes]

Thanks for the suggestions.

My current idea is to use a Raspberry which I ping continuously. The Raspberry is not on the UPS so the ping will fail when the power goes out. And then I can send a message to myself.

Soitjes.

[Bwired]

?
you have an UPS, the software can detect the power outage and send you a mail.....
i have the same construction, my UPS runs on Nodejs

[soitjes]

I don't know if my UPS can do that. I bought it second hand and it did not came with software. I'll google it to see if I can find something.

Soitjes.

[dad]

Hi,

I live in a rural area so have a sometimes flakey power supply. I keep track of power failures by using an MQTT topic of the uptime from my RPi.

HTh

Dad

[jeroen_]

I got a APC SMT1000I with "Smart" Management Card 2" and these can send email from there.

Of course, that does require the rest of the network to be up and running... kind of funny when the network towards the UPS is over PowerLine and thus the powerline fails because that part does not have connectivity... but at least you get a mail when the power is back

[dad]

Just to add that I had an outage last night and by comparing the logged uptime values I was able to tell when the outage occurred and that it lasted 3 minutes 20 seconds.

HTH

Dad

[jonbanjo]

As others have commented, your UPS probably provides a solution.

We have a couple of APC units at home. They are monitored on Linux systems (one is actaully connected to a Raspberry PI) running apcupsd. With that particular setup, as far as I can remember, the default is to send an email to root when the status changes.

In the /etc/apcupsd folder, there are a number of scripts that are called when an evets occurs, eg. onBattery is triggered when power is lost. One could edit these scripts so that they would execute any command you want, so if you needed, the whole setup is quite "customisable" (if there is such a word...).

[Jeroen Bartels]

Don't ask me how but if you agree with a fellow domotician to ping each others system. No ping for x time should trigger an sms from fellow domoticians system to your phone. And you can return the favour of course.

[AshaiRey]

While your idea is very nice it isn't testing power outage but it's testing connectivity