Monitoring Home Power Status

[Minjin]

Not sure what forum to put this in because it could span a few so we'll try this one first and mods can move as necessary.

I ran into a situation today where my power went out at home and rather than sit around in the cold and dark with no internet, I went to the library. My plan is to go back home later when the power returns. However, how do I know when the power is back? That got me thinking that I would like some way to monitor simple power status at my home.

Here are the issues:

- all of my computer gear is on a large UPS so pinging my router or cable modem won't work because it should always be up
- no home phone service
- I want the initial outlay and continuing costs (energy usage or whatever) to be as low as possible

My router does use DD-WRT so maybe I could figure out some way of pinging another network component that isn't on UPS and then notifying me when it goes up or down? I've always wanted a home status web stage with things like garage door status and temperature and such and this might be a good start.

Any thoughts?

 

[vshah]

get an old router, plug it in to an non-ups outlet. hook it up to your network as usual, and enable WAN pinging. foward a port from your main router to this one.

get an app on your phone that monitors server status...i've seen several for iphone/android. set it to ping your externalip:forwarded port


simple enough and should work pretty seamlessly.

 

[Minjin]

get an old router, plug it in to an non-ups outlet. hook it up to your network as usual, and enable WAN pinging. foward a port from your main router to this one.

get an app on your phone that monitors server status...i've seen several for iphone/android. set it to ping your externalip:forwarded port


simple enough and should work pretty seamlessly.

Pretty much what I was thinking except I didn't think it all the way through. Thanks.

Any other thoughts? Anyone do something like this or have any other kind of home monitoring system?

 

[DivideBYZero]

I guess it depends on how often the power fails, but I would look into using a cell service of some kind as a data line backup, i.e., the notification, whatever you may set up, will go via your 3G service instead of the regular broadband connection during failure. Maybe you could use a MiFi type device or an old fleabay'd rooted Android with wifi hotspot.

 

[aceO07]

Pretty much what I was thinking except I didn't think it all the way through. Thanks.

Any other thoughts? Anyone do something like this or have any other kind of home monitoring system?

I'm slowly setting up a custom monitor system (WSN, wireless sensor network) that I will have upload data to a website. Currently it just monitors temperature and motion. I suppose it's shouldn't be too bad to have it report the power status.

Power monitoring was never part of the plan. But I think I can have the laptop use it's 'plugged in' or 'battery mode' status to indicate if there is power. The router/modem would be on UPS. The laptop would merge all the sensor data and upload it to the site every few minutes or when triggered. Of course if there is no internet connection or long power outage or major event, then you can tell by the lack of regularly scheduled data upload.

vshah's plan is probably the simplest and easiest.