When I ran a X10 Stargate it was battery backed up and could stay battery powered for almost 48hours with it's battery. Because that was integrated they had a flag for rules called power fail catch up. the Stargate understood the unit was on battery when the power line adapter lost power.
With the hubitat which is powered though 5 volt usb it's easy to use a power bank backup power or UPS. I chose the UPS because it drives my hole network stack from a single location. The next step is detecting a power outage. There are multiple ways but I use a multi step process.
Virtual switch devices to record the state of power fail and ordered shutdown
Web Pinger to ping a IP address of a non-ups device on the network if not pingable power is out or a UPS feed using NUT or other UPS device driver
A device that resets state when power is restored Sengled legacy ZigBee bulbs will always turn on when mains are restored. I have one in my wire closet that is only used for this purpose.
Now the fun begins, I have my UPS feeding data into the Hubitat also though NUT and this allows me to do a clean shutdown when battery gets critical. I have an virtual switch for this event that allows me to identify on the next startup of the Hubitat that it's a full restart from power off.
I also set another the virtual switch that is labeled "power failed". I then begin a rule waiting for a change in state in the Sengled bulb to be "on". When the virtual switch is true and the Sengled bulb is on I run my recovery rules which reinstates my scenes in the home. And then switches the Sengled bulb off and the virtual switch off.
Having to do this is not weakness in the product, Recovery from power fail means different actions for different devices and the general rule of thumb is that anything that is mission critical shouldn't be solely managed by a home automation controller, ie. you don't want your sump pump being switching on and off via hubitat rules when a simple float switch just works.
And it's not crazy to have multiple UPS or battery operations in a home, at my mom's home we have a battery backup for her garage door, her network equipment, her sump pump and her alarm system. You have to think in layers and always have a recovery plan from a power outage. Nothing and I mean nothing works better than a recovery plan and not all plans are "automatable".
You could also use a Ring Range Extender for these two parts of the Rule like I do.
I chose to go with a Lithium Power pack to power HE since a UPS is so not efficient and will die on it's own just because of the lost in converting DC to AC and the up conversion of the voltage. When possible, if the power required for the device is DC always use a DC source not Low Voltage DC -> Higher voltage AC -> Lower voltage DC.
My devices usually don't have a problem reconnecting after a power outage or if I reboot (shutdown, pull power) even without a power backup. Note: I do have a UPS on my hubs, Wifi and network switch etc..
Both my door locks are battery operated and my Yale even has a place on the outside for a 9 volt battery in the event the internal batteries runs out so no UPS required!
The garage door thing - if the power is off, not opening via the motor anyway but are you talking tilt sensor which is usually battery powered or the relay which COULD have a battery backup if desired.
Last night when I wrote my feedback - I did it for the right reasons but was in the wrong state of mind. Although I meant what I said, upon re-reading it this morning I didn't write as carefully as I thought I had.
What I derive from all the time I spend with HE, the groups, the apps is this feeling of 'whats next'. The UPS model that is so prevalent (it seems everyone who's deep into their HE has one) it tells me that HE's should come with a built in UPS. Or a battery at the very least.
recall the evolution of the computer Mobo. The first ones would loose the clock. And compaq put a battery on the Mobo. This became the defacto standard. Then M$ put power detection into the operating system. And to this day when the power goes out to a server, on next boot your asked why the power went out.
I stand by my statement. I think the overall way that HE comes back online is so fraught with peril, so difficult to understand the state upon recovery, so prone to corruption - I hope the next 'big thing' from HE is to make substantial progress around this area.
I've had my all my network equipment (servers, router, switches, and home automation hubs) on UPS from day 1. We lose power often, so it really matters to us for things to keep working. In fact, we eventually went to whole-house battery backup. But I still keep the HE plugged into a UPS.
I just use a small portable UPS like a BE425M for my HE C-7. That, along with a 50' ethernet cable, let me move it around when I was trying to pair some tricky devices early on.
Other people have had more interesting DIY approaches:
This is far from "HE's biggest weakness" and not something Hubitat needs to address any time soon.
Let's be serious here - I'm looking at you @JasonJoel !
If we are serious about this matter, then we must consider the market forces which are working against a small player in the Home Automation arena (even one with some very good ideas).
The market forces that are aligning (Apple, Google, Amazon) are enough to swallow any firm, of any size. HE must be careful and cautious when those types of players get it into their heads that they want to dominate the market. After all, they are multi-billion dollar players! Who can afford to throw around a few millions here and there in the hopes of developing something!
This was definitely one feature of the ST hub that I liked, integrated battery back-up. It would be nice if HE had a small built-in battery backup and was set up to do an auto shut-down when power failed. The battery power would only need to be big enough to provide time for an orderly shut down of the hub.
That said, like others here I have my network devices/NAS devices on a UPS. IMHO, anyone that doesn't UPS their networking stuff is just asking for trouble, especially if outages are a "normal problem." As long as you're putting network devices on a UPS, adding the HE hub should be small additional effort.
Maybe the desire to monitor and control important systems (notice I didn't say "critical" to avoid triggering the Industrial Controls folks out there) in a manner that is highly fail-safe isn't a universally held requirement as much as I would have expected. Yet I bet it really is ...more often than not...., and more importantly I bet there are people STILL shying away from Home Automation out of fear that it's not addressed.
Sure, throwing a UPS on there (as I have on both hubs) is proper prudence. But having lived through multiple events in my life where a UPS didn't cover the duration of power loss....have I thought about HE + my expanding device network recovering the way I'd like it to? You bet I have. Because the last thing I need after one of those events is to have to go around reconstituting a monitoring & controls environment that I very much depend on. Never mind the added complexity if I'm traveling. You guys do travel right?
Here come all the retorts, "this isn't a $50K+ system you can rely on like that".
I guess you all are just simply turning on/off the lights, putting on the jazz music, lowering your home theater screens, and staying home 99% of the year. I know that's not the case based on the complexity of what is regularly presented in this forum.. but hey, it was fun making that provocative of a statement
So give OP a break for suggesting this topic be one of concern to Hubitat. This isn't "a failing" as much as it is an opportunity. You guys that are knee deep in this stuff have lost some of the 10000' generic customer vantage point.
If Hubitat can say it has a built in battery, or better yet...an optional and replaceable battery pack that is integrated & monitored.....that is marketing resilience.
If Hubitat can say it does everything possible to know, update, and store everything it needs to about it's device (monitoring & controls) states in order to reconstitute the environment (to the degree the devices allow) to the way it was before power losses on some or all of said environment....that is marketing resilience.
Actually if you think about it, in today's world, anything less than a whole house generator is failure.
Refrigerator holding 100's of dollars of food, air conditioner, lights and internet. Who can go 5 minutes without internet ?
With unlimited data plans my kids never even turn on Wi-Fi on their cell phones... I'm not 100% sure whether they would even notice that the power went out.
But then you need fuel and oil, and you know you can't get it because the power is out at the gas station or you go natural gas and the gas is shut off or you never topped off the propane. So then you build a solar plant to use batteries instead and then realize that you don't have enough battery to take you form sunset to sunrise. The list goes on and on.
Yes, but depending on where you live....A good portion of my state has access to piped in natural gas, which I haven't seen go out in over 50 years. Many house generators run dual fuel, natural gas or gasoline.
Now I'm going to pontificate....
We are all too isolated with our technology. I see people get together and everyone is on their dam phones, hypnotized by everything except the people around them. Scary. It's like "electronic Haldol"
I've already spoken my feedback - but that generated a good dialog which in turn triggered more thinking about the issue since...
Putting the HE on a UPS is only a small part of the problem. Actually a very small part. It's the recovery that to me is more critical an issue. In my most recent case, while away my home lost power. When I returned nothing seemed wrong with the exception the porch light was on. Previous power fails I've experienced didn't have that effect so I can't use that as some form of sensor of what happened.
I just reviewed my Watchdog report - and learned 4 devices hadn't reported in. A contact sensor on the garage door, a Philips Hue motion sensor, a RMPro and an Outlet. the contact sensor was showing 'closed' in the garage and when I opened the garage it continued to report CLOSED. The solution to 3 of the 4 devices was to reset them and rejoin them. It's nice Hubitat said 'previously device found' but how can a device go belly up and hubitat be completely unaware? Is that supposed to be on me? I'm supposed to:
A) somehow be fully aware of any power failures that occur.
B) visit every device in the network and verify they are working.
C) Trust complex codes and rules that are reporting.
It's really astounding that 10000 hours of sw dev and the hardware of it all is untrustable. Is it HE's fault? No. BUT. What then should I trust? I use recommended devices. I follow recommended guidelines. And still I have no trust in the home automation. We worry about Zwave security tech and still can't be certain the states reported on basic devices is true. Where is this going, I ask myself. Is it a forever DIY project? I have to ask myself and be honest about the reply.
Honestly I understand where you are coming from. Its kind of more than just something that is solved by a UPS and its not just power, but also internet outage (for cloud devices, we all have one) that it doesnt always recovery from.
Now I wouldn't say its an issue with HE per se but something that would be addressed at the driver/app level. In most of my apps I have them do things like clean up after a reboot or force a full refresh every now and then just in case to address things like this.
An example I had recently was with sharptools. Over night my internet went out. When I woke up and finally rebooted my modem sharp tools was all out of sync. No matter what I did I couldn't get it back in sync from the dashboards. But from the app itself I had to go into it and resave it so it forced a full sync and everything was back in business. I would expect that to be automatic.
Even with a zwave device. If it was on when the power went off and is not set up to restore state when the power comes on, it will be off and HE will still think its on. So I usually have HE polling those devices to see if they are alive and get an update in case they are out of sync. But that is in my driver itself.
So ya.. its a valid argument that it doesn't handle power failure well. Just need to find ways around it.
(And yes a UPS is critical for HE if you have frequent power outages)
If a device does not report, the hub has no specific awareness of that. An automation can be easily implemented that checks this (which would be completely reliant on the hub being powered up to work). But there is no reason for the hub itself to have this awareness absent an automation.
You are in control of your home automation system. The hub certainly doesn't know that a power failure occurred unless you have implemented a specific system to deal with this situation, nor could it have such an awareness otherwise. Without getting into a pointless debate about backup batteries, if power is pulled from the hub, it isn't a hub anymore. When power is restored, it reports the event of the system coming back up, but it has no awareness of its environment unless you have put those capabilities in place.
Ultimately, it is on you. You design your home automation system. You certainly shouldn't trust it with anything beyond its capabilities.
No, it's not astounding at all that problems such as you raise have not been solved. If this is part of your expectation set, you will continue to be disappointed.
With all due respect @bravnel - and I say that sincerely -
It's is precisely these issues that HE is in a perfect position to resolve. Efforts into these areas, even if they were exploratory would put HE into a position of strength as the other manufacturers like aeotech and samsung bring product into direct competition. At some point HE has to begin to take a leadership role. With the resources, experience and community support HE currently enjoys, now is a good time to roadmap toward the future.
I already mentioned this in my previous posts but let me repeat my point again:
"Hub is Single Point of Failure, no doubts here".
Hub fails - nothing is working. And it does not really matter how good a recovery plan is.
Another point is:
" The Devices should be able to talk to each other directly bypassing hub".
This days there is no technical problem to achieve this and it is already
partially implemented by introducing the "direct association".
For instance, the entire Insteon system (about 20 years old) was built around "scenes".
Furthermore, each really smart device should/must have built-in mini RM.
Again, technically this is not a problem.
