How I Proved I'm An Idiot

We had quite a storm here this week, as was true in a large swath of the country. We had high sustained winds and very cold temperatures. I felt fortunate that I never lost power, but my electricity supply here has been pretty solid for years (not the case when I first moved in here).

Thursday morning I got up and triggered the "morning" routine on my C-5 hub... and nothing happened. WTF? I checked and found a solid red light on my hub. I wasn't happy, but it was pre-coffee you know. I unplugged it for a few seconds, plugged it back in, and everything appeared to be fine. I triggered "morning" again, and life went on. I briefly scanned the logs, but nothing stood out except that the hub had been off since around 3:00 am.

I fed the dog, had breakfast, and sipped my morning coffee. Then I got dressed and took the dog — who hates cold and wet — out to do his business in the storm. We didn't go very far because the wind was icy cold. But we were out probably 20 minutes. When I got back... nothing happened that should have happened. The hub had that stubborn red light again. I was not happy. I unplugged it again. Plugged it back in. Everything was fine.

I swear to you, gentle reader, that I spent almost all day trying to figure out if my hub was failing (Merry Christmas!), or something else weird was going on. I searched the logs (I thought). I moved the hub to a different UPS, just in case. I scratched my head. I searched the forum for clues. Other than fixing lunch and taking the dog for a short afternoon walk, it kept me going until nearly dinner time.

In a last ditch, grasping at straws moment, I started looking at what devices were doing when the hub went down. And then I remembered... A long time ago (it seems), I got a Ring extender that I use as a switch to determine if power has been lost. It will report when it's on battery vs mains. I set up a little RM rule to shut down the hub if power was out for 5 minutes. But that's all it does... no notification... no logging... no clues that's what happened...

So, yeah... the power went out during the night while I was asleep, and again while I was out walking the dog.

I've changed the RM rule to provide both logging and notification, and changed the trigger to 10 minutes of no power.

Maybe I should have done that in the first place? Ya live and learn...

Happy Holidays, everyone.

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At least it did what I told it to.

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Gotta love it - everyone has these moments (some of us like me more than we'd like to admit). :wink: Your Christmas gift from the universe is that everything was at least working the way you set it up. :smiley:

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