I just went through a power outage of about an hour or so. When this happens, I take it for granted that a light or two may be on when power is restored. This time, a garage door opened, which isn't a good thing if you're not home.
I saw some flakiness on the events for the Smartthings car presence sensor fob while there was no utility power. Things like the car left and came back when it did no such thing. I think that's why the door opened.
The hub is backed up by a TalentCell battery backup that constantly supplies power to the hub, even when the utility is cut.
I wonder if the battery backup might not always be a good thing. All the wireless sensors are still operational and the hub is issuing commands to powered devices that can't respond, etc.
I can't imagine why presence detection would be affected since it's a battery powered zigbee device that sends a signal out every 2 minutes. Unless...the thing is out in the garage, and I put in multiple Centralite outlets to boost the zigbee signal. Yes, that could be it.
I wonder, what if there was no battery backup? There would be no hub activity and no erroneous commands. When the power comes back, the outlets will be powered up and before the hub comes back on line.
It'd be a drag if the garage door was open when we were away. I have an app that closes the doors when either car leaves and once a day in the evening, but don't have one to close the door after a certain period of time. That might not be well received, even by me. I could have a switch act as an override to the app, but again, possibly not a good reception.
I'm using the Zooz app.
So, what's the risk in running battery backup free? Is it great?
Many people use the Ring Alarm Range Extender because it has an internal battery and will report when it switches to AC or battery. Obviously then you can use that to prevent certain AC powered devices from trying to operate or force a specific state.
Maybe in that scenario it isn't? It is an interesting question.
I don't automate my garage doors (on purpose, and probably never will again). I used to, but had a few times the doors opened when I wasn't expecting it, and so ripped out the smart control of them.
I have smart door locks, but I am ok with that... If they go off at the wrong time my door is just unlocked (still takes someone to physically go try and open it to find that out) - not sitting wide open like a garage door is.
I set things to shut down the hub cleanly while on battery backup. If you have writes going on and power is suddenly cut it can corrupt the database. Having it on a ups is always good and you get the added benefit of surge protection (well at least at the power level. You'll need something to arrest the surge at the network port level)
Yes... Everytime a backup is made, that backup is clean (corruption is scrubbed during the backup process) But do you want to keep doing that? Best keep it on the battery backup and after a certain amount of time have it do a clean shutdown.
There you go. All my repeaters are Tuyas with their own backup battery so my zigbee mesh stays intact, and all sensors remain operational.
I have mine on a talentcell also. (plus the rest of the network is powered off a few UPS's) The main reason is that if the power goes out and I'm not home, we'll get an alert so that we can get a neighbour to check on it.
If the power just went out "cleanly" it would be one thing. But in our area, we often get rapid on-off cycling right before the power goes out, supposedly because of trees on lines, automated attempts to reset branch circuits by the power company, etc. It absolutely cannot be good for electronics, and we lose one or two things every year (this year it appears to be the control panel on the dishwasher and one of my Ring range extenders used to detect outages, but one can never be certain its these power fluctuations causing it). What I can tell you is that none of the devices we keep on a UPS across four buildings has been lost. If I could put everything on a UPS, I would. Battery backups for me, thank you!
