Notify Hubitat if power goes out

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1

Hello:

Is there a device that can notify Hubitat in the event of a power failure?

This device will have to be mains powered, have a big capacitor or battery (to power the zigbee or Z-wave radio,) and tell Hubitat if the mains are on or off.

My Hubitat (and my router) are on on a UPS, and I am installing a whole home (well half a home) standby generator in the event the power goes out.

I have an irrigation system that consists of a well water pump that Hubitat controls.

In the event of a power failure, I do not want the generator to run that pump so Hubitat must not start the pump if the power is out (also, turn off the pump in short order if the power goes out in the middle of an irrigation cycle.)

Currently, I tapped off a bedroom circuit for the pump and I want the bedroom powered by the generator and to isolate the pump is impractical.

So, I envision a relay that stays energized on a non generator circuit that feeds a contact sensor on some kind of battery backup that tells Hubitat if the power is on.

Does anyone know of a device that can handle this, or am I rolling my own?

Thanks, Mark.

2

A prior long thread with a few suggestions:

3

I use the Ring Range Extender 2. It's a zwave device with a battery backup.

4

Zooz makes (or made, seems to be out at Amazon) one as well. Basically for either, if power source goes from mains to battery, there’s an outage. I have one on a finicky GFCI circuit so I know to go reset it.

5

Me too. Reports power off/on almost immediately.

6

I bought a cheap plug-in relay on Amazon for a few bucks then connect it to an old garage door open/close sensor from the junk drawer. It's worked great for years.

7

Zooz Zac38 Zooz 800 Series Z-Wave Plus Range Extender ZAC38 - The Smartest House

8

My Hubs monitor my UPS Servers that will trip a power failure event.

9

Another vote for the Ring Range Extender 2. Has been real reliable and I have not missed any power outage reports even when I have been out of state via my phone notification.

10

i also use it!

works great, got hubitat on battery backup...runs for hours...

11

Battery backed-up devices are good for this, if they report power source as mains or battery. One such device is a Honeywell T6 Pro thermostat with the community driver. When it switches to battery you know the power went out, and when it returns to mains the power came back on.

12

OR the transformer on your furnance is fried. I know small chance...

13

Yes, my Ring.

14

I noticed that when I installed mine. If I didn't have the "Frankenstein" project I mentioned above I would have used this to monitor the for power outages.

15

These has been my main notification, probably since they are some of the 1st things I got. Also have some ZAC38's and ZSE50's. All work well.

16

I use one of these, had a ring 2 but it died after about a year.

17

I use Hubitat Ping (HPM) to query my PC and my BLE tag gateway.

If the pings fail after 5 minutes I do a hub shutdown.

My PC shutdowns at the same time via UPS software; they are both on the same UPS.

18

I also use the Zooz Range Extender - but I use two of them. One is primary and the other one is a backup. I went down this path because occasionally someone would remove the device and it would trigger the hub shut down process. Now I check for both being on "battery" before shutting down the hub.

19

Options listed above are good but I did want to point out your transfer switch might have another option. I have a Generac whole home generator and on the transfer switch there are contacts you can connect to that will indicate when the power is out and the transfer switch has moved to generator power. You can connect these to a relay that would then update HE.