Power Outages - Beyond the UPS. Will we need to fear this forever?

Yeah, in a bygone era I actually spec'd a few of those that sat in separate rooms from what we were needing to keep up. But with the shrinkage of the power requirements for everything (I can safely say)...I was just expecting that for "stuff as small but still important as what we're talking" below would be a more common built-in feature minus the "super" designation

I have multiple tombstone-ish APC UPSs, admittedly a couple are remnants from the years I didn't want PCs to go down...power conditioning aside the laptops with batteries take up some of the need. I don't just hang the HE off one, there's comms devices in locations I also have HEs. Admittedly these APCs don't have the freshest of batteries but still I think the last prolonged power outage I got at least 30 minutes from them.

I like the idea of something that JUST takes care of the HE and does so with a smart interconnect...but I'll have to admit, reading @dylan.c post above (outlining a well thought out solution) I was thinking to myself....wouldn't it be cool if a a square centimeter of board space in the HE could be dedicated to a bunch of that somehow.

I don't think I've heard anybody ever complain about the HE being "too big" of a footprint. Hell, give me another USB port to plug an optional module out the back of it to accomplish this then (sans battery but maybe not capacitor, sub-super of course :wink:).

EDIT: Maybe not, "sans battery", this is where those guys are going in that other thread and with the latest in battery technology...this really doesn't have to be too big of a unit as they've proved.

EDIT Correction: @dylan.c well.... "super" is indeed the important and necessary designation on the capacitor called for "to buy time" to gracefully close down, just as you said !

I think your option 1 fits about 90% of us, and option 2 works for 9%. In my mind the last 1% are those folks who have automation systems at remote vacation homes or other situations where physical access to the site/hub is an issue.

I'm watching where that goes also. Seems to be the most elegant solution of all these options.

Doesn't have a smart interconnect but the USB-C ups that @dJOS designed works very well. I'm excited for the 2.0 version

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yep, or a challenge to get to in a storm. Your industrial controls experience probably has you quite surprised how far "beyond the plant/facility" a lot of control capabilities have been pushed and now facilitate operations that would have otherwise required somebody putting on their boots and going out to tend to. Agriculture, Livestock, Greenhouses, etc. are a huge consumer of this now.

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To be fair, I didn’t design the original version, I just made them.

The new version is heavily based on that design, but we are aiming for it to be far more tailored to Hubitat.

PS, the design goals are here:

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That sounds like it could be helpful for users that have extended power outages. Please feel to do so. If you make it a wiki post, others can add to or edit it.

Done.

I really hope you guys get all the cooperation and support, if not HE internal design accomodation, you might need to succeed in integrating this.

The more one thinks about this stuff in the scope of what all the community-at-large is doing with HA it behoves the-best-in-class solutions to NEVER have a problem induced by a power outage. I'm not saying the box should have built-in "stayin alive capability" for 24hours... I'm just saying...be accomodating and orderly in how you deal with power loss.

I don't think you have to be at a Crestron level to expect this. HA has gone WELL BEYOND "playing with your lights" and despite all the safety/security warnings in making is so...I'd argue it is has become Mission Critical ...even if only for THE HUGE HASSLE it can be when it breaks after being built out and relied upon.

EDIT add:
HE prides itself in being the "Look Ma, no internet and it STILL WORKS" solution, I think the "Look Ma, no power and it RECOVERS" would make a good pairing.

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At this point I don't think HE has anything to do with it. I think know it is just about the cost to add these last bits of control and features to the current design and will the cost support it.

I think the cost is really the biggest problem when you factor in ACP UPS options out there.

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I wouldn't use that classification. If the "hassle" is huge enough for any given user, they can throw enough money at it to get some type of solution working.

Our (my) problem is we (I) want "mission critical" reliability and functionality at a hobbyist price point and consumer "set-and-forget" deployment.

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@dJOS

Interesting but way too complex.

My two approaches at the moment are:

  1. When the UPS is supplying, measure the Hub current draw. I know the C7 power down is about 60 ma. If the hub current is below 60 ma, shut off the UPS output until mains return.

  2. Assume some timing related operation. (would be able to be disabled). After loss of power for xxx minutes the UPS output would be shut off, to return on resumption of mains.

Both have drawbacks.

  1. You could not run more than one hub (probably). Internal circuitry is more complex (but doable).

  2. A minimum UPS hold up time would have to be predefined. Unfortunately this depends on the battery capacity ( a variable).

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As it turns out, My wife and I live on a 56-acre island in a lake, in rural Maine. You can drive onto the island but t's about 2 miles down a private road that my only neighbor and I maintain. He's not at all technology-savvy, so not very helpful for restarting things. It was our vacation home before we moved here full time, 500 miles from our then home, so I've had to deal with a bit of "how to access and reset stuff", in years past. Back then I used an ISY-994 and also Homeseer on a RPi (the ISY was much more reliable than Homeseer, but not more reliable than my HE hubs, which have been rock solid). Anyway...

With Hubitat, once you restore power it just comes back online. To verify that before writing this, I shut down one of my hubs remotely and then went about the morning doing chores, then pulled the plug on that device, and then restored power. Sure enough, it came right back online. So, it would seem to me that if you had a UPS that turned itself back on once the battery reached a certain level, and you had your router and HE hub plugged into that, you'd probably be in pretty good shape.

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Agreed.

Make it so :vulcan_salute:

:rofl:

I don’t think the single hub per UPS is a drawback, I think it’s better for reliability.

I’m also thinking we should add a restore power delay timer to give the battery time to get above our minimum DoD, before restoring hub power.

The major downside to not including a Zigbee radio is the lack of visibility of SoC. So if we have multiple power outages over a short period of time, the hub won’t know how much runtime it has available.

My HE hub is powered by a 32000 mAh power bank. If grid power is lost, this is one of the few pass through power banks that continue supplying power during the transfer, averting a corrupted database.
I fully expect the power bank to keep the hub powered for 4-5 days.

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The major issue with using a power bank, is the constant charging to 100% will kill the batteries after roughly a year. Assuming they are LiOn and not LFP.

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Huh, my HE loses power somewhat often when I mess around in my rack putting in new gear or redoing cables or whatnot. I didn't realize there was any risk in just unplugging it..

Yep, database corruption leading to a soft reset and restore from backup is a very common outcome, ask me how I know….

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So here is the scenero I'm trying to find a simple solution for:

  1. Mains power lost
  2. UPS maintains power to the hub.
  3. Power is out long enough to nearly deplete the UPS power.

Now at this point "hopefully" user had written a rule that has shutdown the hub.

  1. Now Mains returns before the UPS is 100% depleted so the Hub remains in the shutdown state.
  2. Hub will remain in the shutdown state until power is cycled.
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Tbh, the only way I see us meeting our goals without a Zigbee module as the brains, is with a microcontroller.

Arduino Nano boards are about $5 AUD, as are ESP32’s, but considering a Zigbee board is double the price and offers direct integration to the hub, it’s looking like the better option.

Ah, compromise, it’s so much fun! :man_facepalming:

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Why not try this:

  1. Purchase a simple wifi switch connected to your wifi network, and plug it into a UPS that restores power when its battery is sufficiently recharged (doesn't need to be manually turned on). Most wifi switches have their own app available and can tell you when the switch is online/offline via that app, through the cloud. I have Leviton and Wyze switches, for example, and both seem reliable.
  2. Plug Hubitat hub into that switch, and turn on the wifi switch
  3. Set up Hubitat hub Rule as earlier described to shut itself down X minutes after power outage detected (using, for example, a Ring extender, which can tell Hubitat when it has switched to its internal battery and remained in that state)
  4. When power is restored, the wifi switch will come back online. If still powered on, your Hubitat hub will restart. If for some reason it became powered off during the outage, you can restart it via the cloud app.

Seems the only real challenge is finding a UPS that will turn itself on when recharged, and not require a manual restart.

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