This only happens in the US where lawsuits are a national pastime. And because lawyers have made litigation so expensive it is often cheaper for a company to pay rather than fight.
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Simply No
Needing a battery backup isn't new and not something that needs to be explained. Unless you live under a rock and have not used a computerized device it has been best practice and suggested for probably 30 years to use a ups/battery backup to prevent data loss , corruption or just simply bad things. We don't need to constantly warn people to protect the stuff. At some point the individual needs to take some responsibility. As there is no standard for UPS with Hubitat there is also no way to privide directions or rules to take care of this. You need to figure out your ups plans and make the rules accordingly.
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Yeah, OK. None of us have anything in our closets anymore that are "prime examples of the total calamity" that pulling the plug unexpectedly USE to be on MANY devices.
Just to be clear, I never suggested that HE provide onboard long-run backup. Graceful behavior in the event of power loss would go a long ways.
This is part of the problem there and now. It has almost never resorted to a calamity. It has always been a possibility though. More often then not it is a annoyance. Even with Hubitat most of the time it will come up fine and on the occasions it doesn't a simple soft reset will fix it 99.9% of the time.
But how much should we ask for from a hub that most of us bought for $100-150.
Would you be willing to spend 50% more for a built in battery backup. And the repurchase in a few years after battery problem ruins the hub.
Well stated. It’s a reasonable modern-day expectation that a device survive a crash. There are many methods to accomplish the feature.
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Since you brought up pricing, I'll try to close on this note. The price of this device, and what people are increasingly relying upon it to manage (without hassle), are out of sync.
I've said it before; there are folks in this forum and others that wouldn't flinch at paying 4x more for the latest capable networking equipment from Brand X.
IF "HA is a hobby", and HE as a company is just an overgrown "hobby project" with a short MTBE (mean time before end)....then yeah...expectations of future features should be set accordingly.
But...a lot of things have been done right in this product relative to the competition...and if the company has legs, then expecting a little more and paying at least twice the current rate for an evolving platform is NOT AT ALL out of line.
If a higher price point can't be justified as features expand, I'd suggest it's not on what the product is capable of...but more about other factors that might give comparative shoppers pause.
EDIT: Just for entertainment value I googled a device I once deployed to keep an eye on HVAC status in "computer rooms" (as they were once called). Low and behold it's still a product! Roughly twice the price as 'Version 1.0' of the old days...it can do a lot more now....but it's still not as flexible as an HE.
GASP ! They built in onboard battery backup and it'll tell ya when it's on battery. And I'd guess the amount of power required to "make a phone call" probably exceeds everything the HE is tasked with other than maaaybeee radio comms.
" Includes: A pre-installed temperature sensor to monitor the installation location and a 24-hour battery backup to ensure reliable operation during a power outage. "
OH man the Sensaphone, used to install them in remote data centers to alert me to issues.
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I don't think HE is a hobby, but i do think devices that are built need to be purpose built to maintain a reasonable cost to benefit ratio. Considering the cost of the USB-C battery pack that @dJOS has put out i am not sure it can support much more cost for the majority of folks.
It doesn't matter if it is made if no one will buy it. It is easy to say "oh another $10 is fine" until you actually are sending your money out for them.
I find it rather amusing we are discussing a Datacenter AC monitoring system in relation to a UPS for Hubitat.
I just wanted to add that in all honesty I am not opposed to what you are talking about, I just don't think it is reasonable to put this responsibility on the hub perse. Some of this is on us knowing what we are doing. Part of it is just nature of electronic devices, Part of it is diminishing return on what we get once we have it protected through various means. Part of it is a exaggeration of the problem.
Ultimately if you want to keep this from ever being a problem you should probably just put your whole hose on a UPS like a Tesla Power Wall or ecoflow offgrid solution. Since the discussion of cost doesn't to be a concern for some folks that seems a very reasonable option.
This whole thread oversimplifies the idea of providing battery backup and the advanced functions to support the additional asks beyond simply providing power when the power is out. I am not saying it can't be done, but just that it isn't easy or cheap and as such most users probably wouldn't spend money on it.
I also still stand by my comment earlier that once i have 12+ hours of battery backup what does it matter. I understand some folks have niche situations like off grid power and such, but those folks are not going to financially support the product development to make it happen.
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Warning: 2c worth here.
While the discussion about keeping the hub alive is all well and good, I've also concentrated on keeping my zigbee mesh alive for as long as possible. With pretty much all xiaomi/Tuya/etc battery operated sensors in my mesh, having the mesh go down is also a minor disaster as many of these won't rejoin the mesh after a power outage takes down the repeaters or if the repeaters are mains plugs.
Hence plugs are on a separate zigbee network, all repeaters have battery backup as well. Because there is no use to have hub restart strategies if half your sensors have gone offline and a repair/wake up is required. As I said my 2c worth.
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Another relatively inexpensive option is to use a standard 120V relay plugged into the non-battery backup side of the UPS. Connect the contacts of the relay to an Ecolink DWZWAVE2.5-ECO then write a rule in RM to monitor the contact. If 'open' for xx minutes then shutdown. You can put all those neatly in a little plastic project box, too for aesthetics.
Speaking as a Tesla PW2 owner, they aren't actually fast enough at responding to power outages for modern computers (laptops excluded). You can actually see your Home's LED lights flicker when they take over. I still run UPS's for my servers and comms gear for this reason - they are Line-Interactive and have a response time in the 6-8 milliseconds range, vs ~250 milliseconds for a PW2.
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... my 2¢
For me the Hubitat Hub is a cross between a hobby and real need. I started with X10 automating some lighting for the wife's decorating plan. It included 8 "up" lights, each with their own in the cord switch.
I added water sensors and a water main shutoff valve.
The other automations are part convenience and part hobby. The need / desire for a UPS stems from my technical OCDness. I would not even try to justify it on a cost/benefit basis.
As for Hubitat adding an internal UPS. I think this would not be such a good idea, again due to cost to benefit ratio.
I worked in automotive for some time. We got to know the vehicle engineers pretty well. It was said that every engineer had a "concept" that would make whatever part they were responsible for, "much better" at a cost of only a few cents. However if they added in all these "much better" ideas it would push the sell price out of their respective markets.
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Buying time to shutdown takes more board real estate than I expected.
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I am definitely at the other end of the spectrum from the "Oh, this is so, so complicated" crowd. I have a few UPS devices, and a backup generator. The UPS devices keep things humming along for the few seconds it takes the generator to come on, and they "clean up" the power as well. Solved. For years now, in a place that's a lot more remote than that experienced by most suburbanites. I do keep a couple of additional generators and some fuel on hand, just in case the automatic big boy connected to the big propane tank goes down. But that's it. Nothing more complicated.
We're currently designing another house, that will operate primarily on solar. We'll tie into the grid for those long periods of clouds and weather that affect us a couple of times per year, but our battery system will be designed to operate the property for about 8-12 hours only, before the generator takes over, and that's just to keep things quiet. Much simpler and more economical than days of battery backup.
You can overthink, over-design, and overbuild anything. I think a bit of that might be going on here.
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Had it since I migrated to HE. It is a RAVPower 32000 mAh power bank. Probably 3 years old. Since it is lithium ion and is constantly being charged, I strapped a temp sensor to alert if over 100F.
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