The neighbor and I have been warning the city for years about this large branch overhanging the street. They said it wasn't a problem. They are finally convinced and the tree is now marked for removal. The branch falling took down my power lines and the next door neighbor.
We often see people without a UPS complaining about the issues a sudden power outage causes, and I just wanted to share the very successful recovery I had thanks to my UPS which gave me lots of time to shut down after phoning the city and Toronto Hydro Electric to report the incident.
Thanks to my UPS keeping my hubs, bridges, modem, router, 24 port switch, NAS and MacBook Pro that runs my four node.js instances (Google Assistant Relay, Insteon Server, Homebridge and CastWeb API) powered, I had plenty of time to do a shutdown until the power lines could be reconnected. The outage for me lasted 5 hours, but once I started everything up again, the only thing that had to be paired again was an IKEA Trådfri LED driver that frequently drops off the Hue bridge when we lose power.
Absolutely everything else was just fine once the hubs and MacBook were running again. The Xiaomi devices that were paired to the Aqara HomeKit Gateway came right back online like nothing had ever happened. Even the two Xiaomi Mijia motion sensors, two Xiaomi leak sensors, and my Xiaomi Aqara Temp/Humidity sensor directly paired to HE did not drop off the Zigbee network. I couldn't be happier with the way things just came back online, and cannot stress enough how valuable the minor investment in a full size UPS is to your IoT devices. Here's the APC model I have, and recommend.
Also want to give praise to the Ring Alarm. Its built-in backup battery kicked in, it switched right over to its cellular backup, notified me of the power outage and the door open tones kept humming along like nothing had happened. When power was restored it gracefully joined back onto my network and notified me that its connection and power had been restored.
I do computer tech support for a living. Several years ago I switched to CyberPower UPSes from APC because of a bad run in the models I used at customer sites. Since then I've stuck with CyberPower because I've had good results. Your mileage may vary. I have a few of the CyperPower models in use here from the CP1500PFCLCD (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00429N19W/) powering my primary PC, multiple monitors, and accessories to the small CP425SLG (https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0030SL08A/) that's only for my production Hubitat hub. I'm going to be adding a 24-port switch dedicated to the smart home devices. So the switch, 6 Hubitat hubs, a few Raspberry PI PCs, and at least one other PC (undecided as to what) for use in monitoring the smart home status will get a new UPS and the 425 will get repurposed elsewhere.
While it may sound silly and a little wasteful power-wise, I'm acquiring 8 golf cart batteries and plan on building my own power bank that I can keep charged and ready for use. If I end up with a long power outage (like last week that was 3-4 hours when a idiot hit a power pole at the high school and took out 4 transformers), I can unplug the UPSes from the mains and connect them to a large inverter on the battery bank to keep running much longer than just the UPSes can provide and not have a blink in my smart home, networking, or my work PCs. Right now that functionality is provided by a smaller Kodiak lithium portable power pack (https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MQVPLFM/). While I could get by without the smart home portion (but I'm lazy and don't want to) or maybe even the IP cameras and Blue Iris server (which is a power hungry beast comparatively), I need to keep the Internet and select PCs up and running for work. It's doesn't look good when your tech has to say, "I can't help you right now because my power/Internet/PC isn't working." It's not the best way to instill confidence in a customer. And to be blunt, just annoys the crap out of me when any of it's down.
Just to clarify. I’m endorsing a full size UPS to backup all your stuff. Not endorsing APC in particular, just have had success with that particular model for myself and several of my clients.
I’ve had experience with many inexpensive, to very expensive to brands/models over the years, from Oneac, APC, CyberPower, and Tripp Lite. None have been immune from issues across their entire line. Choose what works best for you. This model that I’ve had for three years works well for me, and no failures for my clients that are using it either. It’s a good one and low cost. That’s all.
They are finally convinced and the tree is now marked for removal. The branch falling took down my power lines and the next door neighbor.
