What are your battery backup strategies for Hubitat and network?

I have a little one just for my Hubitat :+1: happy with that so far. Might extend it to the modem at a later date.

Computers can pull a lot of power, so they will drain the reserve power in a UPS rather quickly. Mechanical hard drives run off of 12 volts and also require significant power.

Devices that run off 5 volt wall worts generally use somewhere between 1-5 watts of power. Thus, even if you have several of them plugged into a USP, it will take quite a while to run out of backup power. Just avoid plugging high wattage devices like computers, monitors, TVs, audio devices, etc. into the same UPS.

I have a separate UPS that just powers my work computer and will safe shutdown windows before the battery drains.

I have a small-medium UPS that controls my Hubitat hub, TV, computer monitors, and 2-in-1 dock (so I can keep my Wyze cam on for local storage at the very least).

I also have a larger UPS with a secondary attachment battery that controls my modem, router, switch, and PC. It's probably overkill as it's telling my that my current estimated runtime is 648 minutes (I'd also shut my PC down if it was an outage and not just a quick disruption).

I've got CyberPower 1500s covering critical infrastructure. My servers, which when power dropped get a signal to poweroff, I have a separate one running my cable modem, router, and cellular modem. (DD-WRT router configured with dual failover WAN.). HE is wired to one of the LAN ports on the router as it is core infrastructure. It is on an APC500. I get about 3 hours run time before I need to remote in and power them off.

After the February ice storm. I am planning long term to have a whole house generator to cover for power outages by ice storm or more likely hurricane. EIther way, I need power to stay on...

You guys had it tough. My cousin lives just south of Dallas and was hit like everyone.

The one issue I see with a generator is how to power it. I have an old gasoline 5kw generator, it works great, starts right up but is loud as hell and sucks a lot of gas even when lightly loaded. So the issue becomes how to store enough energy to power the generator. My cousin lost their natural gas so its either propane or gasoline (or diesel).

Siphoning for you vehicle is not a good idea. The fill vapor capture system (since 1998) requires a valve at the end of the fill pipe (in the tank). A siphon tube has a chance of damaging that valve.

I kept mine simple (I think). As I work in the field of electronic security (intruder alarms / swipe card systems etc) getting hold of 12v DC battery backed power supplies was cost effective for me. My ISP modem & router work off 12v DC, so these are hooked up to two power 3 amp supplies. Each power supply has 2x 7AH batteries, as each device pulls less than 1 amp in theory you would get 14+ hours of backup. For the HE I used a similar principle but this has a heavy duty vehicle USB (12v - 5v) multi way convertor/adapter, using a similar battery backed power supply and a 7AH battery.

The mains monitoring is delivered in two ways, using a Fibaro UBS (also 12v and battery backed) i use one of the inputs to monitor a power supply's mains monitoring trigger which operates a delayed and cancelable rule onto HE to shutdown the hub gracefully if mains is off greater than two hours. The second mains monitoring is via my intruder alarm system via GSM - this will text my phone in the event of mains power loss.

Fortunately here in the UK we don't get severe weather events causing power outages like in the US but we do get idiots digging roads and damaging HV cables causing them (twice in 5 years) or as is often the case it's something in the house like a faulty oven heating element tripping the RCD (happened only last week :frowning: )

Another bonus I find using the 12v battery backed power supplies is I have simple LED lighting with manual switching in strategic places which are still operational whilst the mains is off.

1 Like

I have recently added another UPS for the HE Hubs and 2nd Hue Hub.

The Plex Server along with Drobos is on its own UPS and it will do an orderly shutdown when the UPS is close to giving up.

Another UPS for my M1 Mac Mini, not monitor, along with office managed switches and AP.

Another one for the FTTD router, managed switches, AP, wireless security camera base stations, Fing box, and a Hue Hub.

The micro managed switches are POE as are the remaining APs.

I need to find a way for my M1 Mac Mini to send a shutdown to the HE Hubs if the power is off for too long.

Very rare to have a full power outage, but have had a few power drops recently so these UPS have me covered in the main.

Reading thread above will move the four IKEA zigbee repeaters onto existing UPS and some spare zwave sockets to keep the respective networks stable longer.

You can build your own power source for UPS it's easier than you think:

2 Likes

Two circuits from my electrical panel independently feed the A and B UPS blocks. UPS A has a USB monitoring interface, which is connected to an Opengear ASM7008-2 running NUT for shutdown scripting. The redundant UPS feed A and B input on the Cyberpower PDU15M10AT ATS in the network rack, which powers the network core.
The network switches support POE+ and POE++. Nearly everything wired to the network is either native POE or uses POE extractors. I like the Trendnet TPE-104GS for multi-voltage support up to POE+ power… still looking for cost effective POE++ extractor.

Separately there is a wall box for the wired security system. It contains a 12VDC power supply and battery similar to what @EVOLVING.HOME describes. It’s effectively another UPS that powers a Konnected board and a 5V regulator to power a RasPi Z-Way node. Konnected and Z-Way are both WiFi connected hosts.

@sidjohn1 brilliant idea to use a DC power combiner at the HE. Does your combiner cable have Schottky diodes built-in or did you have to hack something together?

I also appreciate the comments cautioning about the effects of losing mains-powered repeaters. Has me thinking about ways to overcome that problem.

I recently bought this for my computer, which has my DSL modem and router nearby. We just lost power a day ago, and it worked splendidly. My desktop had power for over an hour (I let it run dry just to see.) Because I have DSL, I don't lost internet during a power outage.

I also bought two of these when they were going for $25 bucks (shoulda bought more.) My NVR and Hubitat hub are plugged into one of them.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00NTQYUA8/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I needed to repeatedly test a power cycle and wrote a small driver to power down/power up a standalone hub (no need for a second device). Same logic may have other uses...

2 Likes

Neat solution. The reason I'm pinging a second device (that is not on a UPS) is to determine if there is a power outage and when power is restored.

1 Like

I have UPS on Network and Both Hubitat.

If Hubitat detects a power outage it will run for an hour before issuing an orderly shutdown.

When power comes back up it should all start up on its own.

The way I am detecting an outage is by putting a trigger on the Ring Zwave Repeaters, if tow or more go onto battery power then I know power is down.

I use a UPS to power my network rack which also powers my hubs via POE. The UPS uses a small 7ah battery and the actual load is about a quarter of the the UPS is rated for. I piggybacked another set of leads off the battery and ran it over to a dpdt relay with a 12Vdc coil that is connected to a small power supply in a non backed up socket. The other side of the relay goes to a 12v 105ah deep cell battery. This allows the UPS to manage its own battery and i can use a regular battery charger with the deep cell. When the power drops out the voltage on the 7ah battery drops and the 105ah picks up the rest of the current. I have ran it for a bout 4 hours while I was replacing z-wave switches and have not had any issues.

If my power goes out, many of my devices such as lights and repeaters won't work. However, my cable modem, WiFi router, VOIP phone system, Hubitat hub and Hue and Lutron bridges are all on UPS backup. My computers are on UPS as well. If the outage is extended, I can crank up my gasoline powered generator, but where I live, power outages are unusual and rarely last more than a few minutes.

Wow hard core ! !

I subscribe to the KISS principle.

I have a simple single 18650 ups for the Hub. If power off is detected the hub will be shutdown in 1 hour (about 1/6 of the actual UPS runtime). If it is shutdown I have to manually cycle the hub to restart it.

We have very few power outages here. The 1 hour time will more that hold up long enough for 99% of our outages. For those that last day(s) the generator comes out.

Is the cheap and fast solution

1 Like