Power went out here from approximately 2am until 4am.
It would be helpful if sense would email me a report showing the start, end, and duration of the outage.
Thanks
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I like your idea, at least logging and alerting during the period when Sense loses contact with the mothership. Sense sometimes alerts when this happens, though often delayed.
I do see this more as a general network function and I believe that some forms of networking hardware that have server-based logins have this type of functionality. I have an aging, but rock-solid Apple network, that I have occasionally tried to replace with newer mesh-based systems (tried Orbi and Google), but have never been successful in gaining speed or functionality that I had hoped for. Until I move to my dream Ubiquiti system, I keep supplementing my network with devices like this one, that has the functionality you have requested, along with other fun stuff:
I recommend maintaining a clear distinction between network outages and power outages. Both are important but distinct events often with distinct causes and effects. My specific suggestion was to report details of a power outage. Of course, this is likely to also cause a network outage.
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Good point, though I’m not sure Sense can discriminate when the event happens, especially since the monitor doesn’t have battery backup. Any alert would be based on the Sense mothership noticing that the monitor has stopped sending data, plus noticing when it resumes. I guess a network outage would include some non zero power data after the event, but with a power outage data would be zeroed out.
I’m definitely in the “the more logging the better” camp. Partly I think it’s a UI issue, as hinted here:
Of course just a straightforward web-based log download would be better than nothing. In theory that could be incorporated into the existing data download files.
But now to the tricky part of network vs power outage. Rather than @kevin1’s fingbox method (which I do with UniFi), if you have something like a voltage-monitoring UPS with your network gear plugged into it you can log and send alerts during a power (Sense) outage. The voltage logging can also serve to keep Sense “honest”.
The most robust solution, which I think I’d be using if I was in PG&E-land right now, would be to use something like a Monnit voltage sensor on the Sense circuit and have a 4G LTE gateway service with that. The LiPo on the gateway runs for 24hrs stand-alone and it would be trivial to add some juice to extend that to long enough for major outages. An ethernet gateway would be cheaper but you’d then be relying on keeping your network intact in a power outage. Of course the real motivation to invest in something like that would probably have to come from needing other forms of monitoring like water leaks, pump failures and so on. I use Monnit for building/construction monitoring and it has saved some serious pain.