[Project] Fault Detection: Power Quality

Sense Labs
170

I want to share here that my power issues - the severe ones I had last year that destroyed electronics, caused minor electrocutions on unpowered circuits, and were theoretically a fire hazard - have been solved entirely.

I want to share this here because it was only possible with Sense. Multiple electricians and the power company could not find the issue. People were starting to think I was making it up. The data from sense was the only useful clue and only useful evidence. It’s truly invaluable for that, and I am recommending all my neighbors with mysterious power issues get sense purely for this feature. It should get primary status, not merely “labs” status.

I say that last bit because it never actually gave me a push notification or anything like it when I was having 1000x events per month. I needed to navigate to the power quality route to get the indication.

Honestly I think sense should market it to associations and annoyed homeowners just for the power quality functionality.

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171

If you lose power enough for your router and/or modem to go down, sense cannot upload the event. IIRC they’re already pushing the onboard hardware very hard, I doubt they have the storage space to retain it long enough to upload when the connection returns.

What I did when I had power problems was I put my router and modem on a good UPS, so the connection doesn’t drop during blips or even short outages. Mine is a bit too small for long term use, since I just needed a basic one to ride through the issues. But if you have outages in your area often, go as big as you can afford!

Not gonna lie, all the people who switched landlines to their cable company should consider getting a UPS for their modem, router, and also phone basestation. It’s worth it to get a big one that will last at least twice as long as your usual outage.

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