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Thread: keeping track of power cuts ...

  1. #1
    Automated Home Legend chris_j_hunter's Avatar
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    Default keeping track of power cuts ...

    we're prone to power cuts, and one on Sunday ran longer than our UPS could last ...

    meaning Cortex Histories cover only part of it ...

    IDRANet was kept going longer by our IPSs, but that doesn't help !

    so, wondered if anyone has a way of timing power-cuts - in olden times, a simple electric clock would have paused for the duration, meaning its display would have revealed how long ...

    nearest we have to that is a mechanical time-switch, but it's not easy to read it precisely ...

    this sort of thing :

    http://www.amazon.co.uk/Diehl-MIII-S...ds=time+switch

    in any case, how would we arrange the reading as an input to Cortex ?

    corrections to Window's time come from the 'net, without which drift would be a problem ...

    we're not using Reflex, yet ...

    any ideas ... ???
    Last edited by chris_j_hunter; 26th August 2015 at 04:58 PM.

  2. #2
    Moderator Gumby's Avatar
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    If you have a smart ups, there is usually monitoring software that can track interruptions. Won't feed back to Cortex though. Some mid-level UPS have USB connections to tell windows to shutdown, you might be able to also send an email or log to disk on power interruption, and then get Cortex to send an email when it comes back up. That may be a reasonable indication of duration, though not exactly what you asked for. Or, if you monitor a power meter, it would go to 0 consumption and probably be logged in Cortex history before the UPS gave out. Then can see history starting again when power comes back on and Cortex presumably restarts.
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    Automated Home Guru Vangelis's Avatar
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    You could pick up a cheap Android phone or tablet and run Tasker. Create a shell script to ping an address and timestamp any interruptions. You can then maybe have it interface to Cortex via an API call?

    This could be wifi only so no SIM required, or you could run a PAYG SIM and have it text you on power interruption. These devices tend to have longer battery life's that should outlast your UPS (and power cut). Playing around with backlight and Wifi sleeping could prolong it even more.

    I don't run an Idratek system so some of this might be theory

    Vangelis

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    Automated Home Legend chris_j_hunter's Avatar
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    thanks for replies, some food for thought !

    did wonder if the MFP timers could be used in some way - as long as the IPSs keep IDRANet going ... but can't see a way !

    AH's feature on Idratek / IoT / WebAPI published a bit over a week ago shows v.low-cost Android tablets are a display device option, so maybe linking to Tasker is also a possibility ...

  5. #5
    Automated Home Legend Karam's Avatar
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    Whilst mechanisms exist to detect mains signal in both the IPD and in QLDs and SLDs, the problem is how to use these to achieve what you want. So for example the IPD(S) has a connection within Cortex itself to create messages upon mains loss detection. You will also get error logs recorded as a result of QLDs and SLDs detecting mains loss or resumption (much quicker then the IPD which has a somewhat greater filter on this signal). So knowing when mains loss occured should be fairly easy. The problem is recording when resumption occurs if the PC has gone down. This is further complicated by the usual practice of implementing a PC watchdog whereby the IPD resets itself and thereby the entire network in order to enter the system cleanly into Reflex mode when it cannot detect the PC (i.e when the PC power fails). If you have a properly working setup then typically when the power resumes the PC will boot up and soon after re-initilaise the network and generate another error log to indicate that it was previously terminated. So all in all you should be able to work out the duration of the power cut plus or minus a few minutes, but it is not in some single nicely presented piece of data. Of course if your PC does not resume properly then this route will not work. Trying to set up a DFP timer will be problematic due to the network reset mentioned above. I suppose a module on the non resettable spur might be able to do something. Alterntively a slightly softer watchdog approach which just asks the IPD to reset its spurs but not itself might open up an approach to use one of the IPD timers to measure between the last mains off/on event.

    BTW the AH article did not show an Android tablet but rather the noticeboard running on a Windows tablet. However it certainly is possible to connect the noticeboard to a suitable app on an Android tablet

  6. #6
    Automated Home Legend chris_j_hunter's Avatar
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    yep, we know - from the Log generated by a QLD - when the power went down ... not sure why the other QLD & the SLDs didn’t do the same, presumably one’s enough ! Not the same, of course, as Cortex having a record of it, to add to it’s knowledge of when IDRANet started-up, and so calculate the interval to present to us directly ...

    not a big deal, perhaps, but knowing the interval, we’d be able to size the extra batteries we need to add to keep the UPS running usefully longer !

    Our experience, too, with Cortex, and HA generally, has been that the more data we have the better ... we tried to be cost-efficient, when we created our network, but we regret not including most of things we decided to omit ! Going back & adding sensors later, is quite painful & expensive, in time & money !

    this time, our PC stayed down - we need to bottom why, which first means finding a time when we can power everything down, so we can take a look at BIOS settings !

    Chris
    Last edited by chris_j_hunter; 31st August 2015 at 12:19 AM.

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