Detecting power supply status when using a UPS

[andrewm]

We had a power outage today for a couple of hours, so we left the house and went out. I was initially surprised on returning as the power was back on but I had no lights on. However on further review I realized the ISY was operating correctly because its power supply is on a UPS (the PLM isn't).

 

This made me wonder if there is any way the ISY can detect and raise events on power failure / recovery when its power supply is on a UPS and its PLM is not? Ie whether it can detect the PLM's state?

 

Note in my case I don't want to move the ISY power supply from the UPS because it's actually connected to a multi-outlet Synaccess Netbooter, which provides services to the Isy and other devices.

 

A work around could be to add an additional Insteon device that would send a power on status notification to the Isy, but that's less elegant and there's a danger that signal could get lost in the initial power-on noise.

[kaphely]

Is the PLM connected to the UPS? If so you could also have an IOLinc on that ups. Then you get a 5 volt dc wall adapter to trigger the IOLinc input but you connect this adapter on a non-UPS outlet. So when the power goes out your IOLinc input would go off so the ISY would know about it and it would go on when the power gets restored. You could then trigger a program to turn on lights when the power is restored.

[andrewm]

Thanks for responding. The PLM is not connected to the UPS.

 

Your solution would fall under the "work around" I mentioned in the OP. I know that would be an option, but it wouldn't be the best solution for me.

[Michel Kohanim]

Hi andrewm,

 

If ISY's power supply is not on UPS, then you could have a program that runs at startup and sends you a notification.

 

Other than that, it would be very difficult for ISY to sense power loss during the loss.

 

With kind regards,

Michel

[andrewm]

Obviously if nothing was on a UPS it would be no problem. That's not the case for me.

 

For historical reasons the Isy power supply (NOT the PLM) is plugged into a Synaccess Netbooter, which is shared by other devices and is in turn plugged into a UPS . The Netbooter can remotely power on/off the attached devices (which are not in a very convenient physical location) or even monitor and automatically reboot the Isy if network connectivity is lost to the Isy; this used to happen often for me, back when Isy was less stable. Tbh I don't know if it's still needed for monitoring, though the remote power control is useful if things lock up.

 

I was hoping the PLM could provide (or Isy could infer from the PLM) poweron / poweroff events. Oh well, I can always improvise another solution.

 

- Andrew

[sea3pea0]

If you have a windows pc using eventghost on a UPS you can have eventghost detect power loss with help from the script in this thread on the eventghost forum: http://www.eventghost.org/forum/viewtop ... f=2&t=2928

I use this and so far it works perfectly. When the UPS attached to the windows PC loses grid power eventghost generates an event that the system is using battery power. When AC power is restored it generates another event. You could send commands to REST from eventghost to change variables or whatever you need to signal the ISY that grid power has failed and also when it has been restored.