Power outage monitor/alerting

As I was searching the interwebz, I thought to myself: Maybe the flashaholics can help...

I'm looking for a device that can alert me remotely (ie: text, email, notification) of a power outage to a specific plug/circuit in my house. I'm trying to avoid using an old Android device (leaving an old cell phone plugged in makes me nervous). It looks so far like my best bet is some kind of Home Automation system that has a hub, as the hubs tend to be the devices that alert on power outages.

Does anyone have any ideas, or devices that they've used for this purpose?

Sen

You mean like this?:

https://www.isocket3g.com/en/

That would work if I weren't so cheap...er...cost conscious. My WiFi connected light switch was less than $50...

Sen

I built something around an arduino with a GSM module. It runs off of a 9v power adapter. One of it's I/O pins monitors input voltage from the adaptor and if it drops, battery power takes over and it sends an SMS message to a predetermined cell phone. The most expensive part was the GSM board which was around $50 at the time, bringing the total hardware in at around $80, plus the monthly fee for the SIM card service. It's not quite off the shelf but it works.

There are phone-line-based monitors that have battery backup and will call a predetermined series of numbers from a landline. These start at around $150 for a basic one that monitors power, temperature, sound level and some contact closures. It really depends on how complex you want to get.

That sounds really cool PhotonWrangler. Just out of curiosity do you know how cheaply you can obtain a SIM card for a small amount of data transmission such as that project?

blah9 said:

That sounds really cool PhotonWrangler. Just out of curiosity do you know how cheaply you can obtain a SIM card for a small amount of data transmission such as that project?

Click to expand...

Adafruit is a reseller of Ting and they offer SIM cards with very affordable messaging rates for devices like this. They also offer some fairly inexpensive GSM cards.

Very cool; thanks!