Question

I’m realizing this morning how vulnerable all of this great tech is when you lose either power or WiFi. My problem is that I don’t know how to tell which it is! I got an alert from my power company that my electric went out but within a few hours it was supposed to be restored. Nothing is working ( hub, cameras etc) so I tried resetting my router and WiFi but still no luck. I’m doing this remotely as I’m not at home. Hopefully I will have a friend there soon, but in the absence of someone to send over, what could I do? Thanks for any suggestions  

Answer 1

Likewise Matt. Have wall switches everywhere and try and avoid smart bulbs if possible. My cable modem is on UPS and worked through last nights outage. Luckily Rest of the stuff recovered on its own once the power came back. The few smart bulbs and led strips I have lit like a Christmas tree. Need to figure out and write a routine that would turn everything off after power is restored.  

Answer 2

How are you resetting internet remotely if there’s no connectivity?  

Comments

Stephen, I’m using the FIOS app to try to reset. It can only go through the motions but not tell me if the reset isn’t working. It asks if my tv and internet are restored. Since I’m not there, I don’t know  

Answer 3

What would you have done before?  

Comments

Carlos, if I were at home I would be able to tell if I had electric. The power company texted that power was restored, yet nothing is working so I thought my internet might also have been affected. That’s my problem. I don’t know which or if both are down.  

Answer 4

This is why i am moving towards as much local execution as possible. Zigbee and zwave devices with a local hub, put the hub and whatever else on a UPS and you dont have to worry about it. if someone cuts a fiber, most of my lights will still turn on and off based on motion or contact sensors. But if power goes out, what does it matter? Local or cloud execution wont matter if theres no AC power for your lights to come on

Comments

Mike, sorry can you tell me what a UPS is? I don’t care about lights, cameras or much else. I’m worried about my parrot who needs heat and I don’t like that I’m unable to diagnose the issue. Ok got it. Yes, that would probably help me since with that I could at least monitor the temperature! Thanks

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Thank you! Excellent idea!  

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Except that if your host site doesn't have internet you won't be able to control it remotely. Also, while the draw on a UPS from a ST box isn't great they won't last forever and if there's no power the devices you're turning on and off won't be turning on. Your heating source will also require sufficient power (a lot of if it is electric) and may still require 240v if it is oil. A whole-home generator and cell phone backup system are about as good as you can do for these situations, but the cost would be high.  

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@imperturbation91375 you have to make sure any UPS has auto restart though. Which means that should it deplete the battery before power comes back, it will self restart when the power is restored. Not all UPS devices do this. I have never seen a clear answer in Cyberpower devices if they do or do not. Most APC do as far as I can tell. Amazon UPs does not I found out the hard way. If they don’t, then they need a person to physically switch them on. Guess how I found that.  

Answer 5

I keep my router, NAS, and NVR, and smart gear on a UPS. Gives me 100 mins running without power.  

Answer 6

I agree I have ST and all supporting equipment on a UPS plus a LTE cellular fail over router.  

Comments

There it is the WiFi solution too! Thank you!  

Answer 7

This is the best notification and reset tool on the market. However it’s a dealer only product. If anyone would like to purchase one that isn’t a dealer please PM and I’ll get you pricing. 1, 3, 5, 8, 12 outlet models available

Answer 8

I have a whole house generator and thought this would be the answer, but the neighborhood cable box runs on the power company juice. It has a battery backup that lasts 30 mins. An answer would be to automatically switch to cellular service when cable goes out, but I don't know if I want to go that far.  

Comments

Guess there’s no real easy answer.  

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@euphorbiaceous My power is 99. 9999% up and whole house generator. My cable is 99. 999% up (except during long power failures). I'm happy with that coverage. The other fail points are: someone cutting the cable coming in the house, Hub, WiFi router, and Smartthings site fail. Some things you just can't control. Overall, I think I'm covered well.  

Answer 9

So short power outages a UPS can be great but not extended outages. Traditional alarm system battery backup can easily last a week if no intrusion events happen drawing more power to sound sirens and such. Luckily I am retired and home unless I travel out of town. Once while away we had a power outage and electrical storm. A couple of breakers popped and ISP modem/router needed a reboot. Alarm system was fine the whole time and it was 4 day trip. No remote camera viewing until I was back home. Now if I go out of town for more than a day or so I simply plug in a cheap analog wall switch timer the 5 dollar type you put Christmas tree lights on to control lighting schedules. Set to 3am or middle of the night for the modem/router. This way if a reset is needed to restore WiFi the worst case is no more than 24 hours and back in business. I could set it for twice a day if I wanted but overkill. Let's say a big storm comes along at 8pm you have no WiFi at home immediately after power hit. Let's say you take a look at your place remotely before going to bed around 10pm and discover that you cant access via app. You go to sleep and wake up at 6am and are able to view your place remotely because the cheap 5 dollar wall timer did its thing. Well in this scenario you didn't miss much. It depends on how often you have issues and how much money you want to throw at it. It's a personal preference. Mainly wanted to share an inexpensive way to get a daily reboot of modem/router if you are away from home. Cheers

Comments

@marja7 Bonar I have the same thing for my manual reset but I leave it all the time as I would forget to put it in when I travel. Works fine to shut off the power for 60 seconds and let everything restart again

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@oruro378 sure I have thought about that. I have also thought that next vacation away from home leaving it that way.  

Answer 10

One thing I’ve always said, what your going through in this day, is what your loved ones will go through when your no longer here. However complex you build your system, that complexity is what your loved ones will have to deal with when your 3ft under. Can they continue to maintain, understand, and make it work? Or will they be in the dark with nothing working and no way to fix it? Although I am nearing 100 devices, and lots of automation, my system can be boxed up and taken down in an hour, light bulbs changed and back to prehistoric times. I think sometimes we get carried away in our ideas, and forget who might be left to deal with what we have designed.  

Comments

@hokkaido true, I've tried to design it so that no automation is essential, just convenient. So if I go, they just have to unplug the SmartThings hubs and the hue bridge and the smart plugs, and will have a normal house full of very expensive lights

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@sharla yea it’s always good to keep those thoughts. I know many of us have wives and children, whom we had to train and get them to accept what we’ve done with ST, and in my situation would be lost if I left tomorrow. I try to keep that in mind as I don’t want them to have to deal with something they don’t understand.  

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@hokkaido thinking about that I almost wonder if they'd be happier if I died lol, dark humor, I know. Edit: just automation-wise I mean of course

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@sharla trust me I’ve had those thoughts also.  

Answer 11

Some UPSes will not power back on by themselves if they drain completely. Also could be a tripped breaker or the circuit protection in a power strip/surge protector.  

Answer 12

I got my sister to check. The power is on but my FIOS is down. So no internet and I haven’t had luck with remote troubleshooting. So going to just what @hokkaido said, there’s no one who can figure this out or get my smart things up and running but me right now. I’ve done all that I can remotely. Thanks for all of your help and ideas.  

Answer 13

We rarely notice if the net is out related to automation. I was without internet for a week and used a generator for power and all my lighting automatons still worked.  

Comments

Bernie, I’m sure you were wise enough to put the back up batteries in the hub!  

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@euphorbiaceous LOL Nope after the first set corroded in the hub due to a firmware defect I removed them permanently but no need as it's on a UPS until I kick the generator transfer switch over but the internet providers central station was knocked out by the storm which meant no internet for a week lucky the generator kept the house powered. But internet being down didn't matter as my important automation's were local and worked fine. Motion sensors, contact sensors, and scheduled lighting all just worked the same.  

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Bernie, when I get home I’m getting a generator and mapping out all my smart stuff in case someone needs to keep the lights from turning on, the fish tanks from lighting or the garage doors from closing at 8:30. Thank you all! This thread was enlightening and very helpful for me  

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@euphorbiaceous Yea use Smart Lighting as much as possible and check IDE to make sure devices are running local. Lots of times you can change the DTH to a ST local one if needed.