So a storm rolled through in the middle of the night, which caused the power to blink. This means my router, my Pi, my WeMo switch, and my Hue lights all lost power momentarily.
In the past, this sort of thing would have gone unnoticed because, well, it’s the middle of the night and everything is off.
But as it stands, my fan turned off (attached to the WeMo plug) and my bedroom lights turned on at full brightness. So it suddenly got hot and bright while my gf and I were trying to sleep.
In the heat of the moment, I unplugged the fan from the switch and plugged it into mains, and flipped the manual switch for the lights.
This kind of makes me think that something should have a backup power supply, but I really hope that’s not the case.
Does anyone have some advice on how to avoid this situation in the future?
My pi, my gateway and my router are all powered with an old second hand UPS so as to avoid this kind of disagreement.
Alternatively for the Pi I know that there is some UPS shield.
ISTR that Hue lights automatically turn on at full brightness when power is applied (a quick Google search should find you many complaints about that behaviour). For WeMo they stay off if they lose power. Without replacing them your only option is to provide backup power to each of them.
Most (all the ones I’ve looked at) Z-Wave sockets support remembering the power state. Switching your WeMo for one of those is an “easy” fix. Replacing your Hue lights may be slightly trickier. Z-Wave controlled lights would be an ideal choice, and I’ve just started playing with a YeeLight, which doesn’t turn on automatically when power is applied.
OK. I just pulled a cellphone backup battery out of a drawer and plugged it in between the power strip and the Pi. Can confirm that this particular model does not turn off when power to it is cut.
The Hue bridge and the router are in a different room. I have to be careful about bringing technological bs in there because it’s kind of my girlfriend’s personal space. There’s a fairly unobtrusive-looking UPS at Microcenter I might get at some point.
You know what would be nice is a light bulb that knows what damn time it is.