I want to be able to monitor my mother in laws internet connection. Her cable modem goes down quite often. I can run monitoring software on her computer but it would have no way to alert me.
So I was thinking of an app that somehow sets a device on in HA. Then I use an automation to turn it off. And if it stays off for too long then it can alert me.
Does anyone have any thoughts? Thanks.
While I don’t use this for elderly monitoring, you could get something like a Kauf ESPHome plug that will auto restart the modem after a period of inactivity that will also periodically make an API call to your Home Assistant to let you know it’s up and running. I did this for mine for when I travel to make sure my Internet stays up.
Thanks - that is really intriguing. I haven’t played at all with ESP but this would be a good start.
Since the HA instance is in my house and the plug would be in my in-laws house I presumably would need to get it to talk to my instance. I have read that people have not been able to get that working through a VPN.
Once the plug is set up and tested on your side, you should be able to just take it to their house and have it run. As for VPN, you could either open a port on your firewall, something like 32150 or a port that is unlikely to get probed easily or you could subscribe to Nabu Casa and do it more securely.
The ESP is just so you can program it to do what you want, otherwise it doesn’t need to be linked in any way to HA.
I have ordered a Kauf plug to check it out. Thanks for the tip.