From time to time our mains electricity RCD trips out for no obvious reason - with the result, obviously, that we have no power anywhere in the house. Other than the main fridge and the additional freezer it's not a great issue - IF we are here.
The problem, should we not be here, is that we have - until now - no means of knowing the power is out.
A simple USB gadget, PowerNotify, has been installed - it works with its own wifi so remains active even if the power is out. As described in the blurb, it transmits a regular "heartbeat" every few seconds to a computer somewhere in the cloud - if beats are missed for a pre-determined time (we have it set to 2 minutes) it generates alert texts and emails that are sent to our phones.
In our case, if we are here or nearby that's fine - if we're away then the fall-back is to ask one of our neighbours, who has a key, to switch the power back on.
We just have the one to notify a total failure - several devices can be connected to monitor single circuits (e.g. a fridge or aquarium) that may trip but not trip the whole supply. The messages sent advise of failure and reinstatement (for example, after a power cut where the board doesn't trip an power comes back on)
About £35 from Amazon. Ongoing e-mail notifications are free, texts are about £0.15p (paid from an online PowerNotify wallet - ours has £5 in it) No other costs.
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