Power Outage App Possibility?

This may already exist but I thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask…

For those of us with programmable bulbs, when the power comes back on, all of the bulbs will turn on. This can be a real problem if you are not at your residence at the time of the power cycle…as you may not know for sure if the representation of the bulb is accurate within the app.

The Hub knows when it goes off line and when it goes back on line. We get push notifications of these events. Could an app be made to utilize the Hub back online event to trigger a mode which would turn off the lights we so choose?..maybe even custom tailor it to the current hello home mode (if in bed asleep power cycles and all your lights turn on…had this happen a time or 2!)

It would be really sweet if this was a built in option of hello home.

You probably already know this but the lights coming on after power outage is just a factor of that device technology, not something to do with SmartThings. But I like your idea of knowing that the power came back on.

I’m not sure the hub going off is the right answer, though, since the hub can go off independent of any circuits that the lights are on. In fact it could just be lost Internet connectivity which won’t change the brightness of the lights.

There are some people who were monitoring for power outages using any of several devices which show energy draw. But one that I think is the most clever is the original generation smartthings motion sensor. This device can run either from USB power or from battery. So a couple of members have captured the moment when it changes from battery powered to USB power as an indicator that power has returned to the circuit. Like I said, very clever. I particularly like the fact that this is catching the power on moment rather than the power off moment.

So that’s one option that is available today, although it does require the additional device.

Here’s one use case example from @scottinpollock using code from
Jesse Ziegler:

This is awesome! Power is Out based on state of v1 Motion Sensor

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This is similar to what happens when someone switches the physical switch off in my house. I have a bunch of Hue lights, and when someone physically turns the switch off/on, the Hues use some Philips-default brightness level of 100 and color settings.

The only way I’ve been able to address this is to have all of my SmartApps / devices use a max brightness level of 99. Then use an app subscribing to the desired lights that have a level of 100 (meaning some physical / non-coding event occurred) and, if so, revert to last known state.

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I’m using this at my house. I haven’t tested it in awhile but it worked great the last time this happened.

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They have one, it sends a push notification saying “ST has lost comms with your hub.” If I see that and open the app and don’t see any of my stuff then I can make a pretty good guess that’s what happened.

I open it and look for activity to make sure it’s not a false alarm… there have been.

I guess what I was trying to get at is that is I wanted to be able to say:

  • if away
    or
  • if asleep
  • if hub goes offline and back online
  • turn off the lights (and whatever else I choose)

It seems there has to be another way aside from buying yet another device which I don’t really need. I agree…that is clever and I have read up on it…and will default to that method if need be.

Thanks for everyone’s input!

You can change when the notification sends. “Only when mode is” is an option. This is all under Hello Home dialogs. Click the gear, then at the bottom click Automatic Notifications.

BTW, that particular device makes a very good zigbee repeater because it is plugged in. (Most battery operated devices are not repeaters because it drains the battery too fast.)

So if it does happen that you need to add a repeater to strengthen the zigbee Mesh, you can get double use out of the device that way.

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has anyone added to the Aeon labs smart switch device type so that it has the same functionality as does the 1st gen. ST motion sensor?

I ask because I have one of those now. It would seem if that function could be added it would give the trigger I need.

This should be built-in to the hub. Since the data is stored in the cloud, the hub should restore everything back to as it was last when it boots. Maybe even check again after five minutes up time.

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This thread is a bit old, but in case someone stumbles across this looking for a solution, I’ve created the following, which does the trick.

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Give this a shot: