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how to alert when breaker tripped?

PostPosted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 6:28 pm
by gregbr
This past winter we lost power to our hot tub and did not notice until a week later when I was doing my weekly maintenance. While the tub had not completely frozen it was serious enough that our tub dealer recommended draining the tub and that we check in the spring for damaged pipes, connections etc. We will be doing this in a couple more weeks when Manitoba is released from the deep freeze.

For next winter i would like to be alerted via chime or email etc if the breaker has tripped so that I can immediately deal with this problem when it occurs. I have another circuit out back that could serve as hosting power for a suitable insteon device.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to how I should do this? I'm not an Applescript/Python guy so am hoping to do this via some hardware and Indigo functionality.

Greg

Re: how to alert when breaker tripped?

PostPosted: Wed Apr 03, 2013 9:48 pm
by thedon
I would use this.
http://www.machomestore.com/catalog/pro ... cts_id=214

Not on your pump, maybe too much draw but on the same breaker loop.
You would have to power the unit from another source as you were saying and then either have something go into that's always on.
You could create the trigger likely when it goes off. This device is usually used in the opposite way, when it senses something it triggers but why not do the opposite?
Make since?
That's my idea and $39 is cheap.

Re: how to alert when breaker tripped?

PostPosted: Thu Apr 04, 2013 9:41 am
by jay (support)
Many (most?) INSTEON devices support a "ping" of sorts (see this post for details) so theoretically you could add an INSTEON device to that circuit and send the ping command periodically. Following his instructions, just create a trigger that watches for the variable to become "ERROR" which means that the device didn't respond. Now, it's not a guarantee that the circuit is dead - it could fail because of signal noise as well - so you might want to build some retry mechanism (longish, like an hour later) just to make sure that it really is dead.