Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requirements

Posted on
Wed Jul 03, 2019 6:04 am
DaveL17 offline
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Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requirements

So we had a severe storm come through on Sunday afternoon, knocking our power out for about 9 hours. Fortunately, we have a whole-home generator which kept us cool and dry and we had no damage. However, when our area loses power, the cable company loses power too. We live in a tiny town so they don't bother with backup power, so--even though we have power at the house--we have no Internet/TV/VOIP service. Fast forward to today, we still don't have those things. Seems the storm knocked out the power plant that feeds the cable node that serves our area. I'm grateful that we're not facing what others are still facing (no power, no AC, no sump pump) so ours is a first world problem for sure; but it's opened my eyes to a few things. Seems that a fair bit of our devices now require Internet access to work at all--even though you'd never expect them to. For example,

Plex -- no worries for entertainment, we can just stream something from our personal library of content. Wrong. Plex requires Internet presence to run--even though you're not streaming online content. Can't even watch the OTA antenna stuff. Seems that you can reconfigure Plex to work in this situation, but you have to have Internet access to be able to do the setup. If Internet is gone, it's too late.

VLC -- no worries, I'll just watch using VLC instead. Wrong. VLC apparently requires Internet, too. VLC won't even load properly.

Mini TiVos -- no worries, we'll just watch DVR'd content that we've previously recorded. Kind of. Apparently, Mini TiVos *may* require Internet, too (some of ours work and some don't--not sure what that's about).

Fortunately, a fair bit of our local content is ripped in a format that Quicktime can handle (a lot of it isn't, though) so we're able to still entertain ourselves. I mean, who reads books anymore? :D

Although this is more venting than anything, it's still a PSA to say that I'd recommend testing things to see if they work when your online access is gone. You might be surprised.

I came here to drink milk and kick ass....and I've just finished my milk.

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Posted on
Wed Jul 03, 2019 6:41 am
durosity offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

"Seems that you can reconfigure Plex to work in this situation, but you have to have Internet access to be able to do the setup. If Internet is gone, it's too late."

I'm curious what these steps are? As best I was aware it works locally and it has for me when I've been doing various things that'd disconnected the internet for a a short time while the wife watched her Drag Race program!

I've been planning to get around to changing out various things out that require an internet connection. I've already removed my nest thermostats and replaced them with DSC alarm ones, and I'm about to replace my hue bulbs too with Z-Wave ones. The only thing I won't be able to do is my Netatmo heating system (and doorbell when it comes out), but at the very least homekit works with that locally and all has local controls.

Computer says no.

Posted on
Wed Jul 03, 2019 7:37 am
jalves offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

Possible fall back - use an iPhone in tethered mode?

Running Indigo 2023.2 on a 24" iMac M1), OS X 14.4
Jeff

Posted on
Wed Jul 03, 2019 7:42 am
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

@Durosity -- I haven't done the steps because I can't access the server (even on the machine it's running on) but if you Google something like "Plex Requires Internet Access", you'll see what I'm on about.

@Jalves -- Interesting thought. (I may give that a try, although I'm a little hesitant to do that because we don't have an unlimited data plan and have been in conservation mode because we don't know how long the outage is going to last.) If all the server is doing is transmitting authentication details, that could be a good workaround. Thanks for the thought!

I came here to drink milk and kick ass....and I've just finished my milk.

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Posted on
Wed Jul 03, 2019 11:05 am
peszko offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

I'm anal about having everything working without internet connection. I had couple internet outages and everything worked properly (except remote access of course) The internet outage was accompanied by power outage which also tested the ups and generator power. The UPS worked great, but the generator is too small and not connected to the circuits that would be the most useful . Time to think about replacing the generator and re-wiring :-)

Posted on
Wed Jul 03, 2019 11:37 am
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

+1 on the generator.

As long as we're able to afford one, I'll never live anywhere without one again.

I came here to drink milk and kick ass....and I've just finished my milk.

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Posted on
Wed Jul 03, 2019 12:03 pm
jay (support) offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

Out of curiousity, I have a few questions:

  1. How do you calculate capacity/determine the size you need?
  2. Any particular features that are must have features?
  3. How well do those things play with solar panels?
  4. How quickly do they automatically kick in (is there a noticeable disruption)?

We moved into a new subdivision a couple of years ago from a rather rural area. We experience frequent power outages (3-4 a month), which is infuriating since we had significantly fewer at the rural house (maybe 3-4 a YEAR). I thought it might be happening because of ongoing construction, but the neighborhood was finished about 6 months ago and we're still seeing these frequent outages.

So I've been considering a generator. Also considering solar panels so understanding how they play together is an interesting question in my mind.

Jay (Indigo Support)
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Posted on
Wed Jul 03, 2019 12:18 pm
FlyingDiver offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

We have a backup generator at our new house in southwest Florida, thunderstorm capital of the world... ;)

It's a 20KW unit, and we have two 200amp main electric panels. The generator is connected to one panel via an automatic transfer switch. The other panel has a cross-connect to the first panel. To get power to anything on the second panel from the generator, I have to manually engage the cross-connect. This gives me an opportunity to turn off breakers on both panels to manage the loads.

1. Figure up the stuff you really need in an outage.
2. Auto transfer switch and auto-start.
3. No idea. Really depends on what your panels are doing, and if you have a solar wall battery system.
4. Less than 10 seconds for the generator to start and come up to speed. You need UPSs on computers and such.

If you have full solar with battery, then the generator would just recharge the batteries. That's the system in my RV for everything that runs on the inverter. A house could certainly be wired the same way.

joe (aka FlyingDiver)
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Posted on
Wed Jul 03, 2019 9:01 pm
peszko offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

1. I measure the power used for the plugin devices, and go by power rating for others and add it all up by circuit.
2. I have an older model generator thats a bit noisy (power noisy), but I have a server level UPS that can be programmed to ignore power and frequency drifts.
Older home type one would constantly cut out. Personally I automatic transfer switch is not critical, as UPS will run things till I start things up. So must be able to carry the server rack.
3. No idea, don't have any. Would love to have some.
4. Mine is manual, but with a 6 hour UPS backup I have time to start it up.

We are downtown Ottawa (Canada's capital) and we have outages every couple months. Most are short, but we had a tornado recently (used to be very rare, but we had two recently), and we lost power for couple days. First day, the internet worked, but then the provider went down as well. Locally everything worked, but no internet.

Posted on
Wed Jul 03, 2019 11:55 pm
kw123 offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

Back in the days when I still lived in Germany I could not recall any power outage ever. - That might have changed now..

Here in the center of Dallas we had 4 days no power after an ice storm (trees branches went down on power lines - that was the longest I can remember.
and in recent times we have 1-4 hours of outages per quarter.

I only have the computers and all switches and modems on APC backups - enough for ~ 1 hour.

We have more internet outages than power outages though.
Both spectrum cable and att fiber are about the same - measured over ~ 2 years each.


Karl

Posted on
Thu Jul 04, 2019 8:26 am
DaveL17 offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

We're finally back (as of yesterday morning). A few things got temporarily borked (for example, a Trane Z-wave thermostat wouldn't respond until it was rebooted) and the aforementioned stuff that wouldn't work without Internet seems to be back to normal. Overall, none the worse for wear except inconvenience, which is great. Not everyone around here was so lucky.

jay (support) wrote:
Out of curiousity, I have a few questions:

Ours is a (now dated) Generac 16kW unit. It's capable of running our two central air systems and basically the whole house under normal load. However, we've recently had our AC units replaced and the AC units put an incredible load on the generator when they first kick on. During this last outage, whenever one of the units started up (with the other unit already running), the lights would dim dramatically, and our various UPS units considered it a significant enough drop to sound an alarm and switch to batteries (however briefly). For this house, if I were to do it over, I'd go for at least a 20kW unit. We avoid unnecessary stuff during the outage (dehumidifier, microwave, minimal lighting, etc.) if were home when the outage happens--but that's still not enough if we want full AC.

When power is first lost, it takes about 10 seconds for the generator to spool up and for the automatic transfer switch to kick in. When power is restored, the transfer back is seamless. In fact, it's typically the case that the only way we know power is back is that the generator shuts off (the generator runs a minute or two under no load to cool down before shutting off.). Our unit is very dirty and I suspect that it would wreak havoc with Insteon power line signaling. But that's just a guess. We don't have solar panels, so I can't provide any insights there.

I think the gap in power (during transfer) is somewhat inevitable in our circumstance. A battery capable of handling the potential load of the entire house would require a PowerWall-size unit which is way too much money for what we'd be asking it to do. For the next house, I want to look into whether it's possible to isolate the biggest things (AC, etc.) such that a battery could bridge the outage and the big stuff would run only when the generator is on full bore. Not even sure this is possible, but it's at least worth looking into.

I came here to drink milk and kick ass....and I've just finished my milk.

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Posted on
Thu Jul 04, 2019 11:56 am
Sevilsivle offline
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Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

kw123 wrote:
Back in the days when I still lived in Germany I could not recall any power outage ever. - That might have changed now..

Karl


Nope, I also cannot recall any power outages as such in the last 30 years.
Every couple of years a thunderstorm or similar event may produce a dip just long enough to cause a computer to reboot.

Tim

Posted on
Fri Jul 05, 2019 7:33 am
RogueProeliator offline
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Location: Baton Rouge, LA

Re: Public Service Announcement - Internet Access Requiremen

Another option which is cheaper, albeit more "manual" work, is what we setup... though I admit I would rather a fancy, automated (natural gas) whole-house generator, they are pretty expensive. The alternative is to get a decent size portable generator and have a plug installed into which you can plug its (220V) output. This should me on a manual transfer switch by code (technically you could turn off your main breaker to prevent out-feeding, but that won't pass inspection...)

Downside is, of course, that you have to go start it up manually and generally will have less power output than a fixed, natural gas version. But is also many thousands less. For us, it is acceptable and will run the key circuits plus, if we wanted, the smaller A/C unit. We would need to get a significant upsize (portable or whole house) to handle the 5-ton's surge when it kicks on, so we don't bother.

On either option, consider having them put in a sub-panel that powers the circuits you want powered (some installs require this anyway), but makes it much easier to turn off specific circuits or see what is powered, etc.

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