Protecting the brains of my smart home for $130
Hey r/smarthome
Calgary gets enough random outages that I started thinking about what actually happens to my smart home gear when the power drops. HA server, cameras, network gear, it all just hard-shuts. Not great.
Picked up a used APC UPS off Facebook Marketplace for $40. Batteries were toast but the unit was fine, so I grabbed two replacement 12V 9Ah cells for about $80 and swapped them in. Picked up a cheap RJ50 by USB cable to connect to my router, maybe 10 minutes of work.
Here's where it gets smart though. Set up NUT (Network UPS Tools) to monitor the battery and wired it into Home Assistant. Now I've got battery percentage, load, and estimated runtime right on my dashboard. Get a notification on my phone the second the power dips. When battery gets critical, everything shuts down clean automatically, no corruption, no babysitting.
Did a full test pulling the plug from the wall. HA picked up the outage instantly, sent the alert, and the whole stack came down in order. Power came back, everything booted clean. Here is the video i put together for those interested: https://youtu.be/Ts9vMLNeqgI
About $130 CAD total. The UPS itself is an APC Back-UPS, the used market is flooded with them because people toss them when the batteries die instead of just replacing the cells.
What are you guys doing for power protection on your smart home setups? I feel like this doesn't get talked about enough considering how much we all depend on this stuff staying online.
