Needed: Hardware to send SMS if there is a power outage

[Jay]

I need a small (none UPS) bit of kit that i can plug into a standard plug socket and will send an SMS to a few numbers in the event there is a power failure.

Does anyone here have any experience with anything like that?

Thanks.
.

[oolon]

What is your problem with using a ups as part of the solution? A cheap ups with a plug computer on it (running nut) talking to a moble phone would do it. You system is going to need battery backup anyway, otherwise it will not be able to send the message when things are down so why not use the battery system as the "sense"?

[Jay]

We already have a fully battery backup system in place, sadly it doesn't have the ability to send SMS alerts.

[aidanjt]

I was thinking along the same lines, only get the UPS software to trigger a script or programme to fire off an SMS over the internet. Shouldn't be difficult at all.

Opps, never mind then.. I don't know of any cheap gizmos for SMSing when the power goes off. But, you could grab a cheap netbook and cobble together a script to fire off when battery power takes over. Same principle.

[oolon]

Don't forget from the socket side of the ups power is not "lost" you need to monitor the supply side and on the same circuit. The laptop idea is pretty sweet, having a system with its own battery is every important as it need to send out message when all else has failed. I do not know your current ups setup, if it switches to a generator your need a tap on the supply riser, to monitor the correct circuit, you could get a digital current meter that would detect when there is no current flowing in the riser.

Is your UPS 3 phase? If so a current meter on each phase would be the way to go, if not at its just a plug in, tapping it with a laptop is the easiest way. What UPS do you have? Is it monitored? If so can't you get a feed from the software, if it is not monitored check to see how you could wire it up.

[Jay]

I have bodged another way for now

The UPS sends an email to a hotmail address, this address is linked to my phone and I have set up mobile alerts for the UPS email address. If there is a power issue, it sends the email to hotmail who forward that email via SMS to my phone.

[oolon]

Out of interest is your UPS network connected? If so you should be able to query it by SNMP.

[Jay]

Out of interest is your UPS network connected? If so you should be able to query it by SNMP.

Yes its an APC. I already pull SNMP data out of it for votage, temps etc and its graphed via Cacti.

[oolon]

So why not get a USB G3 dongle and use gammu to send txt messages based on the output from the UPS?

[Jay]

I may be able to get nagios to do this

[scaryjim]

I have bodged another way for now

The UPS sends an email to a hotmail address, this address is linked to my phone and I have set up mobile alerts for the UPS email address. If there is a power issue, it sends the email to hotmail who forward that email via SMS to my phone.

I know you call it a bodge, but actually this strikes me as a pretty reasonable way to handle this, because you'll also have a record in the hotmail account of when your power issues have occurred.

Good improvising

[oolon]

Sadly though, no alert if the internet is down, in a power fail situation this is quite likely, otherwise I rather like it too.

[Jay]

All our server room is on a battery including our WAN connectivity and all switches / routers inbetween. The connection out is 1 x 10Mbps Leased line and one 100Mbps leased line so I expect the internet connection should stay up during a power outage.