I had an issue come up during Irma, and am wondering if people have more creative solutions than I can find.
I have a security camera setup recording on a PC. The PC is (physically) beside my ELK security system, and both share a consumer type UPS (Cyberpower), which in turn has a USB connection to the PC.
Because the PC draws so much power, I use the UPS to power it only briefly during a power outage (to ride out brief outages) then it shuts down, and the UPS provides relatively long duration for the low power requirements of the ELK (which of course itself has a battery to provide yet longer duration) in the event of a long term outage. It also powers the network including internet.
Here's the issue: Suppose you have a 10 minute power outage. The PC shuts down, the power comes back on and... nothing.
The PC does not auto-restart, because the actual outlet (on the UPS powering it) never lost power. Consumer grade UPS's, as best I can see, cannot be programmed to shut down individual outlets.
The PC can be set to restart on power on (even if shut down, at least the BIOS says it can), but since it never sees a power loss, it just sits there, until a human hits the button. For Irma the humans were 400 miles away.
The PC has a real time clock and can schedule wakeups, so it could wake up every hour -- and have the UPS shut it back down if power is still on. That's bad in two ways -- doing it frequently consumes a lot of battery if premature and infrequently you miss a lot of time, and if you are doing actual maintenance of some sort, having it wake up all the time if you forget to unplug is a problem. But it's a possibility.
The UPS can be programmed to shut down entirely on outage, so on utility return everything restarts, but this will take the Elk and my network (including internet access) with it.
The other alternative is to put something like a Raspberry Pi somewhere else, NOT on the UPS, which periodically sends a Wake on Lan signal. With power off it won't send; with power on it should wake up the computer if down. This is the most attractive if most complex. I even have a Pi sitting around.
But all this seems over-complex. Is there something I am missing?
The best I can think is to separate the computer from the Elk/network, which of course costs money, then have the PC's UPS shut down, the network/Elk not.
What do others do, or do you have such issues?
I have a security camera setup recording on a PC. The PC is (physically) beside my ELK security system, and both share a consumer type UPS (Cyberpower), which in turn has a USB connection to the PC.
Because the PC draws so much power, I use the UPS to power it only briefly during a power outage (to ride out brief outages) then it shuts down, and the UPS provides relatively long duration for the low power requirements of the ELK (which of course itself has a battery to provide yet longer duration) in the event of a long term outage. It also powers the network including internet.
Here's the issue: Suppose you have a 10 minute power outage. The PC shuts down, the power comes back on and... nothing.
The PC does not auto-restart, because the actual outlet (on the UPS powering it) never lost power. Consumer grade UPS's, as best I can see, cannot be programmed to shut down individual outlets.
The PC can be set to restart on power on (even if shut down, at least the BIOS says it can), but since it never sees a power loss, it just sits there, until a human hits the button. For Irma the humans were 400 miles away.
The PC has a real time clock and can schedule wakeups, so it could wake up every hour -- and have the UPS shut it back down if power is still on. That's bad in two ways -- doing it frequently consumes a lot of battery if premature and infrequently you miss a lot of time, and if you are doing actual maintenance of some sort, having it wake up all the time if you forget to unplug is a problem. But it's a possibility.
The UPS can be programmed to shut down entirely on outage, so on utility return everything restarts, but this will take the Elk and my network (including internet access) with it.
The other alternative is to put something like a Raspberry Pi somewhere else, NOT on the UPS, which periodically sends a Wake on Lan signal. With power off it won't send; with power on it should wake up the computer if down. This is the most attractive if most complex. I even have a Pi sitting around.
But all this seems over-complex. Is there something I am missing?
The best I can think is to separate the computer from the Elk/network, which of course costs money, then have the PC's UPS shut down, the network/Elk not.
What do others do, or do you have such issues?
7 -i wlan0 >> /home/ferguson/etherwake.log 2>&1
