‎Power Outage Sensor for non-SimpliSafe devices and appliances | SimpliSafe Support Home
 

1 Message

Monday, September 26th, 2022 5:32 PM

Not In Development

2

Power Outage Sensor for non-SimpliSafe devices and appliances

Hello,

I would love if SimpliSafe offered a "outlet power outage" sensor. 
This sensor would have a 2-prong plug to check for power. When power is lost in the outlet, an alarm is raised.

Example : with GFCI outlets being mandatory in some states, a freezer may easily trip and lose power while the rest of the house is fine.
I'd love to be notified so I can take action before it is too late.
There are some devices on Amazon, but it's usually a very loud siren. I would prefer to be notified the same way as for my water sensor.

Thank you !

 

Community Admin

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5.7K Messages

2 years ago

Hi @kpt !

The Base Station of course already has a built-in Power Outage sensor - though it triggers a Push Notification, rather than a full alarm. So you could have your Base Station plugged into the same outlet/power strip as different appliances, and you'll get a double duty power outage sensor.

But I don't think that would work for major appliances, especially ones that use a different power adapter.

(edited)

1 Message

The base station loss of power indication is great for whole house power loss, but I can see a need for cases like freezers and such that are on independent circuits.   If the breaker blows on this circuit, having an alert could help avoid hundreds if not thousands of dollars in lost food.  Newer housing codes require GFCI circuits in garages and other areas that have the potential to get wet, and these circuits, as they age, can open under minimal loads.  Having a sensor that plugs in to the same outlet (and preferably provides a pass-through for another connection, such as the appliance itself) I think would be a pretty popular option, and hopefully much more affordable compared to adding base stations.

8 Messages

@davey_d​ 

refrigerator lost power and everything spoiled while we were away.

GFI tripped! 

The SS tower has battery back up and will not work as a complete power loss alarm to the appliances to the SS owner in case the GFI trips !

 for now, Amazon is your best chance to prevent this happening to you.

It will be good for SS to incorporate such a device into the SS system to alert the owner!

power outlet failure alarms with text on Amazon!

 Wake up SS! You are getting behind!

           GFI sucks with a refrigerator or freezer! haven't needed GFI on these two appliance in over 40 years 

$25.00 will take care of this issue in the future!

Amazon has such a device that will text you in case of power failure. Be nice to keep all my safety stuff on SS but can't at this time! 

Duck 

248 Messages

1 year ago

Bit late to this party, but are you handy?

If you are, you could use a door sensor, an unused USB power supply, and a 5 Volt mechanical or electrical relay rated for continuous duty.  Wire the relay normally-open contacts to the reed switch (gen 3 still use those?) of the door sensor.  Power the relay from the USB power supply.  Set up the sensor as a "secret alert". 

When whatever socket the USB supply is plugged into loses power, the relay will lose power and open up, the sensor will be tripped, and you'll get an alert.

Fair warning:  Simplisafe will not endorse this, and it will void the warranty of the sensor.  Don't try this unless you know what you are doing.

7 Messages

10 months ago

I think a sensor that would plug into an outlet and then you plug a device (iron, freezer, fridge, light, etc.) into it could be an easy way to detect if a device had failed or if the power to the device was no longer available.  I suppose it could detect that the device was drawing power, indicating the device was on.  If the device no longer drew power than it is off (for an iron this would be a good thing to know), it had failed (like a freezer that should be drawing power) or the outlet had problems, such as a tripped GFI.

Ideally the sensor could monitor and report power usage through it, maybe instantaneous and also averaged over time such as a week or a month.  We try to keep our energy use low to save money and this could help us identify where we could best reduce.

Even if this is a silly idea it might prompt other customers and/or SimpliSafe engineers for a new kind of sensor that would provide more useful info about our system.

Note: This comment was created from a merged conversation originally titled Power Outage Sensor for non-SimpliSafe devices and appliances

Captain

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6.2K Messages

@kd9rao No, its a great idea, simple and Simplisafe would be foolish not to implement it. Cheap to make, profits could be huge for them while serving a nice niche for customers.  

Community Admin

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3.4K Messages

Hi @kd9rao, 

Thank you for this suggestion! I've forwarded this idea to our dev team.

Community Admin

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5.7K Messages

Hello,

Thank you for your suggestion. After conferring with our engineering team, we have sadly determined this is not feasible for our team at this time (especially since the Base Station's power outage function already covers outages if the power goes out for the whole home). So for now we are marking it as Not In Development. But if there's a big demand, I'll make sure that our engineers hear about it!

Captain

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6.2K Messages

@gtsnet79 Short answer is no but an alert from the base station when it loses power is a close 2nd. Can be a SMS test, email, push alert or any combination of them.

9 Messages

Thank you for responding. That works fine for house power on base but not for different GFIs powering Frig and freezer.

I bought some "gfi notify" plugs that do the job that simplisafe does not want to do.

4 Messages

6 months ago

I too would use this. I recently had a power disconnect on a chest freezer and lost hundreds of pounds of beef. I've since implemented a third party power outage solution, but I would love it if it was integrated into my SimpliSafe configuration. 

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