Outage Detector

Simple module meant to notify user if a power outage has occured or if the internet has been down.

What it does

At every run it writes to a text file timestamps for power and internet, whether the last run was scheduled or at boot and the last calculated periodicity.

If the script was run after a boot up, it will assume there was a power outage (the system is meant to run 24/7, for example a Raspberry Pi Zero) and send a notification, approximating the power outage duration through the last known timestamp and calculated periodicity of the runs.

Internet downtime is detected if the 2 timestamps written to the file differ and the downtime is approximated again through the calculated periodicity. It is possible that an internet downtime is missed if the script is run too rarely.

How to run it

Install the module in a virtual environment with pip:

pip3 install Outage-Detector

Alternatively, you can also install the module by cloning this git repo and running setup.py

git clone https://github.com/fabytm/Outage-Detector.git
python3 setup.py install

Afterwards, all you need to do is to run the outage_detector command line interface for the initialization process:

outage_detector --init

From here you can choose the way you want to be notified and will be prompted to enter your e-mail information, PushBullet API key or IFTTT API key.

Additionally, it will also ask you if you want to set up scheduling for this module. Choosing to do so is recommended for inexperienced users (this will create 2 cron jobs, one running at boot time and one every 5 minutes, to check in on internet status and record timestamp if either the internet connection drops or a power outage happens).

Update the module to the latest version in a virtual environment with pip:

pip3 install Outage-Detector --upgrade

How to setup IFTTT

Install the IFTTT app and either create an account or sign in to an existing account and create a new applet.

Next, select the plus button beside the word This and choose the Webhooks service. Select Recieve a web request and click Connect. Choose an event name — you will need to remember this for later.

Select the plus button beside the word That and choose any action that you like. Clear everything from the message text box and choose Value1 from the Insert Ingredients menu. Enter any necessary information and press finish.

Select the Webhooks icon in the top left of the screen and press the Documentation button (in a web browser). This will give you a key which you will need for initialization.

Finally, complete the outage_detector initialization process by running the command above.