It’s estimated that nearly 90% of the world’s homes have access to electricity, meaning nearly 90% of us inevitably become annoyed when our power goes out. 😖
While most of the time it is merely an annoyance, losing power (especially when we aren’t aware of it) can lead to disastrous outcomes. This could mean anything from loss of equipment due to current surges when power is restored, to lives literally being on the line in critical care settings.
In this tutorial on Hackster, I walk through how to build a globally-available, cellular-enabled, power outage detector, complete with instant SMS notifications powered by Twilio.
What’s in the Box? 📦
We take a Blues Wireless Cellular Notecard, attach it to a Blues Wireless Notecarrier-A, and use a newly-released Notecard firmware feature that allows for autonomous reporting of GPIO state changes without a host microcontroller:
{
"req":"card.aux",
"mode":"gpio",
"usage":[
"input-pulldown",
"off",
"off",
"off"
],
"sync":true,
"file":"power-outage.qo"
}I also use a small LiPo battery with a JST connector (any capacity will do), and a micro USB cable (with a wall outlet adapter):
Let’s Build a Power Outage Detector 🛠
Check out the complete instructions in this Hackster tutorial.
Want to build one yourself? All you need to get started is the following hardware:
- Cellular Notecard
- Notecarrier-A
- LiPo battery (any LiPo will do)
- Micro USB cable (with a wall socket adapter)
Also, feel free to take 10% off your order of a Notecard + Notecarrier-A to build your own with this discount code.
Happy Hacking! 👩💻🔌💡
