Power outage alarm

If you're a beginner, you could just try some beginner projects, they may get you halfway there.

The first project is usually a blinking LED. If you can blink an LED then you can pulse a buzzer with not much more of a leap, using say a relay module. Try controlling the blinking with a button input. If you can do that then it's not too dissimilar to getting a power status signal to know when the outage has started.

Get familiar with loops, if/else and while statements, all of which are useful tools to build up the behaviour you may want. 

If you're looking for a ready-made solution rather than developing it yourself, then there are fridge alarms for not a lot of money.

But personally I would want to be notified immediately, not after two hours, just in case I'm not home. But that entails a different solution.

We had a few brief power outages one morning last week. It was interesting seeing the complete lack of business continuity plans from some of the major retail chain stores near me.. they gave up and shut for the day. On the other hand, it was a bright, warm Friday, the staff probably were not too motivated to look for an alternative solution : )

 shabaz I understand EdgarAndre's desire for the 2-hour wait.  At the last place we rented, the squirrels would regularly trip the main feeder breaker.  The outage would typically last 45 minutes to an hour.  Why get woken up an hour or so before your normal alarm when you can't do anything about anything? 

These days, the battery backup sump pump alarms as soon as the electricity fails so no sleeping in there.  We also don't lose the main feeder where I currently live.  Maybe we have smarter or less conductive squirrels.

I also immediately went to Amazon to see how much a commercial unit would cost.  None of them had a time delay. 

Interesting! I'd not heard of this issue. Poor squirrels!

I've done the thing beacon_dave  mentions in the past, i.e. small plug-in mains adapter holding a relay energized, but for a different purpose, which was to maintain my home router during a power outage. The relays de-energized fast enough that it's possible to switch to a battery pack of (say) 8 x AA cells to have a backup 12V supply to the router (without the router resetting). 

 shabaz Many years ago, I put my router on a UPS.  The first outage proved that my ISP had NONE of their equipment on UPS's.  Nor did they have backup generators.  I can only hope that they have improved. 

 shabaz Many years ago, I put my router on a UPS.  The first outage proved that my ISP had NONE of their equipment on UPS's.  Nor did they have backup generators.  I can only hope that they have improved.