Monitoring utility powerOn mikrotik

http://gregsowell.com/?p=2093

I was thinking while running the other day. How could one monitor utility power at a POP (Point Of Presence) without forking over your standard $200 for a monitoring device. So this is what I came up with:

Stuff 

Supplies:

DPDT 12V Relay – I used two SPDTs, cause I had them lying around

Cat5 Patch Cable

12V Transformer

Plastic enclosure – I used an old tape box

Cut your cable in half and then strip off a couple of inches of the jacket.

Then strip a little of the jacket from the remaining wires.

Wire the green/white to the common leg of relay # 1 or the first common if you are using a DPDT and the orange/white to the normally open (NO) leg.
Then wire the green to the second common leg (DPDT) or to the common of the second relay and the orange to the NO leg.

Then tie in your 12V transformer to the positive and negative polls on your relay(s). Throw everything into your plastic container and you are just about done.

That ziptie screams quality.

At your POP, plug the router into the UPS and then plug the 12V adapter into the mains power outside of the UPS. Then plug the ethernet cable into an available port on the MTK.

When power is live on the 12V transformer, the relay is actuated and the cable we wired up is now looped up. With the loopback active, the port on your router comes up and the script running at the bottom of the page sends a message to you indicating that power is restored. When the power goes down, the UPS will keep the router up, but the relay will fail and thus the loopback will fail. The router’s script will see the change in port status and send you an email saying the port is down.

This script was written by a clever guy named Manuel, and I’ve adapted it to work in other situations.

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# Checking eth5 link status: :global "ether5-state" :global "ether5-laststate" /interface ethernet monitor ether5 once do={:set "ether5-state" $status} :if ($"ether5-state" != $"ether5-laststate") do={ /tool e-mail send from="Power <monitoring@$[/system identity get name]>" to="powerdown@gregsowell.com" subject="$[/system identity get name]: power status changed" body=("$[/system clock get date] \nInterface ether5 - link status changed to:" . $"ether5-state") :log info ("Interface ether5 - link status changed to: " . $"ether5-state") :set "ether5-laststate" $"ether5-state" }

Schedule the above script to run every 15 seconds or so.

If done correctly, you should be able to scrape all of this together for less than $15. If you spend $15 putting this together and it saves you a truck roll in the middle of the night, then it was well worth it!

Happy hacking my friends.