Power Stations as a UPS
Portable power stations wired in as home UPS units, and the work of getting them to say when the grid is gone.
The AC180 has no USB-HID, serial or dry-contact UPS port. The only local data path is Bluetooth LE: encrypted with reverse-engineered keys on the BLUETTI, plaintext DUML on the DJI. A BLUETTI AC180 is read from Linux, then by an ESP32-S3 that publishes to MQTT on the router, with tests along the way that pull the plug on the grid and on the bridge. Then the observer that turns those readings into shutdowns on every machine, the alerts that have to get through during the outage they report, and a smart plug as a second opinion on the grid. Parts 8 and 9 are about how the project was checked: the refusals that improved the design, and tests built to say what they could and couldn't prove. The last three come from real outages and the days around them: a DJI that stopped advertising over Bluetooth for hours, a recharge estimate read as runtime at 95 %, and a storage box that went down three times with the battery near full.
- The power went out twice. My UPS log saw it once.
- Secure session ready. Battery: ?
- Twenty-five percent is a countdown
- The DJI's grid flag is labeled charge type
- A null battery reading cleared the low-battery alarm
- The pin template was for a different plug
- The alert about the blackout needs the internet too
- The guard rails that said no
- Pulling plugs on purpose
- The DJI went silent for four hours
- The UPS said 2 minutes at 95 %
- Three shutdowns, three causes