Z-Box Battery Backup

Z-Box
1

So recently I decided I wanted some sort of battery backup for my Z-Box. My original plan was to use a UPS. However then I decided it might be easier to just use a USB battery pack. However the ones I already had power cycled the Z-Box when the power went out (which was not ideal). This led me to find Voltaic’s battery packs mentioned in a Reddit thread for Raspberry Pi’s.

V25 USB Battery Pack - 6,700mAh
V50 USB Battery Pack - 13,400mAh
V75 USB Battery Pack - 20,100mAh

I purchased a V50 model (the middle version) from Amazon. This battery pack really is always on, and the Z-Box stays powered even when power is cut. When power is restored the battery starts charging again. I’m over 90 devices, and over 90 scenes, and I’ve gotten 24-30 hours of runtime out of the V50 version (running through the LAN adapter) in my few tests so far. According to Voltaic it is supposed to be discharged once every 5 months at a minimum. So I did place it on a smart plug, so it can cut power to itself, and restore the power automatically.

So now the why?

  • The security system will essentially still function even if the power is out. Even if we don’t get notified, the sirens and everything will still go off.
  • My entire network actually is on battery backup too. So actually most of the time even when power is out, we still have internet, and will likely get notified too.
  • Anything that can be cycled, that should be, will still get cycled.

Compared to a UPS?

  • So really even a very small UPS would surfice for a Z-Box. However I have a feeling your run time even on a small UPS would be much shorter based on what I see out of my other UPS.
  • A UPS even small ones take up more space.
  • As for cost, these battery packs aren’t the cheapest. However they do things my others don’t in this case (always on), so in that regard, they were worth a bit of a premium.

One word of caution. I had one issue with what I guess was an incompatible cable with the battery pack when I first got it (I didn’t use the short cable that came with it). The lights on the pack should be on when charging, off when running on battery. I ended up swapping to cables, and all was good.

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Thanks for sharing this. I live in an area with no cell service and semi-frequent outages. I have a UPS on my system and so far so good.

I like this implementation, it seems more powerful than my UPS which also has to power a few other items due to a lack of cell service.