Test recovery after a monitoring power outage

Map the equipment that must return

List the host, its power supply, network router or access point and viewing screen. Add any network switch needed between them. These devices may recover at different times or receive power from different sources.

Keep solar power-system operation outside this test. Do not interrupt inverter, battery or building circuits to exercise a dashboard. Use an already planned maintenance event or the host’s documented restart procedure, with local access and a recovery plan.

Save a before-state

Record the host’s local address, responding equipment count, current time and last live reading. Note which browser screens are open and whether remote viewing works. Keep this record somewhere other than the device being restarted.

Use actual observations rather than assuming a fixed recovery time. Different installations and events will have different sequences.

Check the host before the satellites

Confirm the local application is reachable and its readings are fresh. If it is not, investigate power, boot and network status at the host. A satellite displaying old values is not evidence that collection resumed.

Once the host is healthy, check the second screen’s network and browser. Reopening a bookmark may solve a display-session problem, but that does not explain a host boot failure. Keep the two investigations separate.

Review the missing interval honestly

Identify the last valid sample before interruption and the first valid sample after it. Energy calculated from live samples may omit the gap. Do not assume a later current reading reconstructs all consumption during the outage.

If a device supplies its own cumulative counter, that is a separate source whose behavior must be understood. Keep counter-derived totals distinct from locally accumulated samples. Note timezone and any clock correction that occurred on recovery.

The official Raspberry Pi hardware documentation is the reference for board-specific power and boot behavior; it does not establish how a particular application reconstructs history.

Turn the result into a site checklist

• Host starts and local address is known.
• Network path is available.
• Equipment identities and fresh readings return.
• Satellite screens recover or have a documented manual step.
• Remote viewing works after local recovery.
• The data gap is recorded.

Assign any manual step to a person who can actually perform it. If the property is unattended, an unresolved need to press a button is an operational limitation worth fixing before relying on remote viewing.

Repeat this acceptance check after a major change in host, network or display configuration. It tests the complete monitoring arrangement without treating electrical equipment as a test fixture.