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[Tuicemen]

After several months of a flawless operating Pi Zero W with GH it finally stopped working.
Seems we had some power blips at my city place which caused my SD card to get corrupt! Usually this wouldn't be much of a issue if I was home as I had a backup SD card. Unfortunately I used this to play with docker builds of HG at the off grid place   Must remember not to do that again!
I also had a backup on my development machine but it is failing to boot now too
No Problem I have a USB stick with I think a HG backup at least on. Problem is I can't find it!

[petera]

After several months of a flawless operating Pi Zero W with GH it finally stopped working.
Seems we had some power blips at my city place which caused my SD card to get corrupt! Usually this wouldn't be much of a issue if I was home as I had a backup SD card. Unfortunately I used this to play with docker builds of HG at the off grid place   Must remember not to do that again!
I also had a backup on my development machine but it is failing to boot now too
No Problem I have a USB stick with I think a HG backup at least on. Problem is I can't find it!

Yes an unscheduled shutdown in the case of a power failure will do that to the file system.

My mission critical Raspberry Pi (if you could call it that) is attached to my security panel via a 12 volt to 5 volt buck and the security panel has a 12 volt 7ah battery on constant charge and will power the Raspberry Pi and the security panel and will do an orderly shutdown of the Raspberry Pi in the event of a power outage.

You definitely need some form of UPS attached to your Pi to cover eventualities like this.

[Tuicemen]

Yes I will be looking into something this fall.
I did have an old UPS that I'd been meaning to replace. Guess I put it off just a bit to long.
My ODROID has the option for a 3v battery pack so I may also look into that for it.
The small battery pack isn't that expensive.

My off grid place PI isn't likely to need anything like that being the whole place is on batteries anyways.

[bkenobi]

I have a UPS on my structured media panel with "critical" items plugged in (DTV swim power supply, router, switch, RPi, etc).  I have the USB from the PSU plugged into the RPI so that if it gets low due to a long outage, the RPi will shut down rather than hard power cycle.  I haven't confirmed functionality recently (dumb), but it was working great last year when tested.  I have 2 backup cards sitting next to the RPi, but I don't know if they are the current config (also dumb).  When I get the RPi3 configured correctly, I'll have a backup microSD in a USB adapter and it will have a scheduled backup so if the main card fails, I'll have a live backup ready to go.  I also intend to have a second card next to the setup so in case the backup is fried, I have a secondary.  MicroSD is so cheap for 8-16GB cards, not having a handful sitting there ready to go is really silly.

[petera]

Yes I will be looking into something this fall.
I did have an old UPS that I'd been meaning to replace. Guess I put it off just a bit to long.
My ODROID has the option for a 3v battery pack so I may also look into that for it.
The small battery pack isn't that expensive.

My off grid place PI isn't likely to need anything like that being the whole place is on batteries anyways.

Of course in your case here you just need to ensure an orderly shutdown in the event of power outage.

I did look at something like this a while back and would certainly consider it if I was based out in the wild

https://www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=150198

[Tuicemen]

I had read that post before and the link to the MoPower UPS
Since I have a back up generator which starts once the battery level drops below a preset point a UPS for me I feel is over kill.
I may at some point regret that decision for the off grid place.

[Noam]

If you're only worried about power blips (and not full outages), you might be able to get away with powering the Pi off one of those USB portable batteries, and keeping that plugged into a charger. Basically a low-tech (dumb) UPS.

[petera]

If you're only worried about power blips (and not full outages), you might be able to get away with powering the Pi off one of those USB portable batteries, and keeping that plugged into a charger. Basically a low-tech (dumb) UPS.

Absolutely.

Anything that can take over in the event of a sudden voltage drop or power outage that will surely shutdown your Raspberry Pi unceremoniously. Open database files are guaranteed to be corrupted otherwise.

A lot of the home automation systems are constantly writing logs among other processes going on in the background

[bkenobi]

I already had a UPS on my structured media panel, so hooking the USB up to the RPi was a no brainer.  If I didn't have something already there, I would have probably looked at something like in your link.  But to be honest, it's easy to find a very small UPS for close to nothing.  Sometimes the battery is dead, but new ones on eBay are less than $20 shipped.  I understand that the MoPower unit has some added benefits, but a APC UPS for ~$25 that can power other low power devices for over a day seems like a much better option than double that for a RPi only solution.  Just my thoughts though...

[Tuicemen]

But to be honest, it's easy to find a very small UPS for close to nothing.  Sometimes the battery is dead, but new ones on eBay are less than $20 shipped.  I understand that the MoPower unit has some added benefits, but a APC UPS for ~$25 that can power other low power devices for over a day seems like a much better option than double that for a RPi only solution.  Just my thoughts though...

The APC UPS route is most likely the route I'll go for the city place.

For the off grid place I'll likely do the small internal battery option of my ODROID.

[bkenobi]

Depending on where it's located, you might be able to do a solar option as well.  The RPi doesn't take much power so a small solar cell and AA batteries might work well (I think that's one way to set up the MoPower).  Of course, if you already have a solar array, why install a new one for such a low draw.