How can I monitor availability of a home electrical outlet remotely?

Question

We have a freezer plugged into a GFCI electrical outlet that likes to "pop" and turn off on its own every once in a great while.

What I would like to do is monitor the availability of this electrical outlet. Ideally, I'd like to plug in a cheap monitoring device, like a Smarthome or X10 type of device. And when the circuit turns off, the device would trigger some script on an another computer that can send me an email or whatever.

I was unable to find anything like this from Smarthome and X10 devices.

I am aware that some UPS (Uninterruptible Power Supply) devices will send some kind of a signal when the power goes out. I think this may be what I need. Do I need to use a RS-232 cable? Would I need to configure a cheap linux server to do this? Or is there a way one of these devices can send a trigger over ethernet? And can it be done without too much expense?

To summarize: I want an inexpensive solution for something to send me an email when the electrical outlet goes dead.

Thanks

Answer 1

There are tons of ways you can do something like this. If you're at all experienced with electronics, I'd recommend you build your own, since I don't think you'll find any commercial product that does it that isn't some sort of reliability monitor (and thus expensive). You can find some design ideas and perhaps even a full design at some website such as hack a day. A medium-grade UPS might actually be a good solution to this problem if you don't want to mess with any hardware and cost isn't too big of a factor.

But really, the problem here is not with monitoring the outlet, it's with why the GFI is tripping. Either the GFI is broken and needs to be replaced (very cheap and easy to do yourself), or your freezer is broken and improperly grounded -- it should be repaired or replaced, since that's dangerous.

Also, this isn't really programming related... prolly will get closed.