This reminds me of the kind of hack I came up with, almost 20 years back. I used to work in Bangalore, and now and then, we would have a power outage in the evening that lasts for a few hours. I was single and used to live alone. I did not want to go home from the office and find myself without power. So how do I find out there is power at home? During those days, there were no IOT devices so checking them is that's out of the question. But I did have a landline phone that was powered by electricity and had a replaceable battery as a backup. I used the phone only to connect to the internet. So I just removed the batteries and when the power goes out, my phone wouldn't 't work. So before leaving work, all I had to do was call my landline. If it rings, it means there is power.
Here in Argentina people sometimes leave inside the freezer an ice cube with a coin on top of it, so they can check if the power went off for a long while - because the coin would be lower in the cube even if it froze back.
I used the same trick recently where a long power outage had me staying at my relatives until power was restored. My answering machine doesn't work without power but the phone does so if it doesn't pick up I know the power is out.
Since the central office switch is usually powered by generators I was used to the phone always working even during outages. But I found that the landline phone only stays functional for only a day now. I believe the deployment of fiber to the node means there are battery backups at the nodes that only last that long.
How long was the commute from office to home? Depending on this you still had risks of phone working while at the office, power out when back home, no?
