This are my first steps into electronics. I have power problems at my current home, with random blackouts that are driving me crazy. These are specially annoying when you are out of home (vacation) and there is nobody there to put the big switch again on.

Instead of complaing to the gods for my misfortune, I tried to workaround this problem in the nerd's way: I have constructed a blackout detector that sends me a message to my phone when the power goes off at home. So, if I am outside, at least I will know it.

I one of those fortunate guys who have an UPS at home. It is not a powerfull one, but at least is enough to save your data and prevent a disaster. Having this and a Raspberry PI, the only thing is a power detector to wire it to the GPIO bus and I will have my blackout detector.

I did this by stabilizing a spare power source from an old phone and tame its output to 3.3V, the voltage needed by the input pins of the GPIO bus.