Lights out detection and alerting

[Russ 1]

Hope everyone has been able to enjoy the fruits of their Christmas display labor -- and had time to enjoy other's displays as well.

Is there a technical and automated way to detect if lights are out or your display is otherwise not working as expected? 

I am in charge of the lights for our church. We have a 112 channel LOR display that grows each year. We have issues with GFCIs or circuit breakers tripping, someone yanks an extension cord, animal problems...

We could set up a security camera and someone (me, probably) would need to check on it every night. Probably the mostly likely thing we'd do. But in this day of high tech, automation, IoT, Arduino's, DIY solutions--are there better options?

My top two ideas are:

(1) Have a script that runs at least once a day and checks for the presence of all the expected LOR boxes. Send me a text message if it doesn't see them all. 

(2) An hour before the show is supposed to start, turn on all (or some subset) of lights, measure the power draw. Send me a text message if draw is outside a specific range.

Anyone doing something similar?

Or have other ideas?

Let the planning for 2021 begin!

-r