When you’re performing a backup, a backup alarm (like on certain vehicles) should be sounding. That would remind you of what’s happening.

Why couldn’t you use a relay connected to an outlet in the outbuilding for a simple notification? Connect a light, siren or other signaling device to the relay so that it’s activated when the relay loses power.

She doesn’t have curtains?

I think the bigger issue is that all the bits on your network will be backwards because you’ll be in the southern hemisphere. I believe you can get hardware to correct for this, but it’s probably expensive. A software solution may exist and be far cheaper. It may be better to buy computer equipment there and only transfer the data that you need.

I’ve got a couple TrueNAS systems that I’ve built. Both have twelve drives, one with 12TB drives and the other with 14TB drives. One is a large case, the other is a Dell T620. Both of the systems have dual 2.8 GHZ 10 core / 20 thread processors so I can also run virtual machines on them.

Be careful once you start down this rabbit hole. Next thing you know, your computer hardware seems to multiply all by itself.