I think Moto’s are a pretty good budget friendly phone. Sure their update policy is lacking, but the Moto G Power or Moto G Stylus phones come decently equipped. Plus you can still get expandable storage and headphone jacks.

Correct, if that machine goes down you won’t have any notification. I was thinking along the lines of you are hosting services on one machine while the computer itself is acting as the host or hypervisor.

Quite a lot of work went into your program, I bet you learned some good code while writing it. I’ve used a simple Windows program called Easy Net Monitor. You can specify IP address or hostname connectivity tracking with email alerts.

https://easynetmonitor.en.lo4d.com/windows