Detect Connected Users via script?

[xochi]

I'm considering a setup where I have one "robot" user who is logged in 24/7 in a looping script that does tasks such as sending emails for IWP data that's received.

I'd like to be able to track whether this robot user is in fact connected, so I don't forget to re-connect them after doing a database upgrade. I'd like my administrator account to notice that the robot account is not hooked up and notify me.

There doesn't seem to be a "getConnectedUsers" function, though.

Any other thoughts? Since the robot user will be in a loop, perhaps I could have it keep setting a one-record-table-field to the current timestamp. Then I could have my admin's user navigation script check that field to make sure the timestamp is not old, and warn me if it is.

Any other ideas?