[Novalug] Re: UPS and Stuff

[Nick Danger]

Beartooth wrote:
>     On my desk are a BackUPS 650, a BackUPS Pro 650 (the oldest), and 
> a BackUPS RS 1500 (the newest; shop said it was what they used -- and 
> showed me); the newest has what looks like an ethernet port, labelled 
> "Data Port"; the other two have serial ports. Presumably a computer, 
> if connected, could send to them as well as receive, and maybe send 
> commands; but if there's anything like a physical switch on the back 
> of any of them, it's well disguised.

You can use both the serial ports and the ethernet port with apcupsd. 
http://www.apcupsd.org/  Just depends on what you want the PCs to do. 
You can set them to watch for a power drop, then either something like 
"5 minutes later, power down" or "when batteries reach 20% power down", 
whatever you'd like. Personally I use one UPS here to control all the 
other apcupsd instances even if they are in another UPS, usually a dumb 
one I can't talk to.

Then it really doesn't what the 'wall wart' transformer is doing as far 
as power goes, as long as your PC shuts down cleanly.

And seriously, I don't think they are a huge draw. You'd have to post 
the stats so someone with better math skills then I can do all the 
calculations but I doubt leaving one of those plugged in is seriously 
degrading your UPS time until batteries are dead. I would like them to 
be slightly smarter, only drawing power when the unit is 'on', but then 
people would probably complain they aren't standard and they have to get 
custom power supplies. Give it a few more years, it'll happen, I just 
have no idea what idea will win on how it'll work.

Nick