[Nut-upsdev] more on 2.0.3-pre

[Peter Selinger]

Alfred Ganz wrote:
> 
> Peter,
> 
> As part of my writeability tests, I tried to play with the 
> beeper.{on|off} commands. I was not able to make them work with the 
> current apc-hid.c. However, upon further looking around, it seems to 
> me that the "Back-UPS ES 650" doesn't support the "muted" value for 
> UPS.AudibleAlarmControl that is in the current table (i.e. "3"), but
> it does support the "disabled" value (i.e. "1"). 

No, this in incorrect. The APC supports all three values (I tried this
with mine).

However, when the beeper is "enabled" it does not mean it's actually
beeping. It will only beep when there is a corresponding condition
(e.g. power failure). 

Also, the "muted" value can only be set while the UPS beeps. It will
only last until the UPS would normally stop beeping, and will then
revert to "enabled". In other words, "muted" is the same as
"temporarily disabled". 

This must be why you could not set it. Try again while it's beeping,
and it should work.

I have configured the beeper.on/off commands to switch between the
"muted" and "enabled" states, because that seemed to be the most
backward-compatible thing to do. Ideally, there would be three
commands, bepper.enable, beeper.disable, and beeper.mute. However,
this kind of change requires standardization across all drivers, so 
it is not something one should just do in one driver. 

> After changing the instant value for the beeper.off instant command
> entry from "3" to "1" I am now able to manipulate the ups.beeper.status 
> with beeper.{on|off} and show the results with upsc.
> 
> Do you know if there are APC UPS's that actually support the "muted"
> value, or is this just an artifact from the time the apc-hid code was
> created (I note that belkin-hid.c indeed also uses a "3")? Since I
> don't know the history of this I am reluctant to propose the above
> change without further insight from the experts.
> 
> Hope this helps, AG
> 
> -- 
>  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>    Alfred Ganz					alfred-ganz at agci.com
>    AG Consulting, Inc.				(203) 624-9667
>    440 Prospect Street # 11
>    New Haven, CT 06511
>  ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>