[Nut-upsdev] APC Back-UPS 500

[Peter Selinger]

Hi Rob,

I am replying to a message from December, so sorry if I have lost the
thread of conversation or your UPS has meanwhile been given to the
archaeological society. 

The problem with the missing Back-UPS 500 status variables was fixed
on January 27 in the Development branch.

I am not sure about the status of the timeout problem. You wrote:

> >>I'm using nut 2.0.2 from Fedora Core 4 and had some trouble getting my
> >>APC Back-UPS 500 working. I ended up having to rebuild the RPM myself
> >>after making some code changes.

If you still have them, please send these "code changes". -- Peter

Rob Crittenden wrote:
> 
> Charles Lepple wrote:
> > On 12/29/05, Rob Crittenden <rcrit at greyoak.com> wrote:
> > 
> >>I'm using nut 2.0.2 from Fedora Core 4 and had some trouble getting my
> >>APC Back-UPS 500 working. I ended up having to rebuild the RPM myself
> >>after making some code changes.
> >>
> >>I had to increase the upsd synchronization timeout from 5 to 15 seconds.
> >>It seems like 10 is the sweet spot but allowing a few extra seconds
> >>doesn't seem to hurt anything. At 5 the UPS would timeout 5 out of 6 times.
> > 
> > 
> > Depending on which timeout this is (I don't have the code handy), this
> > might be something that could be exposed as a configuration variable.
> > I think some of the MGE USB UPSes take a while as well, due to the
> > slow internal baud rate, and the low-speed USB transfers.
> 
> Yup, sounds like a great idea to me.
> 
> > 
> >>The second problem is that my UPS, a USB model using the newhidups
> >>driver, doesn't send PresentStatus (840002) in its updates. This means
> >>that ups.status is always empty and upsmon has a fit over it.
> >>
> >>My fix was to simply remove "PresentStatus." from the ups.status entries
> >>in apc-hid.h. I haven't been able to come up with any sort of
> >>semi-elegant solution for this. My fix could break any UPS that relies
> >>on PresentStatus for its updates.
> > 
> > 
> > Does the debug output indicate an alternative variable that provides
> > on battery/online status? (In this case, '-D -D' is probably a decent
> > debug level for newhidups.)
> 
> Sorry, I wasn't clear. Normally ups.status, at least in apc-hid.h, 
> consists of UPS.PowerSummary.PresentStatus.ACPresent, Discharching, 
> Charging, BelowRemainingCapacityLimit, etc.
> 
> I have the variables UPS.PowerSummary.ACPresent, Discharging and 
> Charging available but there is no path for 
> UPS.PowerSummary.PresentStatus. So by removing the PresentStatus from 
> apc-hid.h I can get direct access to those variables. It is probably a 
> bucket issue. On some UPS's these are dropped into the PresentStatus 
> bucket, in others just in PowerSummary.
> 
> I haven't actually done a "pull the plug and watch the status change" 
> test yet since I have equipment plugged in at the moment, but since I 
> see those status variables I have some amount of faith that it will do 
> the right thing.
> 
> rob
> 
> _______________________________________________
> Nut-upsdev mailing list
> Nut-upsdev at lists.alioth.debian.org
> http://lists.alioth.debian.org/mailman/listinfo/nut-upsdev
>