[Nut-upsuser] Unable to set up a "serial-over-USB" UPS (APC BZ2200BI-BR)

[Charles Lepple]

On Jun 10, 2014, at 1:56 PM, Douglas A. Augusto wrote:

> On 04/06/2014 at 09:44,
> Bruno Salvador <bruno.salvador at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
>> What Douglas can do is to patch the solis executable in
>> /usr/local/libexec/nut/solis inside freenas, with the patches that I have
>> posted in the forum:
> 
> Dear guys,
> 
> Following your suggestions I was able to make NUT recognize my UPS model.
> Actually, the only modification I had to introduce in solis.c was to change
> this line:
> 
>   if(  ( (RecPack[0] & 0xF0) == 0xA0 )
> 
> to
> 
>   if(  ( (RecPack[0] & 0xF0) == 0xA0 || (RecPack[0] & 0xF0) == 0xB0 )

Thanks for testing that. I committed this as 533dbf7 on the master branch.

I will try to add some text to the apcsmart driver man page to point users to the solis driver if they have APC/Microsol equipment. I am open to suggestions on how to word this.

> Unfortunately some important information, as for instance the battery charge,
> do not work (e.g., battery charge is always zero). But at least now I have
> access to whether the UPS is on battery or not.

Bruno's post mentioned something about changing the call to ScanReceivePack(), but I'm not sure I follow that part.

> Please let me know if you are interested in fully supporting such class of
> Microsol UPS in the upstream version. I do not understand the whole thing
> to do it on my own, but I am willing to help you on this.


The next step, assuming the manufacturer does not publish protocol specifications, is to monitor the communication between the vendor software and your UPS. I wouldn't recommend doing this during normal operation, especially if the shutdown commands need to be tested.

Assuming that the vendor software runs on Windows, you can use something like Portmon from Sysinternals:

   http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb896644

It has been a while since I had to use Portmon, but email the list if you have any questions about setting it up.

-- 
Charles Lepple
clepple at gmail