[Nut-upsuser] thoughts on tripp lite Smart Online UPSs?

[Charles Lepple]

On Mar 25, 2020, at 6:09 PM, Lee Damon <nomad at ee.washington.edu> wrote:
> 
> I have no experience with Tripp Lite UPSs and the reviews I've found online are scant and fairly mixed so I thought I'd ask here...

It's always hard to get a good read on whether a particular UPS brand is problematic, or if there is more noise on the lists because people are trying to make something work. And then there's the subtle differences under the hood.

If I can generalize a bit, I'd say the USB Tripp Lite UPSes we've seen over the past 15 years fall into one of three categories:

* "HID" but not PDC HID (Power Device Class): solid hardware, proprietary protocol (basically the proprietary Tripp Lite serial protocol converted to USB HID reports); some models don't provide all the stats people want.

* PDC HID, but problems at the USB physical layer and/or the OS HCI layer. SMART1500LCDT falls into this category. I think this whole series ("protocol 3016") is problematic, but these USB symptoms seem to be confined to this series.

* Other members of the PDC HID product lines, which just seem to quietly work (and which have been tested against NUT in Tripp Lite's labs, as David alluded to earlier).

Either Eric or David from Tripp Lite mentioned that they are not selling the models with proprietary protocols anymore. We won't know if there is another problematic piece of hardware like protocol 3016 until people try it (and it sometimes depends on the hardware on the host side - for 3016, pre-USB3 controllers had better luck than USB3 controllers, even on non-superspeed ports).

David mentioned your model is likely protocol 4004. Here are other compatibility reports with that protocol ID:

* https://networkupstools.org/ddl/Tripp_Lite/SU1000RTXL2UA.html
* https://networkupstools.org/ddl/Tripp_Lite/SU1500RTXL2UA.html
* https://networkupstools.org/ddl/Tripp_Lite/SU1500RTXLCD2U.html
* https://networkupstools.org/ddl/Tripp_Lite/SU1000XLA.html
* https://networkupstools.org/ddl/Tripp_Lite/SU2200XLA.html

Seems like a good choice to me, based on the available information. Of those, the 1500s seem to have the most recent information (NUT 2.6.3).

(Past performance is not a guarantee of future returns, IANAL, I don't speak for my employer, I don't work for an UPS manufacturer or reseller, I don't own any Tripp Lite stock, something about staying at a Holiday Inn, etc.)

-- 
- Charles Lepple
https://ghz.cc/charles/