[Nut-upsuser] Experiences With NUT Eaton & Cyberpower UPS

[Jeff Rickman]

I watched the recent discussions of "issues" with an Eaton Ellipse UPS with some interest.

I use the US version of that UPS, the Ellipse Pro 1500 in my case. I had not encountered many of the issues recounted in those discussions. The Login Failure message is not unique to that UPS as I have seen it with my Cyberpower units. The polling setting also had me wondering as I have never had to alter that variable. In short, the entire discussion left me wondering/puzzled.

In my own case I have found Eaton Powerware (from MGE acquisition), Eaton Ellipse Pro and Cyberpower UPS to be practically "plug & play" in their 'ups.conf' configurations under NUT 2.7.4 and 2.8.0. I attach these UPS to a typical PC USB power or to the USB ports of a Raspberry Pi 3 something; no apparent operational differences. Only the Powerware units have showed any quirky behavior, be being a bit slower to respond (compared to a Cyberpower CP 1500C or 1500D UPS, or even an APC Smart-UPS 1000) to NUT polling on a NUT server daemon 'start' or 'restart' compared to the Ellipse and Cyberpower units. I accept that Eaton Powerware quirky-ness by being more patient with those units.

As for my NUT server experiences, I personally prefer low power mini PC platforms as NUT server hosts over Raspberry Pi. I have run both platforms for years now and over the years so this is not a 'blind knock', just a personal preference.

I have multiple NUT server systems with 2 or more UPS connected. In some cases both UPS use the 'usbhid' driver but those UPS come from 2 different manufacturers so the 'ups.conf' configuration is still very simple. I had one instance where I had 2 Eaton Ellipse Pro 1500 UPS connected to the same NUT server and it worked just fine; the UPS were distinguished by their serial numbers as seen in verbose 'lsusb' output with corresponding entries made in the NUT server's 'ups.conf' file.

So based on all of that personal experience I still regard the entire recent Ellipse Pro discussions as "puzzling".

In closing, and this is unrelated to NUT in any way, those Eaton Ellipse Pro 1500 units must be partially disassembled (in a non-obvious way as screws are not the issue) if the batteries swell inside; the internal battery space tolerances are very close and even 2mm of swell will hold the batteries tight in the case.

Jeff Rickman

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