[Nut-upsuser] Wishlist: Absorb apcupsd features and device support that may be still missing in NUT

[Bill Gee]

Hi Charles -

The APC units I have are dumb-serial.  Back-UPS 500, Back-UPS-600 and 
Back-UPS-650.  They use serial cable 940-0020B.  They are listed in 
apcupsd as "Dumb UPS".  The sticker on the back says "Model BK650MC".

Reading through the docs you linked, I cannot tell for sure if these are 
supported.

Here is a sample output from apcupsd:
=======================
Date Range: yesterday
  APC      : 001,018,0458
  DATE     : 2026-02-07 07:46:29 -0600
  HOSTNAME : zoneminder2
  VERSION  : 3.14.14 (31 May 2016) redhat
  UPSNAME  : zoneminder2
  CABLE    : APC Cable 940-0020B
  DRIVER   : DUMB UPS Driver
  UPSMODE  : Stand Alone
  STARTTIME: 2026-02-07 07:46:24 -0600
  STATUS   : ONLINE
  MBATTCHG : 5 Percent
  MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes
  MAXTIME  : 0 Seconds
  NUMXFERS : 0
  TONBATT  : 0 Seconds
  CUMONBATT: 0 Seconds
  XOFFBATT : N/A
  STATFLAG : 0x05000008
  END APC  : 2026-02-12 03:29:01 -0600
=========================

===============
Bill Gee

On 2/11/26 21:53, Charles Lepple wrote:
> On Feb 6, 2026, at 1:18 PM, Bill Gee wrote:
>>
>> I have several VERY old APC devices - so old they use serial ports for monitoring.  I would love to get them off apcupsd, but nothing else will work.  They support fairly modern Linux systems - Fedora 43 and Alma 9.
> 
> Interestingly, NUT has *two* serial APC drivers, and I vaguely remember that there are older units that fall through the cracks even with those two:
> 
> - https://networkupstools.org/docs/man/apcsmart.html (has some tips for identifying generations)
> - https://networkupstools.org/docs/man/apcsmart-old.html
> 
> That said, between the logs from the working apcupsd code, and debug logs from maybe apcsmart-old, we should be able to figure something out.
>