[wellylug] ups

[David Antliff]

On Sun, Mar 30, 2008 at 8:18 PM, Lindsay Hunter <lindsay at csw.co.nz> wrote:
> Any good experiences with ups for the small office?

Not a 'small office' more of a 'home office'...

I have an APC Back-UPS CS 650 which works fine with my headless
"servers" (low power). However it wasn't able to cope with my
workstation so I looked at a gruntier model and decided larger APC
models are too expensive. So I went with a Dynamix 1700 and this seems
to be pretty good. I've pulled the power out once though as a test and
it didn't switch! That was a surprise. It's also marketed as "line
interactive" but boy it sure acts like a switching UPS to me... hmmm

I have a strange observation - every hour, on the hour, both UPSes go
into a semi-random switching state where they switch on and off mains
power every few seconds for about a minute. The APC one has a
'sensitivity control' so I made it less sensitive and it stopped doing
it. The Dynamix one doesn't seem to have this control so I have to put
up with lots of audible switching clicks every hour. Quite annoying. I
believe it's the ripple control causing this and I'd love to know if I
can legally block this somehow... (I have gas hot water). Maybe some
sort of filter on the UPS AC input?

Also, the 'quality' of the power on the Dynamix UPS is pretty poor - I
plugged a 40W incandescent lamp into it and when it's on battery the
light flickers like crazy. However my switch-mode power supplies are
fine with it.

apcupsd seems to cope with the APC very well via USB. There's
apparently a 'driver' for the Dynamix UPS (might not be for apcupsd
but it's something similar) but when I got the cable (serial, not USB)
out and tried to plug it into my workstation I discovered that new
motherboards don't have serial ports any more... sigh.

-- 
David.