A silent UPS - (A little OT, I know...)

[Manolis Kiagias]

Da Rock wrote:
> On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 08:24 +1000, Da Rock wrote:
>   
>> On Wed, 2008-04-09 at 01:02 +0300, Manolis Kiagias wrote:
>>     
>>> Da Rock wrote:
>>>       
>>>> On Tue, 2008-04-08 at 23:45 +0200, Erik Cederstrand wrote:
>>>>   
>>>>         
>>>>> Da Rock wrote:
>>>>>     
>>>>>           
>>>>>> This may sound like a strange question, but is there a way to mute the
>>>>>> voice box of a UPS? I have a highly specialised application for one- I
>>>>>> need a mobile desktop pc (very cheap). I need to setup a pc for my
>>>>>> little girl so that she has music, video, and visualisations while she's
>>>>>> in her cot- which is mobile and moved from room to room. So I don't want
>>>>>> to shutdown the pc when in transit, and I certainly don't want any
>>>>>> shrieks when I unplug the power...
>>>>>>       
>>>>>>             
>>>>> Just crack open the UPS box and cut the wires to the loudspeaker :-)
>>>>>     
>>>>>           
>>>> I thought of that- but how do you do that with those little sealed
>>>> units? I'm looking at a small consumer unit around 500-700VA.
>>>>
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>>>>   
>>>>         
>>> I've got a couple of cheap APC models (RS500). You can turn off all 
>>> their alert signals using the apcupsd ( sysutils/apcupsd)  program ( 
>>> which is of course used for automatic shutdowns). The setting is stored 
>>> in UPS memory (probably flash or EEPROM) and is retained. This is good 
>>> actually, since one of these is pretty close to my bedroom ;)
>>>
>>>       
>> So it can be switched off with the software? That could work for me...
>>     
>
> I just confirmed with APC regarding this software setting, and they
> confirmed it- but stated categorically that only the Window$ software of
> their making could do it. Can you confirm the BSD software will do it?
>
> I think I shocked the guy when he suggested just hook up to another
> windows box to change the setting, then put it on whatever machine I
> wanted, and I told him that was near impossible- "I wouldn't corrupt my
> network with M$"!!!
>
>   
I assure you, apcupsd has this option. Here is a direct paste from my 
freebsd server:

Please select the function you want to perform.

1) Test kill UPS power
2) Perform self-test
3) Read last self-test result
4) Change battery date
5) View battery date
6) View manufacturing date
7) Set alarm behavior
8) Set sensitivity
9) Quit

Select function number: 7

Current alarm setting: DISABLED
Press...
 E to Enable alarms
 D to Disable alarms
 Q to Quit with no changes
Your choice:

You can access this by running apctest as root. It is installed as part 
of sysutils/apcupsd. You should however stop the apcupsd monitoring 
daemon before running apctest.