PCNS Feature request: Menubar monitor for Mac OS X

[BillP]

After struggling to get apcupsd working with my AP9617 card on a SUA1500I Smart-UPS, I reverted to using the PCNS software. Install was a bit tricky, requiring to install two separate Java packages, but I got it working and actually I find PCNS to be quite decent in terms of functionality.

My only gripe with the web-based interface of PCNS is it offers no easy way to keep an eye on the UPS status from the Mac. It would be great to offer a small menubar UPS monitor to simply show the UPS status such as a red/orange/green icon indicating state, with a dropdown showing raw UPS data or suchlike.

Thanks....

[BillP]

Ben,

PCNS is designed to work with the network card and the network card interface provides the UPS status. With the AP9617 you can open the cards web interface or poll for data via SNMP and post that data to a text file or GUI. 

[BillP]

Thanks for your reply. Yes I understand all that and have it working as you describe. The Web interface shows all the required data it's true. My point was just that keeping a web window open the whole time isn't ideal, but without keeping it open you have no indication from the main Finder screen of the status. For example if the UPS starts running on battery, you wouldn't know unless you manually checked in the PCNS web interface.

What would be a nice addition (not to replace) would be a simple Menubar item that would display at a glance the UPS status (the same info polled from the card by PCNS). So that you'd have a simple red/orange/green icon in the menubar to indicate Charged/Charging/On Battery/Lost communication.... for example... like what apcupsd has.

Then you could have a dropdown menu that either showed basic UPS status data, or simply a link to open the PCNS web interface. It could also have (and I think this would be very useful indeed), a "Cancel/Delay scheduled shutdown" option for when you are working and know that you don't want to perform a scheduled shutdown. At present you'd have to go in to PCNS web interface and disable that particular setting, then remember to change it back later. Thanks, Ben

[voidstar_apc]

That sounds like a job for ShellWrangler. I'll see if I can cook up something when I'm at my mac.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Not heard of Shellwrangler before but it seems like it could work if one knew what shell commands to query (I don't!). Will be very happy if you manage to work something out... Thanks.