Smart UPS1000 Not Charging

[Anonymous user]

I am having a very strange problem which is my own fault and fear that there might not be anyway to fix this.

I noticed that the battery level would drop quite low during my Smart UPS1000's self test and though I would check to see what the battery is calibrated to.

I opened Putty and through the Serial cable I was able to enter PROG mode and by pressing 0 view the data about the battery which was 8c which is apparently normal operation.

At this stage, the UPS was working happily, until me being the fool accidentally pressed a combination of buttons on the keyboard by accident which then suddenly made the UPS run off battery power and shows some strange characters on the screen. 

I then powered off the UPS from the mains, held down the power button on the front of the UPS until I heard a series of relay clicks to drain any power and when turning the mains power on, I could hear the UPS humming away. 

However. When pressing the On button, it would not spring to life unless I held it down longer for a cold start.

During the self test, you can see the AC power light blink but then go out which is very strange.

I tried to see if I could make the UPS come back online through other online posts but I cant find anything like this at all.

I have somehow altered the UPS's power settings and wondered if there would be a way to either reset the firmware or re-flash the firmware as I can still communicate with the UPS via the serial cable.

Anyone's help would be greatly appreciated, although I currently am fearing the worst.

Thanks for reading my post.

Nick

[Malvineous_apc]

I don't think there's too much you can do through the console that can completely stuff up a unit.  Just go through the settings and make sure they are all sensible.  Probably you accidentally started the option for doing a calibration, where the UPS runs off the batteries until they go flat to then calculate how long the batteries will last for.

It is odd that the UPS now appears to think there is no input power though.  I take it you've confirmed there is definitely mains power going into the UPS?  Does the console report the mains voltage correctly or does it say 0.000 VAC?

[Anonymous user]

Hello Adam,

Thanks for replying to my post, yes I can definitely confirm that there is mains power coming trough the power socket.

its also very interesting that you mention the device might have started a calibration. I’ll let the UPS run right down and see if the AC power kicks back in.

also, yes the VAC reports as 0.000

Nick

[Malvineous_apc]

If the UPS has been completely switched off then it should have long since cancelled the calibration.  I wouldn't advise letting it run too flat, because once the batteries are dead the UPS won't switch back on, even with mains power - it requires some battery charge in order to power up.

It looks like the mains power is not making it into the UPS for some reason.  It would only report 0.000 VAC if it was unplugged.  Perhaps a fuse is blown somewhere?  I'd triple check that all the cables are secure and functional.  I'm not sure whether these units have input fuses but they do have MOVs (surge protectors) so in theory it's possible that those have gone due to a surge.  Hard to say, but the issue looks like mains power is not making it to the unit for some reason.

If the unit is off, mains unplugged, and you plug the mains in, can you hear any relays click?  If so that would tell you there shouldn't be any fuse-related problems.

[Anonymous user]

I can hear a nice sounding hum from a transformer when the mains are connected.

this could indicate that power is coming in, although I don’t think any hardware has been damaged as such. I’ll have to take a look inside with extreme caution.

If this helps, when I turn the mains on, the UPS front panel lights come on, beeps once but keeps humming rather than going quieter.

Nick

[Malvineous_apc]

Very strange.  The units normally charge the batteries even when they are "off", as long as they are plugged into the mains.  When yours is sitting there humming, does it recharge the batteries?  I guess you'd have to wait a while and then coldstart it so it runs off the battery in order to see the charge level, or perhaps query it through the serial console so you can keep an eye on it and see if it's approaching 100%.

If it's charging the batteries then at least that part is ok.  Sounds promising if it's humming away, but less so if it's humming louder than usual!  Just confirming it's not a cooling fan you're hearing and it's definitely a transformer type electrical hum?

I'm not sure if you've tried this, but have you shut it down, disconnected the mains and the batteries, then held the on/test button for five seconds or so to completely discharge the unit?  If not, try it and give it a few seconds after that before reconnecting first the batteries then the mains then switching it back on.  That should completely reboot the firmware, which may not happen if you haven't disconnected the batteries and drained the residual charge (just switching it off and disconnecting the mains doesn't actually shut down the firmware, it's still running off battery power.)  It's a long shot, but if the firmware has gotten stuck in some weird state then you never know...

[Anonymous user]

Hello Adam,

i am am unsure if the UPS is actually Charging the batteries. Therefore, I have removed the battery packs and are charging the two batteries manually ensuring a balanced voltage of 14.70 Volts for each battery.

i will then allow the UPS to run down as the calibration might be voided if the battery charge is less than 100% charge.

Also, this UPS has no fan.

i have also drained any residue power from the UPS by turning the mains power off from the UPS, and holding down the off button where you can hear two relay clicks. I even removed the battery pack too which would drain any other parts of the firmwares logic.

as a last resort, do you know how I could reprogram the firmware? If possible?

[Anonymous user]

Update: unfortunatley, there’s no change to the situation.

i fear it have damaged the firmware completely...

PowerChute mentions a problem with the Charging circuit but I know it was fine until I changed the code from Putty. 

Is is it possible to reflash the firmware of a SM1000INET?

[Malvineous_apc]

You say you have held down the off button but this does not drain the batteries, it simply switches the unit into standby.  I don't know for sure about your unit but the ones I have contain large capacitors that can maintain a significant charge for days.  The only way to discharge these is to attempt to coldstart the unit with no batteries or mains connected, by holding down the on button for five seconds or so.  When doing this the unit will spring to life for a fraction of a second, with all the LEDs on the front panel lighting up but then shutting off almost immediately.

Newer units I believe will lose this residual charge if the batteries are unplugged for a few minutes, however I always like to use the coldstart test to make absolutely sure the unit has been completely switched off.

Reflashing the firmware is only possible with recent units, and it can be downloaded from the website if there's a firmware update for your unit.  However firmware is very different to a normal computer program and "reinstalling it" rarely makes a difference unless there is a physical problem with the EEPROM, in which case the unit would be unlikely to start at all.  The fact that you can get into the serial console indicates that the firmware is not corrupted.

It really seems like a coincidence that the exact moment you were in the console something went wrong - e.g. a surge - and the unit went on battery.  There are some undocumented things in the console on some UPS versions, where you can press Ctrl and a letter to perform some action, but the only ones I know of (like Ctrl+U) display information and don't change anything.  So unless anyone from APC can chime in with some other key combination that could disconnect the mains input perhaps for factory testing, it really sounds like a physical issue with the unit.

[Malvineous_apc]

Just realised you said you were in PROG mode when all this happened - so on second thoughts maybe something did get changed, although seems odd if you didn't write it to the EEPROM.  Maybe go through all the PROG mode options and confirm they are all set to sensible values?

[Anonymous user]

Hi Adam,

The only problem is that I have no idea what has changed, you can press certain buttons on the keyboard which fly up characters but I have no clue what they are or what they should be...

[Malvineous_apc]

Have you looked for some info on PROG mode?  I found some old very basic stuff which suggests pressing "z" resets things to the defaults, and doing so in prog mode resets even more things to the defaults.

I am guessing though you will want to work your way through the list first and query some of the key values in case you need to restore them after the reset, e.g. in case it resets the output voltage to something that is way off what it should be for your country.

[Anonymous user]

Hi Adam,

Thank you for the link, that looks very handy.

I've also reset the EEPROM with no luck. 

It will be a case of going through each character and checking the values.

I will update you later,

nick

[voidstar_apc]

Some good stuff here:

https://lists.alioth.debian.org/pipermail/nut-upsuser/2007-January/002155.html

and here:

http://www.scn.rain.com/~neighorn/docs/apcupsd/upsbible.html

[Malvineous_apc]

Interesting that the debian.org/nut link says that the person pressed Ctrl+Y in programming mode and reset so many things to the defaults that the unit was showing 0V on the mains input and wouldn't switch on.  Sounds like perhaps that's what has happened here, and the only solution is to find out what the necessary values are and reload them...

[Anonymous user]

Hello Voidstar and Adam,

thank you ever ever so much for your help! I have managed to resolve the problem.

 I must have indeed reset the UPS and I’m happy to say that is now working! I just need to figure out what value equals my UPS 1000 for the model. Although I think PowerChute would give me a hint.

[Malvineous_apc]

Great news!  Can you tell us what values you had to program in to get it working again?  (as in, input voltage, model number, etc.)

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Hi Adam,

no problem! I will post what value I have set for the UPS. This will prove useful for anyone who has bricked or reset their UPS EEPROM.

I’ll update this call as soon as I have moved it back to where it needs to be.

Nick