What does a Calibration Key do?

[Anonymous user]

Exactly, what does it do?

I've been told that a calkey resets the UPS' constants? In clear text or in ordinary English, what does it do? What kind of magic does it operate?

I'm asking because I might have to reuse our calkey on our clients' UPSes, and because I'm curious in nature.

Thanks

[Anonymous user]

Exactly, what does it do?

I've been told that a calkey resets the UPS' constants? In clear text or in ordinary English, what does it do? What kind of magic does it operate?

I'm asking because I might have to reuse our calkey on our clients' UPSes, and because I'm curious in nature.

Thanks

[BillP · Accepted solution]

a calibration key, yes, "resets the UPS's constants." in laymens terms, it accesses the UPS's EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read Only Memory) and issues commands to the UPS to reset the appropriate hexadecimal value to tell the UPS's internal chart that it effectively has a new battery so it can calculate the runtime correctly and accurately if it did not realize that it had a new battery and more runtime (via a discharge/recharge or calibration) if the UPS didn't already realize it.

if you use this on a UPS that does NOT have new batteries, you risk telling the UPS it has more runtime than it does which will give an inaccurate reading via the software. the UPS will still run as long as it can on battery and also should readjust to the correct runtime after its been running on battery for a couple minutes, since the runtime reported while online (versus on battery) is only an estimate. if its incorrect estimate, you will just get the wrong reading while the UPS is online and think you have more than you do since i am sure the UPS is online more often than its on battery.

hope that helps!