A possible way of dealing with failures of the Energy Management feature

[azbruno_apc]

I recently got a BE750G and could not get the Energy Management to work. The basic problem is that as long as the feature is enabled on the device, there is no power to the controlled outlets, regardless of what is in the master and what it's on/off state is and what all the settings are. I got a replacement unit and it too fails. I've seen from the forums that it is not just me experiencing this.

A thought occurred to me today. Since PowerChute PE can turn the Energy Management feature on or off in the UPS unit, is there a way to programmatically do this through a Windows script or other means. What I would like to do is have something I can schedule to run automatically when Windows is booted to disable the feature, thus powering the controlled outlets. And when Windows shuts down, I'd like to programmatically enable the feature, thus cutting power to the controlled outlets.

Hopefully someone at APC could get this done. As a former programmer, I would expect it to be rather trivial.

[voidstar_apc]

I don't have an answer, but that sounds like a great idea. Here's where I would look:

Many UPS features can be controlled via the documented USB Power Device HID though I suspect master-control would be a proprietary usage. Maybe wireshark and usbpcap would help. Additionally, some forum members have had success controlling UPS settings through PowerChute registry entries. Lastly, I would take a look at apcupsd.

[azbruno_apc]

Thanks for the suggestions, voidstar.

I had completely uninstalled PowerChute and installed apcupsd, just to see if that would help. But I couldn't find any way through that to turn the feature on or off so I'm back to PowerChute. I'll look at the other things you mentioned.

My years as a programmer would tell me that for someone who's worked on PowerChute it should be a one day job to create such a program. All the needed code is already in PowerChute. No UI is needed, just a simple command, e.g. ...

C:> apcgreen -[on|off]

While it could be more complex to set up the delay times and thresholds, that can be done easily through PCPE as they needn't change.

Actually, a programmatic method as I'm suggesting would be valuable for another reason. My PC goes to sleep a number of times during the day as I'm not always working on it. If I plug in my LaserJet to a controlled outlet, then each time the PC came out of sleep mode, the LaserJet would run through its power-up cycle before going into its own low energy mode. Better to leave things plugged in and idle until the PC is really shuts down.

Anyone?

[azbruno_apc]

I recently got a BE750G and could not get the Energy Management to work. The basic problem is that as long as the feature is enabled on the device, there is no power to the controlled outlets, regardless of what is in the master and what it's on/off state is and what all the settings are. I got a replacement unit and it too fails. I've seen from the forums that it is not just me experiencing this.

A thought occurred to me today. Since PowerChute PE can turn the Energy Management feature on or off in the UPS unit, is there a way to programmatically do this through a Windows script or other means. What I would like to do is have something I can schedule to run automatically when Windows is booted to disable the feature, thus powering the controlled outlets. And when Windows shuts down, I'd like to programmatically enable the feature, thus cutting power to the controlled outlets.

Hopefully someone at APC could get this done. As a former programmer, I would expect it to be rather trivial.

[BillP · Accepted solution]

Hi,

Why not disable the feature using the master switch on the UPS? There are 2 switches on the ES750. 1 is the power / Off - On switch and the other is the Master enable switch. If you disable the Master outlet using the switch the controlled outlets will power up and stay powered up no mater what is plugged into the Master outlet.