Test and read home APC UPSes without computers?

[ant_apc]

Hello.

Is there a way to test and read home APC UPSes (e.g., Back-UPS ES-750 (BE750G)) in detailed without computers' softwares (PowerChute in Windows and apcupsd)?

Thank you in advance. 🙂

[Anonymous user]

It depends upon what kind of test you want to do.

These units perform a self test at every startup. With any significant load attached, this should give you a quick "go/no-go" indication. Should the unit fail a battery test, you'll know. It will beep constantly afterwards.

If all you want to test is runtime, plugging a stable, resistive load running to at least 30% of the unit's capacity into the unit and disconnecting it from AC power would do very well. Let it run from battery until it stops, and time how long it ran before the battery was exhausted. This will put considerable wear and tear on the battery, and it may push a weak battery past the point of no return.

A third approach would be to utilize some kind of microcontroller with a custom program to interrogate the unit as to its current status, and display this information on some kind of display.

As far as I'm aware, most if not all of the current Back-UPS product line no longer support simple (or "dumb") signaling over an RS-232 serial connection. Even if they did, this doesn't tell you anything beyond "power out" and "battery low, shut down now!". This means you'd have to implement enough of the USB protocol and figure out what information is being exchanged over that connection before you could tap into status information from the UPS.

[ant_apc]

On 2/17/2017 11:25 PM, William said:

It depends upon what kind of test you want to do.

These units perform a self test at every startup. With any significant load attached, this should give you a quick "go/no-go" indication. Should the unit fail a battery test, you'll know. It will beep constantly afterwards.

If all you want to test is runtime, plugging a stable, resistive load running to at least 30% of the unit's capacity into the unit and disconnecting it from AC power would do very well. Let it run from battery until it stops, and time how long it ran before the battery was exhausted. This will put considerable wear and tear on the battery, and it may push a weak battery past the point of no return.

A third approach would be to utilize some kind of microcontroller with a custom program to interrogate the unit as to its current status, and display this information on some kind of display.

As far as I'm aware, most if not all of the current Back-UPS product line no longer support simple (or "dumb") signaling over an RS-232 serial connection. Even if they did, this doesn't tell you anything beyond "power out" and "battery low, shut down now!". This means you'd have to implement enough of the USB protocol and figure out what information is being exchanged over that connection before you could tap into status information from the UPS.

Yesterday, there was a 30 seconds power outage and my UPS lost power too. Its power light showed green status too. I remember there was a few hours power outage almost a month ago, and its battery was fine too (no shut down until it ran out of battery life).

I finally hooked up its USB data cable to a 64-bit W7 HPE SP1 machine to check with PowerChute PE. Everything looked fine. So, I ran its self test (nothing changed on the UPS physically) and it failed with its beeps and UPS's light showed a red color icon. Both software and UPS hardware told me to replace its battery. 😞 I guess the old battery died from the recent power outages?

I wonder why it didn't tell me this earlier. Or did it just started from the recent outages?

[voidstar_apc]

On 2/18/2017 9:37 PM, Ant said:

Both software and UPS hardware told me to replace its battery. 😞 I guess the old battery died from the recent power outages?

I wonder why it didn't tell me this earlier. Or did it just started from the recent outages?

It's hard to tell that a battery has failed except by using it. The UPS does a weekly self-test where it briefly runs on battery -- this is most reliable when there's significant load on the UPS.

Batteries typically last 3-5 years.

[ant_apc · Accepted solution]

On 2/19/2017 4:55 AM, voidstar said:

On 2/18/2017 9:37 PM, Ant said:

Both software and UPS hardware told me to replace its battery. 😞 I guess the old battery died from the recent power outages?

I wonder why it didn't tell me this earlier. Or did it just started from the recent outages?

It's hard to tell that a battery has failed except by using it. The UPS does a weekly self-test where it briefly runs on battery -- this is most reliable when there's significant load on the UPS.

Batteries typically last 3-5 years.

Ah OK.  I guess it finally failed as of a couple nights ago from the 30 seconds real power outage. And then, I went to investigate why when I did a manual selftest in PowerChute PE for Windows. UPS is about five years old.