Smart UPS required with auto shutdown

Hi All,

I am in need of an UPS
1 which can automatically shut my PC when the power goes off
2 and (not compulsory) can also boot it on when the power is restored.

Is there any UPS model in the market which has the same functionality ?

Basically i want to ensure running of my PC all the time.

I have a mercury UPS but it does not have any port like RS-232 or ethernet from where it can be controlled by the PC .Although it has an DSL port (telephone jack) , i am not sure why .

All help will be highly appreciated.

Regards,
som

Any good UPS in the market can do point no. 1. But I doubt that point no. 2 can be acheived by any model available.

Addendum:
I think i have a Classic 600 UPS from mercury. Can it be configured for my need ?

Hi tangent,
please tell which one as i am planning for one and also if possible the approx price.

You can go for APC 500VA, 650VA or higher according to your needs.
APC 500VA costs ~2k in B'lore, am not sure about the 650VA one, am planning to buy one myself, but dealers are not giving good prices.
APC UPS comes with Power Chute software which is capable of switching off your pc in power cut.

Just make sure that the model u get is the one which comes with the software shutdown feature. the cheapest basic model doesnt (or at least didnt as of last year )

PS: The phone jacks are to run ur modem cable thru the UPS to protect any surges etc from reaching ur model through the phone line.

APC 500VA doesnt have monitoring. You need atleast the APC 650VA for monitoring.

Is the APC monitoring software compatible with Vistax64?

You don't need monitoring software. You can just use the power applet in control panel. Why install unnecessary bloat .

heh, heh, not using Vista yet so didn't know about the applet. So basically any UPS with a communication port will work out of the box with Vista?

What significance does the VA have?
I mean what is the advantage of having a higher VA (e.g. 1KVA compared to 600/800 VA)? Is it that it can support more devices or give more run-time on power loss?

It'll support more devices and longer back up compared to a lower rated UPS.

VA is a measure of power => Volt Ampere.

It is somewhat like Watts(though much different in scientific definition).
In simple words it is the product of the voltage and the current going through a circuit. A 650 VA UPS for example can drive a current of 650 amps through a circuit while maitaining a voltage difference of 1 volts at the ends, in theory. Of course that might not be possible due to the limitaion of the wattage i.e. the energy required to drive the circuit. For example say the circuit has such a resistance that the power required to drive through it is 400Watts, but a 650VA UPS is rated at 350W, so 350W will be the actual output and the current or the voltage would have to go down to match that.

In short the more the VA the bigger the circuit it can drive.

The phone jack would be to protect the instrument from spikes on the telephone wire. Although rare, voltages on the phone can spike and damage your instrument



I'll agree with tangentray's comment that the 1st objective is very easy to find, but the 2nd will not be easy

I have an HP UPS that can shutdown by software, but cannot automatically reboot on power restoration.

I too wanted the same thing. When I first tried to achieve 2nd objective, I turned my BIOS power option to "Return to last power-state on powerup".

But this alone will not suffice as the "last state" will be powered-off due the shutdown by the UPS software. I had to disable the UPS software. Now when the power goes off, the UPS will run till the battery exhausts, and then PC will get a rude power cut. But the BIOS now sees the "last state" as powered-on. So when the power is restored, the BIOS will boot the PC to restore it to the last power-state

In short, you will have to sacrifice objective 1 to reach objective 2.

The only reason I want to run continuously is to download stuff. Single-threaded file transfers over FTP & HTTP have been reliable over any power interruptions. BitTorrent will checksum the data chunks and re-transfer the chunks failing the checksum. So the end result file will be reliable.

However I have faced corrupted files on rare ocassions with multi-threaded file transfers over HTTP. So only small file dowloads are multithreaded; all of my large file transfers are single-threaded

My approach is not the most elegant solution for the problem, but it sure beats babysitting the PC over powercuts

I am presently using apc br800in it gives me almost 20-25 minutes backup and hibernates when in the last 5 minutes or so.

now coming to your 3rd point if your power goes at a scheduled time there is a work around.

use Shut Down Expert - Turn off & wake up your computer

now if lets say the power goes at 9 am everyday you schedule a hibernation mode at around 8:50 and when the power cut is there it will switch to battery but because there is no load it will run for almost 3-4 hours. now lets say the power comes back at 11 am then you schedule a wakeup at 11:10 am. so in this way you are able to start and stop the computer. Now what this software adds up more is the ability to start/exit programs in this way you can schedule wichever program to start at a specific time.