Possible OT: power monitoring

[Ben Scott]

On Mon, Jun 16, 2008 at 7:53 PM, Curtis Sandoval
<curtis.sandoval at gmail.com> wrote:
> The TrippLite is "Tripp Lite OMNI LCD UPS 8 Outlet / 900VA / 475 Watt /
> Tower UPS" ...

  This thing?  http://www.tripplite.com/products/product.cfm?productID=3082

  Fancy lookin'.  It obviously has some line quality monitoring, since
it displays info on the LCD.  The docs don't make it clear if you can
read that info from via software.  (You'd think that would be a given,
but I've seen stupider things.)  But their website does offer their
"PowerAlert" software for Linux.  Never tried it myself, but you could
give it a shot and see what you get:

http://www.tripplite.com/support/download/softwareindex.cfm

> and I agree about the CyberPower, it kept connecting and
> disconnecting the USB ...

  Yah, for just about anything that small and cheap, you can basically
count yourself lucky if it holds the load through a two minute outage.

> All of these came from Tiger Direct, incidentally, and I think some of my
> comparison problems come from inconsistent information being provided about
> the units.

  I find most resellers provide (at best) incomplete information.  I
recommend checking the mfg websites and doing your downselection based
on specs and MSRP.  Then shop around for the best price for your
chosen unit.

> Regarding the low line power, it doesn't cause any problems on the UPS but
> just seems to be a harbinger of a blackout that will involve several blocks
> around here.

  Ah, I see.  All the UPS monitoring packages I've used (both OEM and
third-party) can record data over time.  So if you have a smart UPS,
you can log the voltage levels.  Graphing functionality is often
included, too.  So yah, that might provide insight into any
correlation between voltage and outages.

-- Ben