[arm-allstar] UPS Suggestions...

Mon Jul 2 10:54:35 EST 2018

I've been watching this thread with interest...  I run a BUNCH of Pi's, a lot of them in remote repeater locations.  I employed a heavy duty brute force solution...  It's just another way to skin a cat...  I thought I would toss it out there...

I employ a couple of semi-daisy-chained APC UPS's.  They take up a little rack space...  (OK maybe a lot of rack space...)

In most of my sites I use one big computer UPS with an external battery pack for the repeater itself.  The repeater is plugged into the UPS outlet on the big one and that UPS is plugged into the "surge" outlet on the first and smaller APC UPS that has USB outlets that run the Pi, and UPS outlets also run the little router and network equipment (and a USB powered WiFi "hot spot" in some cases).  The amplifier (if any) is plugged into the "surge" outlet on the second UPS.  

In this configuration, if the power fails the repeater goes into "low power mode" with no amp (if any).  The repeater will keep right on going for a couple of hours (sometimes 4) when the second larger UPS craps out when the batteries are drained, it quits.  However, that little RasPi (WiFi hotspot) and the router on the first UPS can stay up for a DAY OR TWO!

Although this solution is NOT cheap, it works rather well.  None of the UPS's I could lay my hands on (that were affordable) would run that power hungry amplifier for any acceptable length of time.  My 100w quantars either - they suck power like you wouldn't believe...  But in most of my cases, this arrangement works and works rather well.
Even my important emergency operations repeaters that are located in places with redundant generators (sometimes triple redundant power backup like at the local bank and city's fiber hub!)  They all have a "fail-over" momentary power blip - and these UPS's make my systems oblivious to how fast their building switches over to propane generators, etc...
However, never try to "daisy chain" battery UPS's for redundancy, if you can help it.  They just don't like to play nice with each other sometimes.  It's best not to risk it - coming from a guy who used to install and maintain huge battery bank UPS' for telephone systems for a three letter phone company...  :)  The way I have mine setup, all the UPS's see the outside power and aren't daisy chaining their battery systems....

It probably isn't the droid you are looking for - but this may make someone else think about pulling one of those old computer UPS's out from under the bench (Or maybe a pair of them!) and slap a new battery in it and see how it works...  :)
I was quite amazed that one of my Pi's stayed up for over 4 days on a little computer UPS with a hot spot and other stuff hanging off of it....

Bill - N5MBMwww.n5mbm.net

      From: Doug Crompton via arm-allstar <arm-allstar at hamvoip.org>
 To: ARM Allstar <arm-allstar at hamvoip.org> 
Cc: Doug Crompton <wa3dsp at gmail.com>
 Sent: Monday, July 2, 2018 9:53 AM
 Subject: Re: [arm-allstar] UPS Suggestions...

I want to make everyone aware that in the howto's at hamvoip.org there is a
power shutdown circuit that will shutdown
 the Pi and any associated radio properly upon power failure and return
power when it comes back up. We had boards made to do this which are
available unpopulated or wired.

https://hamvoip.org/hamradio/power_shutdown_monitor/

While this is different than a UPS backup as it does not sustain operation
in a power failure it might work in some applications. It was intended for
unattended power shutdown in a portable or mobile application.

*73 Doug*

*WA3DSP*

*http://www.crompton.com/hamradio <http://www.crompton.com/hamradio>*

On Mon, Jul 2, 2018 at 10:44 AM, "Sean McCarthy via arm-allstar" <
arm-allstar at hamvoip.org> wrote:

> The script in case anyone else would like to take a look...
>
> On Mon, Jul 2, 2018 at 10:33 AM Sean McCarthy <smccarthy61 at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
> > Jesse,
> >
> > What did you need to do to get the script to run? I followed the
> > instructions from Alchemy with no luck, but it was written for
> Rasberrian,
> > so theres that...
> >
> > Here is my failure:
> >
> > [root at K8FBI UPS]# sudo python GPIO-shutdown-sample.py
> > Traceback (most recent call last):
> >  File "GPIO-shutdown-sample.py", line 32, in <module>
> >    import RPi.GPIO as GPIO
> > ImportError: No module named 'RPi'
> > [root at K8FBI UPS]#
> >
> > Thanks!
> >
> > On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 10:21 PM "Jesse Royall via arm-allstar" <
> > arm-allstar at hamvoip.org> wrote:
> >
> >> Sean,
> >> Yes it will restart when power is applied and will start charging again.
> >> If you do a shutdown then no. You have to remove power and apply it to
> >> start back up. But it will start up if the batteries go dead and power
> >> comes back on. It has a smart charge built on. You setup a python
> script to
> >> monitor the voltage and it will initiate a safe power down before they
> go
> >> dead. Then when they go dead it will restart the pi when power is
> applied
> >> back to charge the batteries. What sold me is that one power supply to
> >> power the ups then since it’s a hat, it supplies the pi with power on
> the
> >> header. If the cells go bad you just replace them like AA batteries. You
> >> can replace them one at a time without loosing power. You can also stack
> >> them to increase the battery time and they have connections to daisy
> them
> >> and charge the next ups. Has a reset button on board to force a restart
> >> when pressed. The only problem I’ve had is I had one bad cell once and
> it
> >> would take the other cell down with it. But the voltage monitor would
> catch
> >> it and shut down the pi when unplugged it. The other is when picking up
> the
> >> pi, I had a habit of hitting the reset accidentally.
> >>
> >> I’m was working on a script to watch the voltage and when it sees a
> >> voltage drop it tells you via courtesy tone your on battery and possibly
> >> speak voltage at intervals. Since the cron job looks for low voltage to
> >> safe power down I figure I could use that check to report back to
> allstar
> >> and either tattle via tone or voice.
> >>
> >>
> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >>
> >> > On Jun 28, 2018, at 10:11 AM, Sean McCarthy via arm-allstar <
> >> arm-allstar at hamvoip.org> wrote:
> >> >
> >> > I was looking at the pi uptime ups, but it was unclear if it would
> >> restart
> >> > the PI unattended. If it does, thats probably the way I'll go...
> >> >
> >> > On Thu, Jun 28, 2018 at 10:26 AM "Jesse Royall via arm-allstar" <
> >> > arm-allstar at hamvoip.org> wrote:
> >> >
> >> >> http://alchemy-power.com/pi-uptime-ups/
> >> >>
> >> >> This is the one I use. Uses 2 18650 batteries. I get about 10 hrs of
> >> >> backup. It’s stackable. Has a reset button on it. Monitors the
> voltage
> >> for
> >> >> a safe power off. And boots back up when power is applied.
> >> >>
> >> >> Sent from my iPhone
> >> >>
> >> >> _______________________________________________
> >> >>
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> >> >> arm-allstar at hamvoip.org
> >> >> http://lists.hamvoip.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/arm-allstar
> >> >>
> >> >> Visit the BBB and RPi2/3 web page - http://hamvoip.org
> >> > _______________________________________________
> >> >
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> >> > http://lists.hamvoip.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/arm-allstar
> >> >
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> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >>
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> >>
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> >
> >
>
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>
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