apcsmart - Driver for American Power Conversion Smart Protocol UPS equipment

This man page only documents the hardwarespecific features of the apcsmart driver. For information about the core driver, see nutupsdrv(8).

apcsmart should recognize all recent APC models that use a serial protocol at 2400 bps. This is primarily the SmartUPS, MatrixUPS and BackUPS Pro lines.

The driver attempts to support every bell and whistle of the APC reporting interface, whether or not this is strictly sensible.

Some older hardware may only report a handful of variables. This is usually not a bug they just don't support anything else.

This driver expects to see a 9400024C cable or a clone by default. You can switch to the 9400095B dualmode cable support with the cable= definition described below.

If your 9400024C cable is broken or missing, use this diagram to build a clone:

http://random.networkupstools.org/cables/9400024C.jpg

This driver supports the following optional settings in the ups.conf(5):

cable=9400095B

Configure the serial port for the APC 9400095B dualmode cable.

sdtype=num

Use shutdown type num, according to this table:

0: soft shutdown or powerdown, depending on battery status

1: soft shutdown followed by powerdown

2: instant power off

3: power off with grace period

4: 'force OB' hack method for CS 350

Modes 0 and 1 will power up the load when power returns. Modes 2 and 3 will keep the load turned off when the power returns.

Mode 4 exploits an oddity in the CS 350 models since they only seem to support the S command, but then only when running on battery. As a result, the driver will force the UPS to go on battery if necessary before sending the shutdown command. This ensures that the load gets reset.

Some older APC UPS models return bogus data in the status register during a front panel test. This is usually detected and discarded, but some other unexpected values have occasionally slipped through.

Nigel Metheringham <Nigel.Metheringham@Intechnology.co.uk> (drawing heavily on the original apcsmart driver by Russell Kroll). This driver was called newapc for a time and was renamed in the 1.5 series.

The core driver:

The apcsmart driver:

Internet resources: