I've been searching for a product that doesn't seem to exist.

In my parents' house, they're set up with an X10 system that's working quite well except for one problem. The main controller gets its power from the wall, and has no batteries. This wouldn't be too much of a problem but for two things: the house loses power briefly almost every other day, and the only thing the controller doesn't store in memory is the time and date.

So right now the lawn lamps are probably on because I haven't gotten over there to set the time yet (my mom doesn't know how).

What I would love to find is a very small battery backup that could handle one device for a very short amount of time. This controller couldn't draw much power, and the power usually only goes out for a few minutes at most.

Does any such device exist? The smallest I've been able to find are still about the size of a loaf of bread. I understand that these things need huge batteries, but that's for keeping computers/monitors running for a couple minutes. All I need to do is keep a 4" 2-color LCD screen going for a minute or two.

Tripplite sells oversized power bars that have built-in UPS. Perhaps only 2/3 the size of a loaf of bread.

-ml

Mmm.. actually, I was thinking of the Back-UPS ES from APC, not tripplite.

Hmm. I doubt the X10 signal will be able to properly traverse the UPS. Some UPS units are also really bad for interfering with X10 signals elsewhere on the mains.

This seems like such a major and fatal design flaw that they must have corrected it by now. I would first investigate the possibility that an upgraded version of the main controller (with battery) is available.

In fact, it's such a major design flaw that I can't see how they could have shipped such a product at all, even in a 1.0 version. Are you certain it doesn't already have a battery option and you just haven't found the battery hatch yet?

Oh I'm certain. The unit actually appears to be more aimed at in-wall installation, but it also came with a plastic stand and an AC adapter.

I agree, it seems like a pretty big flaw to me. At least it retains all the programming and even the city code. It just doesn't retain time and date. I would upgrade it, but there's nothing else quite like this model on the market that I can see, and this one isn't even sold anymore. Most importantly, X10 controllers are absurdly expensive. I think this unit was about $250 around 3-4 years ago, and there's hardly anything to it.


Not a concern. It doesn't get power and transmit through the same line. It has an AC adapter, but also uses a phone chord to talk to another X10 adapter.


Yeah, I have a couple of those. They're still monsters, though. They take up a lot of room on the countertop where the controller is. It also seems like overkill for what I need.


While we're on the subject, why is it that nearly all these battery backups tout the fact that they have an alarm when on battery power? I hate those damn alarms. I have four battery backups at home, and when the power goes out it's a cacophony of beeping. It wouldn't be too bad if only there was an easy way to turn these alarms off.

Don't suppose you remember what unit it is?


What exactly do you need it to do?


Ah. It uses an external interface. Most of them are integrated now which is why using it on a UPS wouldn't work.


In case you've not noticed that its your lights are off or your TV/whatever is off...

Agreed completely. These things pointlessly and annoyingly tell me the obvious: That my power just went out. Like I couldn't tell!?

Hopefully the alarm is permanently defeatable. If not, you can always crack it open and snip the piezo transducer off of the board. I did that on one UPS of mine.

What these things really need is a quiet occasional chirp to notify me when their batteries are dead and need to be replaced. I've had too many instances when the power does go out and the backup units fail because of an old battery I didn't know was dead.

The APCs and Lieberts that I at work do that, come to think of it, my little APC at home does it too. It sounds an alarm for about 10 seconds and then beeps every now and then.

How reliable is the power over there? I get 2 or 3 power cuts/brown outs a year.

It depends on the area. Sometimes on the street. The street my folks' house is on has historically been one of the worst for power outages. Like I said, there's a blip almost every other day, and if there's a wide-spread outage, it's always one of the last to get turned back on.

There was one winter where an ice storm blacked out half the county (which is millions of people). In about two days most places were back on. In about 3 days the neighborhood was back on, and in about 6 days their street was back on. But no matter what, we can't seem to communicate these issues to the power company.

A certain person I know, once didn't even notice for about five minutes that he was having a power cut because the persistent, oddly unsynchronised beeping from the two UPSes in the sitting room was indistinguishable from the sort of music he listened to anyway...


I have an APC Smart-UPS and the alarm can be turned off over the serial port; there's an option in the apcupsd config file.

Peter

True, some of these devices have that option, but not all.

I guess the device I'm looking for still doesn't exist. Shoot.

Seems like you need something like this. But you have to wire it in yourself. And it has to be for a 12VDC product.

Damn. I don't have any of the skills needed to do something like that. But surely the mere existence of that product indicates some need for such a thing...

Although, following today's thunderstorms, I can now reveal that just setting it in the apcupsd config file doesn't actually do anything to the UPS: you have to use apctest's "set EPROM data" facility to set the alarm timeout to "N".

Peter