> > I think you would need a level-shifter to do RS-232 serial with a RPi, and > you may need to fiddle with the cable if modem control lines are involved, > but it should be possible. >
To solve the level shifting problem I've used the following little card from SparkFun Electronics. https://www.sparkfun.com/products/11189 This is being used for a Tripp-Lite which didn't require modem control signals if I recall correctly. --Larry On Thu, Mar 2, 2017 at 9:57 PM, Charles Lepple <clep...@gmail.com> wrote: > On Mar 2, 2017, at 1:46 PM, Garrett Michael Hayes > <garr...@verbalimaging.com> wrote: > > > > I would like to set up a Linux host as a central monitoring system for > UPSs throughout our network. I’d like that system to be able to see the > various UPSs basically in one of two ways: > > 1) Tapping into a native network interface on the target UPS (such > as some larger APC and Tripp-Lite UPSs we have) > > 2) Talking to a Raspberry Pi connected to the UPS via a USB or > serial cable (for lower end UPSs that don’t have network capability) > > One of the design goals of the NUT drivers is that they provide their > status and measurements using a common naming scheme. There is a SNMP > driver that covers most the APC and Tripp-Lite MIBs, so that should cover > case 1. (The three-phase names are similar to the single-phase names.) > > I have done a fair amount of testing with a Raspberry Pi and USB, and it > is no worse than USB on a PC, so that covers at least part of case 2. I > think you would need a level-shifter to do RS-232 serial with a RPi, and > you may need to fiddle with the cable if modem control lines are involved, > but it should be possible. > > I will point out that we sometimes run into regressions with firmware > upgrades on SNMP network cards, but often it is something that can be fixed > by downgrading the firmware, or bugging this list to fix the NUT side. > Also, there are some Tripp-Lite USB models which seem to have trouble > keeping a connection up long-term. Either way, we do have an extensive > collection of sample datasets here, if you are interested in seeing the > sort of values you can expect (and problems that users have noticed) on a > Vendor/Model basis: http://networkupstools.org/ddl/ > > > I’m interested in monitoring and alerting, not so much in making changes > to the UPS settings or shutting down computers, etc. > > > For monitoring, you would run "upsd" plus the model-specific driver(s) on > a nearby system. > > If you are monitoring over the network, fewer hops between driver and UPS > network card would be best. USB pretty much means the machine with the USB > host port must run upsd, although as you pointed out, that machine can be > an embedded system. If your USB UPS reports a unique serial number (as seen > in "lsusb" or kernel message logs; the 16-bit user-definable Tripp-Lite > unit ID seen in their GUI doesn't meet the criteria), you can even have > several USB UPSes monitored by one upsd. > > From there, you have a number of choices for polling the data from upsd. > > NUT comes with "upsmon", a basic shutdown/alerting tool, but you can > always define the shutdown command to be something innocuous like > /bin/true, and/or give each UPS a "power value" of zero. You can use upsmon > for "raw" notifications - reporting an event as soon as it happens, > basically. If you want to "de-bounce" an event (that is, only send an email > if the power is out for more than 30 seconds), you can configure upsmon to > call "upssched" to start a timer, and trigger an action if the timer hasn't > been stopped. > > * http://networkupstools.org/docs/man/upsmon.html and > http://networkupstools.org/docs/man/upsmon.conf.html > > * http://networkupstools.org/docs/man/upssched.html and > http://networkupstools.org/docs/man/upssched.conf.html > > It has been a while since I last set up the NUT CGI components, but I > suspect you can just list each UPS in the template for upsstats, and add in > upsimage references where you want graphs: > > * http://networkupstools.org/docs/user-manual.chunked/ > ar01s02.html#_cgi_programs > * http://networkupstools.org/docs/man/upsstats.cgi.html > * http://networkupstools.org/docs/man/upsimage.cgi.html > > You can ignore upsset for a read-only dashboard. > > We don't have a lot more documentation on the CGI scripts (other than > reference material), so if you don't feel comfortable setting this up from > scratch, you might want to see if any of the monitoring systems listed here > would be quicker to configure for your dashboard idea: > http://networkupstools.org/projects.html#_network_management_systems_nms_ > integration > > (I personally use collectd, since it gathers stats on other subsystems > that I care about in addition to NUT. I either use kcollectd to view the > RRD files locally in X, or I have set up collection3.cgi for remote > viewing.) > > You could probably configure the monitoring system to alert you to various > UPS conditions as well. > > One thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is that you can prototype all of > this by using the dummy-ups driver. This driver simply reads values > repeatedly from a file, and you can edit that file to simulate events like > short power glitches. Again, you can consult the DDL site listed above to > pull sample values for a model similar to one that is deployed, and test > the entire driver/upsd/upsmon stack on a laptop or VM without needing > actual UPS hardware. If you use an automation system like Ansible, it > should be fairly easy to create templates for all of the configuration > files (including setup of the RPi nodes), and just change the host list > when it is time to deploy to the production system. > > Let us know how it goes. > > (opinions are my own - I do not speak for my employer, etc, etc.) > > -- > - Charles Lepple > https://ghz.cc/charles/ > > > > _______________________________________________ > Nut-upsuser mailing list > Nut-upsuser@lists.alioth.debian.org > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/nut-upsuser > -- Larry Fahnoe, Fahnoe Technology Consulting, fah...@fahnoetech.com Minneapolis, Minnesota www.FahnoeTech.com
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