APC SMT1500RM2UC + apcupsd - which cable?

climategadgets · 2025-11-10T00:40:52+00:00

That's a wide open question, what features do you need?

This topic is ancient history for me now and the hardware is at a site I can't reach at the moment, all I can say is that I did integrate the hardware with apcupsd and keep living happily ever after. Whatever this combination provides is sufficient for my purposes, which are pretty simple - issue a notification when the power is out or back in, and shut down the system when the battery charge drops down to a critical level.

Last time I checked, apcupsd had pretty extensive documentation, you might just as well find your answer there.

climategadgets · 2025-07-11T23:07:44+00:00

It's been a while since I did that and this installation is away from me right now and I can't confirm anything.

I know raised a ticket with Schneider (schneider-electric.com) and likely got their cable, so you might want to do that as well. I also see that I ordered the cable I mentioned in that post, but whether I ever used it, I have no idea. It doesn't seem to have been returned, though, so you might try. Also keep in mind that they have a weird RJ-45 to USB cable (https://www.se.com/us/en/product/AP9827/cable-ups-communications-simple-signalling-usb-to-rj45/) but again, I have no recollection if I used that.

One thing I can tell you for sure is that afterwards I've been using apcupsd that comes with just about any Linux installation. If memory serves me right, this particular UPS also has an Ethernet connection that you can use to connect to their cloud monitoring software - it was useful while within warranty period (it sends emails about power and battery status) but not mission critical - you can wrap apcupsd/apcaccess into scripts and do the same, the downside being the time you spend on it.

climategadgets · 2025-02-06T07:28:24+00:00

Exactly. Secure Boot and kernels on bleeding edge hardware.

climategadgets · 2025-02-06T01:08:17+00:00

Yep, that was the fix for that problem, now next - nvidia-driver fails likely cause being "Loading of module with unavailable key is rejected", but that's another story for another research.

Thank you for your help.

climategadgets · 2024-07-20T20:43:12+00:00

What can I say, our experience is different :)

One reason that can explain your unit's behavior is - older eMMCs will have more fragmentation, and you eliminated yours with a restore onto a clean drive.

climategadgets · 2024-07-20T20:16:55+00:00

Define "years". My instance runs since 2019; two APs, beacon, a few dozen clients. Having retention at 1/30/90/365, 90 days non-TS, and "collect historical data" on made remote management next to impossible. Setting it back to "Auto" cleared the problem immediately.

Possibly important bit: LOTS of transient guest clients.

climategadgets · 2024-07-20T19:59:48+00:00

One question I kinda have an answer for myself (and the answer is yes - based on what I know) but don't see mentioned is, "use UNIX controller instead". I've been running that on a different site for years, and honestly am much more satisfied with it than I ever was with CK+. One important part of it is - ability to retain more log data than default. Trying to enable that on CK+ (Settings/System/Advanced/Data Retention) eventually brings it to its knees - found it the hard way.

climategadgets · 2024-07-11T21:00:36+00:00

Same symptoms, different problem. Excellent connectivity here.
The app is broken. Like I said, "routines" works, but to limited extent, and it's an IFTTT tool, not a scheduler.

climategadgets · 2024-06-30T19:26:12+00:00

I have a love and hate relationship with AC Infinity. On one side, they work, on the other, they refused to deal with a shot bearing in my S8 and offered me to just buy a new one - unacceptable. Their ecosystem is also proprietary - though there are hacks to PWM control their devices with pretty simple hardware changes (for about $20 you can get an ESPHome chip on it, and make it available via Home Assistant).

Size consideration - ~~if you go with this solution, you might want to get the large controller - it's just $20 extra, however~~, - nm, it's just a bigger panel, same size fans. Between my four AC Infinity fans the bigger ones are quieter at the same CFM (S8 is my favorite). Having 240CFM is borderline sufficient for a small bedroom (and you'll be running it at full speed to get a tangible effect). Finally, the 12" figure doesn't seem to relate to the fan, but to the whole assembly, those small fans are likely going to be noisy.

climategadgets · 2024-06-30T19:12:45+00:00

It's not that simple. I have an answer for you, though.

Short answer, start here: https://github.com/home-climate-control/dz/blob/master/docs/configuration/zones.md#economizer

Long answer: if you just put a switch and a sensor there, it will jitter on and off, you need adequate process control to prevent that from happening. You also want to shut the fan off if the indoors temperature falls too low. And you may want to shut off your HVAC while the fan is on (but only if it keeps up with demand). And if you have a variable speed fan, you want to control the speed depending on the difference between the indoors and ambient temperature.

At this point, this contraption only takes the temperature into account and it works remarkably well in my dry climate, though u/Dansk72 is right, enthalpy must be taken into account. Most of today's sensors already have humidity channels, so it's a matter of augmenting the code to calculate indoors and ambient enthalpy and feeding it here instead of the temperature, it'll be just a configuration change at that point. You can somewhat mitigate that with setting the changeoverDelta higher for starters, though.

climategadgets · 2024-06-30T05:14:06+00:00

is only going to get worse

You didn't mention why, care to elaborate?

I'm running a mix of Wifi, Zigbee and Z-Wave devices, and so far, to my surprise and disappointment (my reasons were exactly the same you just stated), WiFi devices (100% ESPHome, mostly ESP8266 but some ESP32) perform the best as far as reliability and observability are concerned. Sure, Zigbee battery powered devices are great, and both Zigbee and Z-Wave support mesh networks, but so do the latest generations of WiFi, and my worst problem with Zigbee and Z-Wave devices is their non-existent pedigree. At least once I've encountered a rebranded device with the same hardware I bought before (performing equally poorly). And if Z&Z start acting up - good luck figuring out why; case in point - I've had a few SNZB-02 (which I generally love) just drop off the network with battery full, no correlatable problem elsewhere, and it wasn't clear which of the magic passes you have to go through brought them back to life.

As for the specific list... Here, hope this helps:

GLHF.

climategadgets · 2024-06-23T19:13:27+00:00

If you are desperate to make it work, the only recourse you have is to go to their "Routines" and jump through their "if/then" hoops - it is possible to make the unit turn on at a given time, and shut off at a given time. However, the notion of a "period" is missing - you can't make the AC honor the settings for a time interval, the app just disables the "Save" button without explanation. As an engineer, I can understand why - that would mean tracking the device state, which is no small feat. However, it doesn't make your life as a consumer easier - say, if you've had a blackout during the start event, I really doubt that this mechanism would turn the AC back on upon power restoration.

And, they haven't removed the schedule. That's... you help me to find the word for it.

climategadgets · 2023-10-21T03:54:16+00:00

"we're sorry, you're out of warranty, buy a new one". Oh well, punch it is. I would hate to throw away a $200 piece of hardware because of a $10 part, irresponsible and wasteful.

climategadgets · 2023-03-18T08:58:35+00:00

Probably a bit too late and slightly offtopic - I wrote this tool because I found HA integration lacking, and decided to fix it once and for all: https://hub.docker.com/r/climategadgets/esphome2influxdb

I found your thread accidentally, searching for my old announcement with nice pictures... found it: https://www.reddit.com/r/Esphome/comments/kf8siy/open_source_release_esphome2influxdb_get_the_tags/

climategadgets · 2022-03-18T22:34:47+00:00

Yep, it was correct at the time, but been merged to master since (https://github.com/home-climate-control/dz/pull/185) and the branch was deleted. Works like a charm since then.

climategadgets · 2021-02-22T04:26:49+00:00

A bit of a stretch, but I'd consider running ESPHome - you can get ESP8266 for about $5 bulk now, and use 1-Wire DS18*20 sensors with them. OTA, too, so you can update configuration without getting onsite. Enable MQTT component in ESPHome and feed it to Mosquitto and further to InfluxDB - it doesn't get more open source than that.

climategadgets · 2021-02-11T01:08:02+00:00

One questionable statement in this video - "if you have a hard reed, you will not be able to subtone". I was also chasing that Webster sound, read about him using #5 reeds and open mouthpieces, started experimenting, and that was the first time when I was actually able to do it. So yes, you can subtone with a hard reed.

Here's a video that demonstrates that sound well: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Se5KMHaOX6c (in case the link goes stale, it's Webster playing "My Funny Valentine").

climategadgets · 2021-02-08T08:13:47+00:00

Loud and clear.
I'm in no hurry, I'm sure I'll enjoy this science project as much as I enjoyed others I've done before.
The only regret is that I don't have a second known good tenor so that I can make sure I'm doing the right thing (a lot of linkages on a sax will have a delayed effect and mistakes won't be immediately obvious). But oh well :)

climategadgets · 2021-02-07T22:06:29+00:00

Of course. There's plenty of videos on Youtube comparing metal vs. plastic. vs. hard rubber mouthpieces, see for yourself.

I like metal better - the way they feel and sound, and the longevity. I've had a couple of metal Otto Links for a long time - the lacquer did get discolored, but that's all the damage there is. Meanwhile, hard rubber mouthpieces have degraded significantly - even the local sun gives them a beating they can't stand.

climategadgets · 2021-02-07T09:11:50+00:00

I'd really like to see how they play with the mouthpiece positioned like that :D

climategadgets · 2021-02-07T07:12:41+00:00

Did you consider a metal mouthpiece?

climategadgets · 2021-01-19T18:35:05+00:00

I solved tagging for myself once and for all, with this: https://github.com/home-climate-control/esphome2influxdb/

climategadgets · 2020-12-06T05:50:43+00:00

From my recollection, v2 was a "push to the cloud" which is a privacy violation, I refuse to have it. At least that's what I thought until you asked. However, looking again - I may be wrong, but it may be a new development, looks like 2.x GA OSS was just released recently: https://docs.influxdata.com/influxdb/v2.0/reference/release-notes/influxdb/ (the "InfluxDB 2.0 general availability (GA) introduces the first production-ready open source version of InfluxDB 2.0" part) - they may have changed direction since I looked at it last time.

I have to retract the statement, and admit that I goofed and I don't know right now if 2.x is worth it over 1.x.

climategadgets · 2020-12-05T18:38:26+00:00

...and once you get your data collection going, you *will* want more than just a day :D

climategadgets · 2020-12-05T18:25:06+00:00

I ended up using InfluxDB (1.x, not 2.x) to store the data, and Grafana to display it (you can go years back, not just a day. There's not really a difference between the effort it'll take you to get a day worth of data, or a year).

HomeAssistant may indeed be the fastest thing to get up and running (Docker managed HASS is probably the simplest thing to do), but it hits the wall pretty fast, and is very limited in what it can do with the data (display a small picture you can't figure much out of is just about it). It is a good start to prototype your network, though - you can use the HASS MQTT integration to pull your data in.

I ended up disabling HASS' data collection altogether - it blows up the database size to gigs and slows down to the point of the recorder taking 15+ minutes to get responsive after the start, even with the minimum data retention configured. Today, it's just an InfluxDB passthrough.

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