This man page only documents the hardware-specific features of the blazer driver. For information about the core driver, see nutupsdrv(8).
The blazer driver is known to work with various UPSes from Blazer, Energy Sistem, Fenton Technologies, Mustek and many others. The NUT compatibility table lists all the known supported models. Keep in mind, however, that other models not listed there may also be supported, but haven't been tested.
All devices with a serial interface (use the blazer_ser driver) and many with a USB interface (use the blazer_usb driver) are supported.
You may need to override or provide defaults for some values, depending on the make and model of your UPS. The following are the ones that most likely will need changing (see ups.conf(5)):
default.battery.voltage.high = value
default.battery.voltage.low = value
default.battery.voltage.nominal = value, override.battery.voltage.nominal = value
override.battery.packs = value
ondelay = value
offdelay = value
runtimecal = value,value,value,value
runtimecal = 270,100,720,50
The first load should always be higher than the second. If you have values available for loads other than 100 and 50 % respectively, you can use those too, but keep them spaced apart as far as reasonably possible. Just don't get too close to no load (prediction of runtime depends more on idle load for the battery then).
chargetime = value
idleload = value
cablepower = string
vendorid = regex, productid = regex, vendor = regex, product = regex, serial = regex
-x vendorid=051d # (APC)
bus = regex
subdriver = string
This driver supports some instant commands (see upscmd(8)):
Due to popular demand, this driver will report a guesstimated battery.charge and optionally battery.runtime, provided you specified a couple of the EXTRA ARGUMENTS listed above.
If you specify both battery.voltage.high and battery.voltage.low in ups.conf(5), but don't enter runtimecal, it will guesstimate the state of charge by looking at the battery voltage alone. This is not reliable under load, as this only gives reasonably accurate readings if you disconnect the load, let the battery rest for a couple of minutes and then measure the open cell voltage. This just isn't practical if the power went out and the UPS is providing power for your systems.
battery.voltage - battery.voltage.low battery.charge = ------------------------------------------ x 100 % battery.voltage.high - battery.voltage.low
There is a way to get better readings without disconnecting the load but this requires to keep track on how much (and how fast) current is going in- and out of the battery. If you specified the runtimecal, the driver will attempt to do this. Note however, that this heavily relies on the values you enter and that the UPS must be able to report the load as well. There are quite a couple of devices that report 0 % (or any other fixed value) at all times, in which case this obviously doesn't work.
The driver also has no way of determining the degradation of the battery capacity over time, so you'll have to deal with this yourself (by adjusting the values in runtimecal). Also note that the driver guesses the initial state of charge based on the battery voltage, so this may be less than 100 %, even when you are certain that they are full. There is just no way to reliably measure this between 0 and 100 % full charge.
This is better than nothing (but not by much). If any of the above calculations is giving you incorrect readings, you are the one that put in the values in ups.conf(5), so don't complain with the author. If you need something better, buy a UPS that reports battery.charge and battery.runtime all by itself without the help of a NUT driver.
The blazer drivers having replaced the megatec ones, some configuration changes may be required by users switching to blazer.
Part of this, the following megatec options, in ups.conf, have to be changed:
dtr and rts
Some UPS commands aren't supported by all models. In most cases, the driver will send a message to the system log when the user tries to execute an unsupported command. Unfortunately, some models don't even provide a way for the driver to check for this, so the unsupported commands will silently fail.
Both the load.off and shutdown.stayoff instant commands are meant to turn the load off indefinitely. However, some UPS models don't allow this.
Some models report a bogus value for the beeper status (will always be enabled or disabled). So, the beeper.toggle command may appear to have no effect in the status reported by the driver when, in fact, it is working fine.
The temperature and load value is known to be bogus in some models.
Arjen de Korte <adkorte-guest at alioth.debian.org>, Alexander Gordeev <lasaine at lvk.cs.msu.su>
nutupsdrv(8), upsc(8), upscmd(8), upsrw(8)
The NUT (Network UPS Tools) home page: http://www.networkupstools.org/