"Smart" UPS Recommendation

[tredec]

Hello all,

 

I apologize if this has been answered before but I was unable to find it, but please feel free to just link that article if it exists.

 

I was wondering if people had any recommendations on a "Smart" UPS. Basically I recently got a NAS unit and had my first brown-out where power flickered on and off briefly and it lost power. Drives are fine (and they should be), but ideally instead it would be on a UPS and if the battery in the UPS dropped below a certain level it would shut-off. At my disposal I have the NAS (that can run docker containers) and a Raspberry Pi 4. I don't need a huge battery capacity in the UPS. The set-up I'm looking for is for either the UPS to be able to send a message (that I can read with the RaspPi/NAS) if the battery drops below a certain level, or for the RaspPi/NAS to be able to query the battery level of the UPS and then issue the shutdown command that way. Thanks for any information.

[brwainer]

If the UPS you have has a USB port you can connect that to the Pi and run NUT (Network UPS Tools) which can be configured to send a command to the NAS then shut down the Pi.

[manikyath]

a lot of APC's stuff has got a USB port for communication with a computer. in windows it just shows up as a battery, and i have a driver thing on unraid that does pretty much exactly what you want.

[voyager_]

Either APC or cyberpower. I have both and I just had to plug the usb cable in between the server and the UPS and configure a few things in unraid. The big thing I look for is Automatic voltage regulation 

[tredec]

Thank you for the helpful information! I'm thinking of going with this one from APC then (https://www.microcenter.com/product/497071/apc-back-ups-pro-ups-(bn1500m2)), which is probably a little overkill in this case but it has the USB ports and comes with software that can do it.

3 hours ago, voyager_ said:

Either APC or cyberpower. I have both and I just had to plug the usb cable in between the server and the UPS and configure a few things in unraid. The big thing I look for is Automatic voltage regulation 

4 hours ago, manikyath said:

a lot of APC's stuff has got a USB port for communication with a computer. in windows it just shows up as a battery, and i have a driver thing on unraid that does pretty much exactly what you want.

That unit has both the automatic voltage regulation and USB ports for communication, so that should cover my bases.

5 hours ago, brwainer said:

If the UPS you have has a USB port you can connect that to the Pi and run NUT (Network UPS Tools) which can be configured to send a command to the NAS then shut down the Pi.

If the included software is not great, I'll looking into the Network UPS Tools and set it up on my Pi instead.

[OhioYJ]

25 minutes ago, tredec said:

Thank you for the helpful information! I'm thinking of going with this one from APC

I have the true sinewave version of that (actually two of them, and one of the 1000 va models).  All three have been running for a long time now (long enough I've replaced the battery in one now). They've been great for me. APC's customer service is great as well. I had one that had an issue unfortunately (defective fan) and APC swapped it out no problems at all (it was a great experience actually, despite having an issue).

 

The only one I've used the cable on, has been my "router", but it's worked perfect in both pfsense and opnsense. I've just downloaded the plugin, configured it real quick (told it to use the USB plug) and everything worked as expected.

[Kobathor]

14 hours ago, tredec said:

Thank you for the helpful information! I'm thinking of going with this one from APC then (https://www.microcenter.com/product/497071/apc-back-ups-pro-ups-(bn1500m2)), which is probably a little overkill in this case but it has the USB ports and comes with software that can do it.

Fun coincidence, I have this exact UPS and I use it for basically everything computer near my desk (see my signature for everything it powers).

 

It has what looks to be a network port on the back, but it's actually USB, and the UPS comes with a cable that connects that to any USB-A. I have the USB-A plugged into a Raspberry Pi 4B that runs NUT (you don't need APC's software for it to work) and my homelab server listens to the RPi NUT server and will shut itself down when NUT sends a low battery warning.

 

It's pretty neat to listen to the UPS's contactors ker-chunking every time I have a brownout or blackout. If you need help configuring NUT, I followed Jeff Geerling's tutorial on his blog: https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2025/nut-on-my-pi-so-my-servers-dont-die