Provided by: nut-server_2.8.1-3.1ubuntu2_amd64 
NAME
blazer_usb - Driver for Megatec/Q1 protocol USB based UPS equipment
NOTE
This man page only documents the hardware-specific features of the blazer driver. For
information about the core driver, see nutupsdrv(8).
NOTE
Please note that this driver is deprecated and will not receive new development. If it
works for managing your devices — fine, but if you are running it to try setting up a new
device, please consider the newer nutdrv_qx(8) instead, which should handle all Q*
protocol variants for NUT.
Please do also report if your device works with this driver, but nutdrv_qx(8) would not
actually support it with any subdriver!
SUPPORTED HARDWARE
The blazer driver is known to work with various UPSes from Blazer, Energy Sistem, Fenton
Technologies, General Electric, 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.
EXTRA ARGUMENTS
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
Maximum battery voltage that is reached after about 12 to 24 hours charging. If you
want the driver to report a guesstimated battery.charge, you need to specify this (see
BATTERY CHARGE GUESSTIMATION).
default.battery.voltage.low = value
Minimum battery voltage just before the UPS automatically shuts down. If you want the
driver to report a guesstimated battery.charge, you need to specify this (see BATTERY
CHARGE GUESSTIMATION).
default.battery.voltage.nominal = value, override.battery.voltage.nominal = value
Some devices show a wrong nominal battery voltage (or none at all), so you may need to
override or set a default value.
override.battery.packs = value
Some devices report a part of the total battery voltage. For instance, if
battery.voltage.nominal is 24 V, but it reports a battery.voltage of around 2 V, the
number of battery.packs to correct this reading would be 12. The driver will attempt
to detect this automatically, but if this fails somehow, you may want to override this
value.
ondelay = value
Time to wait before switching on the UPS (minutes). Note that a value below 3 minutes,
may cause earlier firmware versions to not switch on automatically, so it defaults to
3 minutes. The acceptable range is 0..9999 minutes.
offdelay = value
Time to wait before shutting down the UPS (seconds). This value is truncated to units
of 6 seconds (less than 60 seconds) or 60 seconds (more than 60 seconds). Defaults to
30 seconds. The acceptable range is 12..600 seconds.
norating
Some UPSes will lock up if you attempt to read rating information from them. Setting
this flag will make the driver skip this step.
novendor
Some UPSes will lock up if you attempt to read vendor information from them. Setting
this flag will make the driver skip this step.
protocol = string
Skip autodetection of the protocol to use and only use the one specified. Supported
values megatec, megatec/old, mustek and zinto.
runtimecal = value,value,value,value
Parameter used in the (optional) runtime estimation. This takes two runtimes at
different loads. Typically, this uses the runtime at full load and the runtime at half
load. For instance, if your UPS has a rated runtime of 240 seconds at full load and
720 seconds at half load, you would enter
runtimecal = 240,100,720,50
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
The time needed to fully recharge the battery after being fully discharged. If not
specified, the driver defaults to 43200 seconds (12 hours). Only used if runtimecal is
also specified.
idleload = value
Minimum battery load used by the driver to estimate the runtime. If not specified, the
driver defaults to 10%. Only used if runtimecal is also specified.
USB INTERFACE ONLY
port = string
Some value must be set, typically auto.
Note
This could be a device filesystem path like /dev/usb/hiddev0 but current use of
libusb API precludes knowing and matching by such identifiers. They may also be
inherently unreliable (dependent on re-plugging and enumeration order). At this
time the actual value is ignored, but syntactically some port configuration must
still be there.
It is possible to control multiple UPS units simultaneously by running several instances
of this driver, provided they can be uniquely distinguished by setting some combination of
the vendor, product, vendorid, productid, serial, bus and/or device options detailed
below. For devices or operating systems that do not provide sufficient information, the
allow_duplicates option can be of use (limited and risky!)
vendorid = regex, productid = regex, vendor = regex, product = regex, serial = regex
Select a specific UPS, in case there is more than one connected via USB. Each option
specifies an extended regular expression (see regex(7) for more information on regular
expressions), which must match the UPS’s entire respective vendor/product/serial
string (minus any surrounding whitespace), or the whole 4-digit hexadecimal code for
vendorid and productid.
Try lsusb(8) or running this NUT driver with -DD command-line argument for finding out
the strings to match.
Examples:
• -x vendor="Foo.Corporation.*"
• -x vendorid="051d*" (APC)
• -x product=".*(Smart|Back)-?UPS.*"
bus = regex
Select a UPS on a specific USB bus or group of buses. The argument is a regular
expression that must match the bus name where the UPS is connected (e.g. bus="002" or
bus="00[2-3]") as seen on Linux in /sys/bus/usb/devices or lsusb(8); including leading
zeroes.
device = regex
Select a UPS on a specific USB device or group of devices. The argument is a regular
expression that must match the device name where the UPS is connected (e.g.
device="001" or device="00[1-2]") as seen on Linux in /sys/bus/usb/devices or
lsusb(8); including leading zeroes.
Note
device numbers are not guaranteed by the OS to be stable across re-boots or device
re-plugging.
busport = regex
If supported by the hardware, OS and libusb on the particular deployment, this option
should allow to specify physical port numbers on an USB hub, rather than logical
device enumeration values, and in turn — this should be less volatile across reboots
or re-plugging. The value may be seen in the USB topology output of lsusb -tv on
systems with that tool, for example.
Note
this option is not practically supported by some NUT builds (it should be ignored
with a warning then), and not by all systems that NUT can run on.
allow_duplicates
If you have several UPS devices which may not be uniquely identified by the options
above (e.g. only VID:PID can be discovered there), this flag allows each driver
instance where it is set to take the first match if available, or proceed to try
another.
Normally the driver initialization would abort at this point claiming "Resource busy"
or similar error, assuming that the otherwise properly matched device is unique — and
some other process already handles it.
Warning
This feature is inherently non-deterministic! The association of driver instance
name to actual device may vary between runs!
If you only care to know that at least one of your no-name UPSes is online, this
option can help.
If you must really know which one, it will not!
usb_set_altinterface = bAlternateSetting
Force redundant call to usb_set_altinterface(), especially if needed for devices
serving multiple USB roles where the UPS is not represented by the interface number 0
(default).
subdriver = string
Select a serial-over-USB subdriver to use. You have a choice between phoenix, ippon,
cypress, and krauler. When using this option, it is mandatory to also specify the
vendorid and productid.
langid_fix = value
Apply the language ID workaround to the krauler subdriver. This is mandatory for some
devices to work (LDLC, Dynamix and others). You must to provide value (0x409 or
0x4095), according to your device entry in NUT hardware compatibility list (HCL).
UPS COMMANDS
This driver supports some instant commands (see upscmd(8)):
beeper.toggle
Toggle the UPS beeper. (Not available on some hardware.)
load.on
Turn on the load immediately.
load.off
Turn off the load immediately (see KNOWN PROBLEMS).
shutdown.return
Turn off the load and return when power is back. Uses the timers defined by ondelay
and offdelay.
shutdown.stayoff
Turn off the load and remain off (see KNOWN PROBLEMS). Uses the timer defined by
offdelay.
shutdown.stop
Stop a shutdown in progress.
test.battery.start.deep
Perform a long battery test (Not available on some hardware.)
test.battery.start.quick
Perform a (10 second) battery test.
test.battery.start value
Perform a battery test for the duration of value minutes.
test.battery.stop
Stop a running battery test (not available on some hardware.)
BATTERY CHARGE GUESSTIMATION
Due to popular demand, this driver will report a guesstimated battery.charge value 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
one 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 are giving
you incorrect readings, remember that you are the one who put in the values in
ups.conf(5), so don’t complain to the author. If you need something better, consider buy
an UPS that reports battery.charge and battery.runtime all by itself without the help of a
NUT driver.
NOTES FOR THE PREVIOUS USER OF MEGATEC DRIVERS
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:
battvolts
You need to use default.battery.voltage.high and default.battery.voltage.low
dtr and rts
You need to use cablepower
ignoreoff
This parameter can simply be discarded, since it was a wrong understanding of the
specification.
KNOWN PROBLEMS
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.
AUTHORS
• Arjen de Korte <adkorte-guest at alioth.debian.org>
• Alexander Gordeev <lasaine at lvk.cs.msu.su>
SEE ALSO
blazer_ser(8), nutupsdrv(8), upsc(8), upscmd(8), upsrw(8)
Internet Resources:
• The NUT (Network UPS Tools) home page: https://www.networkupstools.org/
• The NUT HCL: https://www.networkupstools.org/stable-hcl.html