Blue Iris , Power Outage
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fenderman
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Same thing you would do for your cameras.
SouthernYankee
IPCT Contributor
For a short term power outage (less than 15 minutes) All my equipment is on multiple UPS. That is the PC BI server and the POE switches, which include the cameras, Back up file NAS. No monitors are on UPS.
Sybertiger
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For the year 2020 what's a good UPS model to handle 200W? I've read enough horror stories about UPS battery failures, smoke, acid, etc and was curious if there's a particular brand or model that gives more warm fuzzies than another brand. The thought of being out of town 2 or 4 weeks in a row with a UPS unattended takes away from the comfort I gained from having a camera system.
Maybe something like THIS from APC, real sinewave and 1500VA. Not 2020 technology but maybe new enough but old enough to be "proven" reliable but certainly don't want it to exhibit high frequency chirp/squeak especially if it's not a standby and the inverter is constantly making irritating noise.
Maybe something like THIS from APC, real sinewave and 1500VA. Not 2020 technology but maybe new enough but old enough to be "proven" reliable but certainly don't want it to exhibit high frequency chirp/squeak especially if it's not a standby and the inverter is constantly making irritating noise.
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looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
I have three of those, one for my TV, one for my BI pc, and One for my POE switch and router. One is going on two years old, no issue's with any of them.
Most PC's will be a lot happier with real sinewave.
Sybertiger
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Is it a standby UPS or is the inverter constantly running? I'm not worried about chirps and noise if the power has gone out.
I got one of those APC models when it was on sale for $142 at amazon. Used it for about 1 month on my main PC but it had an annoying soft high pitched sound and electronic smell that never went away. My brother got one at the same time which wasn't quite as bad, so he still uses it. YMMV
I switched back to the cyberpower unit I was using before. I've had 6 or 8 of those so far and none that smelled or sounded like the APC.
I switched back to the cyberpower unit I was using before. I've had 6 or 8 of those so far and none that smelled or sounded like the APC.
looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
Its standby, all three are completely silent and no smell. I had a CyberPower stop working, with a very strong smell of electrically burning, part of the case on the outside melted, at 18 months of use. Cyberpower support was utterly useless. I tore it down to find that a couple of the inverter wires were not in any shape nor form soldered correctly from the factory. Insulation had burnt back 4 inche's on one cable. I've also read of Cyperpower having the bad smell right out of the box. I assume it's the plastic used off gassing.
I've bought many APC's over the years, (somewhere over at least 25) and not had an issue other then normal battery replacements. YMMV because the location of manufacture of the APC's I'm sure aren't the same as they were in the past.
Bottom line, I think it's probably a crap shoot in today's market which brand to purchase.
fenderman
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There was a bad batch of the apc units with the high pitched noise. At some point it was claimed to be rectified.
Sybertiger
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Comments I read (about many UPS brands) concerned me most when it involved smoke, fire or "I'm lucky I was at home at the time....". Do I need to mount a cam in the server closet and call it "UPS cam" to make sure the UPS is behaving itself...LOL. I'm perfectly happy with a standby UPS as long as it switches to the inverter fast enough on time and everytime. That's preferred to having to hear an inverter running 24/7.
One big tech youtube personality had posted some videos recently (I cant find them now, maybe the UPS manufacturer warrantied everything and they took it down out of respect), but it was like a $20k $15k UPS that caught fire due to a loose cable and an over-current situation. So it can happen, regardless what you spend.
Found something, I was tiny bit off, 15k Eaton.
Found something, I was tiny bit off, 15k Eaton.
I have used APC Backups one without a problem, but have read elsewhere some APC units tend to overcharge and cause battery to swell. YEARS ago I worked for a company that bought about 20 tiny Tripplite units for just power regulation on some sensitive & expensive test equipment and didn't have a problem with them up until we shipped them to Mexico (then I lost track tbh).
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Sybertiger
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Way back in the day when I was a much younger engineer working for NCR one of my projects involved working with a major UPS company (the name escapes me) to develop a communications protocol to include the status of the UPS such that an orderly shutdown could take place during AC blackout. NCR was a major supplier of servers especially in the retail industry and no one liked when the power went out and the system crashed. This was back before there existed "consumer grade" UPS units. The idea was that when the battery was getting low on the UPS it would communicate to the server to let it know to run the powerdown sequence before all power was lost. It was kind of like "hibernate" mode in today's computers where the state of the machine was saved such that you could start back up from where you left off when power returned. It's kind of funny but we used the RS-232 port (serial port) to implement the hardware communication side of the protocol...kind of lame by today's standards but back then no one was doing this with UPS units to mini servers and maybe not with larger computers. I'm actually on a joint US Patent for development of the protocol to include mostly the software side of the implementation. Today this kind of system seems intuitively obvious but back then we were trail blazing...LOL. Even the UPS engineers had to be convinced they needed to jump on board with this...of course NCR helped sell a gazillion of their UPS boxes so it's not like we had to beg....LOL. And I should add that I never saw where we let the smoke out of the test units and trust me those batteries got a workout.
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I gots one of those Cyberpower rack mounted UPS for my server cabinet. I do plan on installing a fire/smoke detector nearby just for this reason.
Sybertiger
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So, I was looking at some APC and Cyberpower UPS units just now and was horrified to find serial ports on the back of them. I hope I didn't have anything to do with making that a standard in that industry. 
I haven't worked on UPS protocols since the late 1980's as I recall, never personally owned one and never paid attention to what was going on after I moved on to other engineering projects.
I haven't worked on UPS protocols since the late 1980's as I recall, never personally owned one and never paid attention to what was going on after I moved on to other engineering projects.
sebastiantombs
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They have a Windooohs based software management app now. Beats e why they keep installing that serial port.
looney2ns
IPCT Contributor
That's a great misconception. One needs real sinewave only for inductive loads such as motors. And modern PFC power supplies are fine with approximated sinewave. Anything computer related will be fine with approximated sinewave. Don't spend extra money for nothing. There is a reason approximated sinewave UPS's are so abundant.
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Sybertiger
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It doesn't hurt that the abundance of stepped sinewave UPS are because they are cheaper. As I recall, some Apple computers can have a problems with because of the power supply but other systems can have an issue. I don't own Apple products
so good for me. I haven't checked to see what the price difference is but if minimal then I'd get a real sinewave. Do you know what the price diff is?
tech101
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I have a UPS connected to my PC. But again they are never meant to run PC 24/7 They are just enough power for may be a small power outage lasting few mins or ... Just enough to bring your PC safely to shutdown.. But yes I do have it on my POE switch another UPS and a UPS On the PC as well and another UPS for all my networking equipment
and another UPS for all my networking equipment