UPS with dead batteries reborn as a whole-house power backup

[Woodporterhouse] must deal with regular power black outs in his area. He recently converted a rack-mount uninterruptible power supply to feed a portion of his mains wiring. This one is not to be missed, since he did such a great job on the project, and  an equally remarkable job of documenting it. It’s one of the best examples we’ve … Read the rest

Automating the shutdown of APC UPS devices

ups-shutdown-device

[Ishan Karve] works in some bizarro world where the building management demands that all servers and Uninterruptible Power Supplies be shut down at the end of each evening. While inconceivable to most systems admins, he has no recourse but to comply. This means that his employees need to turn things off before they leave for the day, and since they … Read the rest

DIY emergency lighting system

diy_emergency_lighting_system

When the power goes out at home, what do you do? Most of us probably scramble around the house looking for a flashlight. [Gigawatts] wanted a better solution, so he built an emergency lighting system based off a standard household UPS. A while back he had constructed a relay-switched outlet box to help periodically restart his cable modem which would … Read the rest

Beefy battery backup still running after a decade

In 1997 [Michael Butkus Jr.] found an uninterruptible power supply in the dumpster. The batteries were shot, but he needed a backup to keep his pellet stove running for heat, drive the exhaust fan to keep the smoke out of the house, and power his computer and other electronics. After a bit of head scratching he decided to beef up Read the rest

Beef up your UPS

beefy_ups

[Surferdude] was unhappy with the decreasing life of his aging uninterruptible power supply. He decided to beef it up using marine batteries. He extended the battery connections outside of the UPS case using #10 wire and swapped the two 12 volt gel cells with the heavy duty lead-acid batteries. Doing so upgraded the device from 20 amp-hours to … Read the rest

NYC CCTV scouting

nypd

On a recent trip to New York City, [sherri] noticed the abundant “NYPD Security Camera” signage. She Ò on her little sousveillance tour and did some digging to learn more about the system. According to a recent NY Post article, the city intends to have 2,000 cameras installed by 2009. Each unit has at least two cameras, an onboard … Read the rest

Kill A Watt teardown

killawatt

Come on, folks. If we keep tearing apart everything that’s handed to us, we’ll never get nice things. SparkFun got their mitts on two Kill A Watts and proceeded to plug them into everything and then dismantled them to see how they work. The Kill A Watt keeps track of how much power is used over time. The largest … Read the rest