UPS Battery Death

Yesterday my APC Back-UPS XS 800 started beeping like mad and turned on the 'Replace Battery' light. "Great!" I thought, "How much is this going to cost me?"

Like the good little consumer I am, I searched the APC site to see what it would cost for a new battery. $90!? Wow. When I purchased the unit 3 years ago, if I remember correctly, it was about $130 on sale. It's not worth replacing the battery at 3/4 the cost of a new unit which is probably more efficient anyway. APC has a little 5 point 'document' that tells you why to use only APC batteries is their units. The only point that has any real weight is the "Voids APC's Equipment Protection Policy". This unit is 3 years old, and the protection is probably out of date anyway. Moreover, I can't find my original receipt for the unit. Still, I'm not going to pay $90 for a battery. ( Pair of batteries really, but more on this later. )

I remember driving down the street some time ago and seeing a sign in a storefront that reads "We do UPS batteries". Considering the store was called Battery emporium or somesuch, it may be worth a try. "What will it cost to replace this?" Quickly the clerk responded, "about $45". They have done this before. "Let's do it"

It turns out the battery for this UPS is just two standard 12v 7.2Ah sealed Lead-Acid batteries with a bracket in between them to keep them apart and to allow space for the connectors. Nothing fancy or proprietary about it except, maybe, the cable connecting the batteries to the UPS.

The clerk cut off the APC label, disconnected the wires, checked a couple numbers and went to the back. He returned with two new batteries, connected them to the bracket, and used good-ol duct tape to hold the batteries together. Some quick connectivity tests, and $48 later I was out of there. That was easy.

Now that the battery is good, I need to reset the battery date on the UPS. In unix, the tool to do this is called 'apcupsd'. I looked around and found it in the opensolaris contib package repository. I tried it, but it kept coredumping on me. No biggie, I just compiled from scratch. I may look into the core dumps later, but for the moment I can't be bothered.

The only thing left to do is to reset the battery date in the UPS. Not difficult.

# apctest
-> Set battery date

and set the date. Done for now.

Now I need to look into the coredumps or make my own package. I really don't like 'make install' putting things on my system.

Onward.