Leon lcb11211@swbelldotnet writes:
On 11/17/2013 9:19 PM, Mike Marlow wrote:
Leon wrote:
On 11/17/2013 5:50 PM, Ed Pawlowski wrote:
On 11/17/2013 6:15 PM, wrote:



Do you really turn the entire entertainment system off when you
leave the house? Amazing. Our satellite box would go bonkers. You must
love resetting clocks. ;-)


We were having some less than a second power blips that would knock
out the sat receiver. It was such a PITA that I finally put it on a
UPS. Problem solved.



Problem may not be solved. My BIL had his satellite system on a UPS
to take care of the blips then one day when they were away from the
house for a few hours because the power had gone out for an extended
period of time the UPS went dead and the satellite tuner/DVR
permanently freaked out because of the low voltage coming from the
UPS as it was running out of back up power. He created his own brown
out machine. The whole tuner/DVR had to be replaced.

Crappy UPS in that case. A decent UPS would provide signalling to shut down
the system at the point where power was getting marginal.



Can you name a UPS that will actually do what you said, signal to shut
down the satellite receiver/DVR? I don't know of any satellite DVR's
that actually communicate with a UPS to power down.

All but the most low-end uninterruptable power supplies have a notification
means. Anything from relay contacts to a USB port, depending on generation and
capability.

If the DVR has both a USB host port and UPS software on-board, then it should
be able to respond to the UPS low-time notification and initiate an
orderly power down procedure. I've read that some Tivo's will support
a standard USB HID UPS device, but have no personal experience with that.

In any case, a well-designed UPS won't provide a low line voltage to any
protected device(s). Unfortunately, there are a glut of cheap, poorly
crafted UPS devices available on the market.