Eaton Power recently approached us to demonstrate how their uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units work with home lab enthusiasts in mind. We opted to show how a simple Raspberry Pi can be used as a dedicated management card for an Eaton TrippLite Smart 1500RM2U UPS, paired with the work from the Network UPS Tools project. NUT Software is widely compatible with a range of UPSs, several thousand are supported.
Eaton Power recently approached us to demonstrate how their uninterruptible power supply (UPS) units work with home lab enthusiasts in mind. We opted to show how a simple Raspberry Pi can be used as a dedicated management card for an Eaton TrippLite Smart 1500RM2U UPS, paired with the work from the Network UPS Tools project. NUT Software is widely compatible with a range of UPSs, several thousand are supported.
Our test environment is very simple, just a UPS and a Pi:
Essential Components for Raspberry Pi SBC:
For this build, we chose Ubuntu Server (https://ubuntu.com/download/server/arm), a stable and reliable option with a strong community. Alternatively, you could use the Raspberry Pi OS (https://www.raspberrypi.com/software/operating-systems/).
To set up your server, follow these steps:
Once your server is set up, it’s time to install and configure the Network UPS Tools (NUT) protocol. Follow the detailed instructions provided in this article, which include:
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade
sudo apt-get install nut
sudo usermod -aG nut <your_username>
sudo nano /etc/nut/ups.conf
Add the following to the end of the file:
[smart1500rm2u]
driver = usbhid-ups
port = auto
desc = "Tripp Lite SMART1500RM2U"
Save and close the file with CTRL-X.
sudo nano /etc/nut/upsd.conf
Change from 127.0.0.1
to 0.0.0.0
to listen to all connections:
LISTEN 0.0.0.0 3493
Save and exit.
sudo nano /etc/nut/upsd.users
Add the following lines, replacing <your_password>
with your actual password:
[
password = <your_password>
upsmon master
]sudo nano /etc/nut/upsmon.conf
Place the following at the bottom of the file:
RUN_AS_USER root
MONITOR smart1500rm2u@localhost 1 <your_username> <your_password> master
Save and exit.
sudo systemctl enable nut-server.service
sudo systemctl enable nut-monitor.service
sudo reboot
After reboot, login and verify the UPS status:
upsc smart1500rm2u@localhost
You should see all the details of your UPS listed.
Keep in mind, there are many ways to accomplish setting up NUT. Having shown you a down-in-the-weeds approach here, it is good to note that many NAS providers (Looking at you IX Systems – TrueNAS) build NUT right into the GUI with config options that make deployments by home-labbers or some brave SMB users, relatively painless.
There are other options like DZOMAYA’s script that automates the setup – https://github.com/dzomaya/NUTandRpi
Or even a more enterprise solution (Beyond the scope here) is a dedicated management card that will manage a compatible UPS with hardware that is designed for 24x7x365 operation – https://tripplite.eaton.com/web-management-accessory-card~WEBCARDLX
There are several clients available to monitor UPS activity. GAWINDX WinNUT-Client has worked well for us.
In a nutshell, the NUT software package is a big step forward in how UPSs report status and events. Our testing with some of the legacy EATON hardware (https://networkupstools.org/ddl/Eaton/), we were pleased to see that nearly the entire range of hardware offerings has the ability to integrate into monitoring and management systems with any number of DIY or homegrown solutions. For those who want more visibility into their UPS, NUT is definitely worth setting up a server and getting connected.
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