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Is there a way of Controlling an old APC UPS with a Raspberry Pi 3B using a USB 2.0 to RS232 Male DB9 Serial Cable?

There seems to be two apps that would be needed. One for the cable conversion from DB9 to USB and one for the actual control of the APC UPS? I can get the cable from Amazon but don't know if the software will work. It says it will work with:

PL-2303 (Chip H/HX/X) Linux driver for RedHat 7.3/8.0/9.0 Only.

NOTE: No need to install drivers for following:

  • Linux Kernel 2.4.10 and above already includes built-in drivers for PL-2303H.
  • Linux Kernel 2.4.31 and above already includes built-in drivers for PL-2303H, PL-2303XA/HXA/TA/RA and PL-2303HXD
Greenonline
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Glenn Smith
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  • A USB to RS232 serial cable should work as a regular RS232 port from the RPi side. I use these types of cable adapters often to connect to various projects. I'm old school and typically use minicom to connect to the serial port.... you should be able to install minicom using sudo apt-get install minicom – RubberStamp Sep 03 '18 at 01:11
  • Cool project! I vaguely recall that APC obfuscated their interface to thwart this sort of thing, but the nut project lists some APC units in their compatibility list. As for feasibility, I would have to say "yes", and the PL-2303 interface shouldn't be an issue. – Seamus Sep 03 '18 at 01:13

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Raspbian Linux has apcupsd, nut-client and nut-server in its repositories. Your USB-Serial cable is plug-and-play with recent versions of Raspbian.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install nut-server nut-client

Here is a guide on how to configure NUT properly.

flakeshake
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