Hi y’all looking for advice here
I selfhost a nextcloud server and a NAS for backups, and one of my challenges has been data corruption after power failures.
I went and bought some consumer UPS units about 5 years ago, which helped, but now the batteries are starting to fail, and I’m not protected from power outages until I replace them.
I have the router on UPS as well so the computers can communicate with each other that the power has failed and it is time to gracefully shut down (using NUT).
However the router itself uses quite a bit of power and I am hoping to make a smarter decision this time around when getting a UPS.
The router’s power supply is 12V5A with a barrel style jack, so i have been searching for “DC UPS 12V 5A” to try and find something compatible that wastes less energy converting from battery DC to AC for the power supply to then convert back to DC.
But the only thing I’ve been able to find are these units designed to power electric doors: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D8VLPRN2/
I’m not sure if this would even be safe to use with a router, and i don’t know how i would wire it up to the router either.
I think i just don’t have enough knowledge to know how to shop for an appropriate DC UPS, or if such a thing even exists.
Anyone been in a similar situation?
That rating from that PSU will be the max it can supply, it is very unlikely that a consumer router is pulling 5A.
Your router firmware might even expose its power consumption if you are lucky.
I have the same/similar setup. My wall-warts are just plugged into the UPS.
I was just thinking the same thing. I was also thinking you can get a wide input voltage buck converter on amazon for cheap and use a bunch of cells in series as the UPS and the buck converter spits out 12V until it cant anymore. Then just wire up a charge controller to charge and balance your lead acid cells.
How about a portable power station? Basically a huge mobile battery with AC input. Some can switch over on power failure like a UPS. Some has USB PD (get 12V DC with the right cable) or car lighter socket (12V DC) or direct 12V DC output.
I’m talking about these, just a random article from my search:
Search for “router UPS”
For example there is one from APC “# APC Back-UPS Connect 12V DC 36W - CP12036LI”
Since it happens to be 12 volts to your router and many UPS batteries are 12 volts… Why not just tap the two leads coming off the UPS battery and run that to the router? After you buy a replacement battery of course, they really are cheap and easy to swap.
Aha! Yes.
Dunno how much juice you need, but I am installing one of these, tied into solar and a smart power switch:
https://au.ecoflow.com/products/ecoflow-river-3-max-plus-portable-power-station
Part of the reason I chose it is exactly what you are talking about. It has a direct DC output, so you can avoid the battery DC --> AC --> router power supply --> DC conversion chain.
The car-style DC outlet supplies 12.6 V at up to 10 A, or 126 W. So it has more than enough current capacity for a 12 V 5 A router.
You’d still need to check whether your router is happy with 12.6 V rather than exactly 12 V though. You’d also need the correct barrel size and polarity.
On the plus side, It gives you 858 Wh of storage (plus additional user replaceable battery packs), a <10 ms UPS transfer time, and enough AC output to keep quite a bit of your other electronic junk alive during a blackout or brownout.
In any case, please enjoy the delicious overkill. I’ve seen these on sale for as low as A$599 / 420 USD. And yes, they can be charged by normal wall socket (and also yes, the DO pass-thru when fully charged)
Thank you, I think this is basically what I’m lookong for. I’ll just need to find an adapter from car outlet to the correct barrel adaptor.
EDIT the only thing that would improve it is a user-serviceable battery.
The common solution is not to replace the UPS but only the battery inside. They are standard sizes and for a cheap UPS probably around 10 - 20 bucks.
I mean, there are 12V native battery systems out there, stuff like vehicle systems.
Assuming that the 12V power supply on the router is permissive enough to take a certain amount of variation, I imagine that you can probably just put a 12V deep-cycle battery on the thing on the thing and directly hook up a 12V charge controller in parallel.
I dunno whether there’s some sort of voltmeter that you can connect NUT up to.
Personally, my position is that if NextCloud or whatever can’t handle power loss without corrupting data, that’s a bug with NextCloud. I mean, sure, it might not be able to complete an operation if there’s power loss while it’s running, but that shouldn’t result in corrupt data.
