Please note that this driver is deprecated and will not receive new development\&. If it works for managing your devices \(em fine, but if you are running it to try setting up a new device, please consider the newer \fBnutdrv_qx\fR(8) instead, which should handle all \fIQ*\fR protocol variants for NUT\&.
.sp
Please do also report if your device works with this driver, but \fBnutdrv_qx\fR(8) would not actually support it with any subdriver!
The blazer driver is known to work with various UPSes from Blazer, Energy Sistem, Fenton Technologies, General Electric, Mustek and many others\&. The NUT compatibility table lists all the known supported models\&. Keep in mind, however, that other models not listed there may also be supported, but haven\(cqt been tested\&.
All devices with a serial interface (use the \fBblazer_ser\fR driver) and many with a USB interface (use the \fBblazer_usb\fR driver) are supported\&.
.SH"EXTRA ARGUMENTS"
.sp
You may need to override or provide defaults for some values, depending on the make and model of your UPS\&. The following are the ones that most likely will need changing (see \fBups.conf\fR(5)):
Some devices show a wrong nominal battery voltage (or none at all), so you may need to override or set a default value\&.
.RE
.PP
\fBoverride\&.battery\&.packs =\fR\fIvalue\fR
.RS4
Some devices report a part of the total battery voltage\&. For instance, if
\fBbattery\&.voltage\&.nominal\fR
is 24 V, but it reports a
\fBbattery\&.voltage\fR
of around 2 V, the number of
\fBbattery\&.packs\fR
to correct this reading would be 12\&. The driver will attempt to detect this automatically, but if this fails somehow, you may want to override this value\&.
Time to wait before switching on the UPS (minutes)\&. Note that a value below 3 minutes, may cause earlier firmware versions to not switch on automatically, so it defaults to 3 minutes\&. The acceptable range is
Time to wait before shutting down the UPS (seconds)\&. This value is truncated to units of 6 seconds (less than 60 seconds) or 60 seconds (more than 60 seconds)\&. Defaults to 30 seconds\&. The acceptable range is
Parameter used in the (optional) runtime estimation\&. This takes two runtimes at different loads\&. Typically, this uses the runtime at full load and the runtime at half load\&. For instance, if your UPS has a rated runtime of 240 seconds at full load and 720 seconds at half load, you would enter
The first load should always be higher than the second\&. If you have values available for loads other than 100 and 50 % respectively, you can use those too, but keep them spaced apart as far as reasonably possible\&. Just don\(cqt get too close to no load (prediction of runtime depends more on idle load for the battery then)\&.
.RE
.PP
\fBchargetime =\fR\fIvalue\fR
.RS4
The time needed to fully recharge the battery after being fully discharged\&. If not specified, the driver defaults to 43200 seconds (12 hours)\&. Only used if
\fBruntimecal\fR
is also specified\&.
.RE
.PP
\fBidleload =\fR\fIvalue\fR
.RS4
Minimum battery load used by the driver to estimate the runtime\&. If not specified, the driver defaults to 10%\&. Only used if
Select a specific UPS, in case there is more than one connected via USB\&. Each option specifies an extended regular expression (see
\fBregex(7)\fR) that must match the UPS\(cqs entire vendor/product/serial string (minus any surrounding whitespace), or the whole 4\-digit hexadecimal code for vendorid and productid\&. Try
Select a UPS on a specific USB bus or group of buses\&. The argument is a regular expression that must match the bus name where the UPS is connected (e\&.g\&. bus="002", bus="00[2\-3]")\&.
.RE
.PP
\fBdevice =\fR\fIregex\fR
.RS4
Select a UPS on a specific USB device or group of devices\&. The argument is a regular expression that must match the device name where the UPS is connected (e\&.g\&. device="001", device="00[1\-2]")\&. Note that device numbers are not guaranteed by the OS to be stable across re\-boots or device re\-plugging\&.
Apply the language ID workaround to the krauler subdriver\&. This is mandatory for some devices to work (LDLC, Dynamix and others)\&. You must to provide
\fBvalue\fR
(0x409 or 0x4095), according to your device entry in NUT hardware compatibility list (HCL)\&.
Stop a running battery test (not available on some hardware\&.)
.RE
.SH"BATTERY CHARGE"
.sp
Due to popular demand, this driver will report a guesstimated \fBbattery\&.charge\fR and optionally \fBbattery\&.runtime\fR, provided you specified a couple of the EXTRA ARGUMENTS listed above\&.
.sp
If you specify both \fBbattery\&.voltage\&.high\fR and \fBbattery\&.voltage\&.low\fR in \fBups.conf\fR(5), but don\(cqt enter \fBruntimecal\fR, it will guesstimate the state of charge by looking at the battery voltage alone\&. This is not reliable under load, as this only gives reasonably accurate readings if you disconnect the load, let the battery rest for a couple of minutes and then measure the open cell voltage\&. This just isn\(cqt practical if the power went out and the UPS is providing power for your systems\&.
.sp
.ifn\{\
.RS4
.\}
.nf
battery\&.voltage \- battery\&.voltage\&.low
battery\&.charge = \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- x 100 %
There is a way to get better readings without disconnecting the load but this requires one to keep track on how much (and how fast) current is going in\- and out of the battery\&. If you specified the \fBruntimecal\fR, the driver will attempt to do this\&. Note however, that this heavily relies on the values you enter and that the UPS must be able to report the load as well\&. There are quite a couple of devices that report 0 % (or any other fixed value) at all times, in which case this obviously doesn\(cqt work\&.
The driver also has no way of determining the degradation of the battery capacity over time, so you\(cqll have to deal with this yourself (by adjusting the values in \fBruntimecal\fR)\&. Also note that the driver guesses the initial state of charge based on the battery voltage, so this may be less than 100 %, even when you are certain that they are full\&. There is just no way to reliably measure this between 0 and 100 % full charge\&.
.sp
This is better than nothing (but not by much)\&. If any of the above calculations is giving you incorrect readings, you are the one that put in the values in \fBups.conf\fR(5), so don\(cqt complain with the author\&. If you need something better, buy a UPS that reports \fBbattery\&.charge\fR and \fBbattery\&.runtime\fR all by itself without the help of a NUT driver\&.
.SH"NOTES FOR THE PREVIOUS USER OF MEGATEC DRIVERS"
.sp
The blazer drivers having replaced the megatec ones, some configuration changes may be required by users switching to blazer\&.
.sp
Part of this, the following megatec options, in ups\&.conf, have to be changed:
.PP
\fBbattvolts\fR
.RS4
You need to use
\fIdefault\&.battery\&.voltage\&.high\fR
and
\fIdefault\&.battery\&.voltage\&.low\fR
.RE
.PP
\fBdtr and rts\fR
.RS4
You need to use
\fIcablepower\fR
.RE
.PP
\fBignoreoff\fR
.RS4
This parameter can simply be discarded, since it was a wrong understanding of the specification\&.
.RE
.SH"KNOWN PROBLEMS"
.sp
Some UPS commands aren\(cqt supported by all models\&. In most cases, the driver will send a message to the system log when the user tries to execute an unsupported command\&. Unfortunately, some models don\(cqt even provide a way for the driver to check for this, so the unsupported commands will silently fail\&.
.sp
Both the \fBload\&.off\fR and \fBshutdown\&.stayoff\fR instant commands are meant to turn the load off indefinitely\&. However, some UPS models don\(cqt allow this\&.
.sp
Some models report a bogus value for the beeper status (will always be \fIenabled\fR or \fIdisabled\fR)\&. So, the \fBbeeper\&.toggle\fR command may appear to have no effect in the status reported by the driver when, in fact, it is working fine\&.
.sp
The temperature and load value is known to be bogus in some models\&.
