Folding Forum

Hi all,

I'm happily chugging away at work units, but I had a question about Windows 10, UPSs, and F&H behavior.

I see that the client has an option to pause folding when on battery power, which is great.

I have my Windows 10 desktop hooked up to an APC UPS. Obviously folding puts a fair load on the PC and in an instance where there might be a power issue, it would drain the battery fairly quickly.

I ran a test yesterday and, despite having APC's PowerChute software installed and data cable attached between PC and UPS, Windows 10 didn't know it was on battery power, and F@H kept chugging along like nothing was unusual.

Is there any way to adjust Windows 10 on a desktop to know when it's on battery backup power with the hopes of pausing folding to preserve battery life?

Thank you very much!

If you look in the System Info tab, is the Has Battery true or false? I'm guessing false. I have a couple systems on UPS, but this is still set to false. I'm no more help so far. Here's a bit of info for Ubuntu, but I'm not sure how old it is: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FoldingAtHome

You might just set your Powerchute software to put the computer into Standby a couple minutes after power goes out.

Kebast wrote:Here's a bit of info for Ubuntu, but I'm not sure how old it is: https://help.ubuntu.com/community/FoldingAtHome

I would guess fairly old, it has references to version 5 of the folding client software.

Some of the basics still apply, scripting can be done that monitors whatever state is set by the UPS and monitoring software.

I don't have access to a Windows computer at the moment, but I recall at one time an option in its power management control panel to track an UPS. Doing that would show "on battery" when power was out. Is that still present in Windows 10? PowerChute may or may not have this as an option. But I was not impressed with old versions of that software, hopefully it has improved.

I appreciate the replies.

I can't find anything about battery in Windows looking in various locations.

Agreed about the PowerChute settings, but I'd much rather have 20ish minutes if F@H could know that the machine is operating on the UPS.

I can't find anything about UPS in Windows advanced power settings either.

I'm just at a loss...

The FAH feature is designed for laptops where the internal battery is tightly integrated with the OS. I'm not aware of any explicit way to logically connect the UPS with FAH.
If somebody else does, please speak up.

Depends on the OS and the software available. There are solutions for OS X and Linux that I know of, a compliant USB connected UPS provides a signal provided for in the USB specifications that can be used to indicate a system is on backup power. For instance, I plug the USB cable into my desktop Mac, and the UPS shows up in the power management control panel. The status of being on battery power was read the couple of times the power went out in the past, and folding paused.

Similar software has been done for Linux, but it has been a while since I researched it so I don't know what is current. I do recall seeing this implemented on Windows, but that was a few years back.

what happens when you uninstall the powerchute software? does windows detect the UPS still (do a scan for hardware changes if you need)? Win10 has it's own built-in UPS management thru an HID interface. that should let any UPS-aware software to interface to the OS interface

Can you help me find that UPS Management in Win 10?

I'm willing to play dig around registries and experiment but don't know where to start.

Ultimately, it seems logical that if a Win 10 on a laptop can know if it's being fed wall or battery power that a UPS with an active data link to the PC could provide enough info to the OS to say it's on battery, ergo telling F@H (or any relevant program) it's on battery and then trip the client flag.

Welcome to the F@H Forum BeaconSlash,

Have a look at this guide for some pointers: https://dontcodetired.com/blog/post/Ins ... Windows-10

Thanks for that. I can't seem to find any of the settings he's got in Win 10.

That article looks a few years old. Is something hidden away now that I'm missing? I've dug through the power control panels and can't find this stuff.

I think windows only supports battery settings on mobile chipsets With integrated manufacturer drivers.
In my case, my UPS is just to warn me to reset the breaker or shut down the client and PC properly.

Could be dependent on if your ups properly reports itself as a battery to the os maybe? If it only works with the software from the ups company fah will never know about it. Just a random guess here.

Ok so on my new win10 machine I just connected my ups to it, was plugged in to it but hadn't connected the cable. Win 10 immediately recognized it and showed the battery icon like on a laptop. Under device manager it shows up under Human Interface devices. Under settings-system there is a battery section that showed up. This is with an APC br1500g ups. A restart of fahclient now also shows has battery as true. I also just realized all my ups units are 4 and 5 years old, maybe i should order new batteries for them.

Replacing UPS batteries after 5 years is a GOOD idea! At least open them up and inspect the batteries. I've done that in the past and found cracked batteries, only to then find they lasted about 15 seconds when tested.

Those APC and Cyberpower UPSes are mostly shipped with 5-7 amp-hour batteries. These days you can find size 1290 AGM batteries that are exactly the same size (5.95"L x 2.56"W x 3.70"H) with higher capacity. I've replaced all mine with the 1290s. Search a while on Amazon or your favorite store, because you can often find MUCH better prices in lots of 4 or more.