Nut upsdev - Oct 2008 - Megatec driver status [was: Re: UPS (Megatec) with strange voltage values]

On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Arjen de Korte <nut+devel at
de-korte.org> wrote:
> Citeren Carlos Rodrigues <cefrodrigues at gmail.com>:
>
>> BTW, the patch has a small typo in one of the comments: "applied
to
>> battery.volage" :)
>
> I'll leave that up to you to correct. Since it is only a comment, it
won't
> be visible to innocent users anyway. :-)
>
> What we might want to do, is to change the multiplier based on the
> information we already have. Looking at the BatteryVolts_t structure, it
> looks like there are some models for which we can preset a multiplier. One
> of them even reports a wrong nominal battery voltage (12V instead of 24V),
> we might even correct that.
Now, I think I should take the opportunity to ask if any of the people
reading this list is willing to help test the megatec driver, or even
take maintainership of it.

For a while now I've been using a virtual machine to test changes to
the driver, but now I don't have a machine with a serial port anymore,
so I'm unable to test with real hardware (even from inside a VM). I
could, of course, buy myself a usb-to-serial converter, but must say
I've been lacking time as of late so, after ~5 years maintaining this
driver (~3 years inside NUT mainline, thanks guys) I guess it's time
to pass it on to someone else.

The megatec driver is pretty much a done deal, all the new stuff
should happen in the megatec_usb driver (for which I'm not the
maintainer). I guess whomever picks up official maintainership of this
driver could also pick up megatec proper. It makes sense, for me at
least.

There are still some small things pending in megatec however, that I
can do myself provided someone helps testing with real hardware:

1) Adding another parameter to set the pace for serial communications
(see the thread mentioned in the subject);
2) Mark the Battvolts_t structure as deprecated/legacy and add the
battvolts values for the UPSes listed in the comments to the
compatibility list (I don't think this structure should be changed
going forward, it is only useful for a small number of users, totaly
useless for the majority of users, and confusing for the rest);
3) Adding some more models to the compatibility list (I have one or
two pending).

So, nothing special. I'll drop a patch to the list instead of
commiting immediately, since I don't like commiting untested stuff
(even if they look simple at a glance).

Any comments?

-- 
Carlos Rodrigues

Hi Carlos,

2008/10/20 Carlos Rodrigues <cefrodrigues at
gmail.com>:
> On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 1:35 PM, Arjen de Korte <nut+devel at
de-korte.org> wrote:
>> Citeren Carlos Rodrigues <cefrodrigues at gmail.com>:
>>
>>> BTW, the patch has a small typo in one of the comments:
"applied to
>>> battery.volage" :)
>>
>> I'll leave that up to you to correct. Since it is only a comment,
it won't
>> be visible to innocent users anyway. :-)
>>
>> What we might want to do, is to change the multiplier based on the
>> information we already have. Looking at the BatteryVolts_t structure,
it
>> looks like there are some models for which we can preset a multiplier.
One
>> of them even reports a wrong nominal battery voltage (12V instead of
24V),
>> we might even correct that.
>
> Now, I think I should take the opportunity to ask if any of the people
> reading this list is willing to help test the megatec driver, or even
> take maintainership of it.
>
> For a while now I've been using a virtual machine to test changes to
> the driver, but now I don't have a machine with a serial port anymore,
> so I'm unable to test with real hardware (even from inside a VM). I
> could, of course, buy myself a usb-to-serial converter, but must say
> I've been lacking time as of late so, after ~5 years maintaining this
> driver (~3 years inside NUT mainline, thanks guys) I guess it's time
> to pass it on to someone else.
>
> The megatec driver is pretty much a done deal, all the new stuff
> should happen in the megatec_usb driver (for which I'm not the
> maintainer). I guess whomever picks up official maintainership of this
> driver could also pick up megatec proper. It makes sense, for me at
> least.
>
> There are still some small things pending in megatec however, that I
> can do myself provided someone helps testing with real hardware:
>
> 1) Adding another parameter to set the pace for serial communications
> (see the thread mentioned in the subject);
> 2) Mark the Battvolts_t structure as deprecated/legacy and add the
> battvolts values for the UPSes listed in the comments to the
> compatibility list (I don't think this structure should be changed
> going forward, it is only useful for a small number of users, totaly
> useless for the majority of users, and confusing for the rest);
> 3) Adding some more models to the compatibility list (I have one or
> two pending).
>
> So, nothing special. I'll drop a patch to the list instead of
> commiting immediately, since I don't like commiting untested stuff
> (even if they look simple at a glance).
>
> Any comments?
first, thanks for taking the time to clarify the situation.
and also for all your hard work during all these years. I recall that
the initial megatec creation was something hard, and I had to bother
you a lot on this. But the results are there, and it has greatly
simplified the drivers list.

@Alex and Jon: what do you think about Carlos proposition?

thanks,
Arnaud
-- 
Linux / Unix Expert R&D - MGE Office Protection Systems -
http://www.mgeops.com
Network UPS Tools (NUT) Project Leader - http://www.networkupstools.org/
Debian Developer - http://people.debian.org/~aquette/
Free Software Developer - http://arnaud.quette.free.fr/