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?

  • poVoq@slrpnk.net
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    37 minutes ago

    Right AC. Was a typo, corrected now.

    As for running nominally 12V stuff directly of a battery… you got lucky with your router then. I had the same idea with various mini PCs and ARM SBCs, and the majority absolutely should not be run directly off a battery where the voltage fluctuates so much. And it gets even worse when you try to solar charge the batteries.

    • moonshadow@slrpnk.net
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      9 minutes ago

      I haven’t had access to grid power in over 10 years and am pretty familiar with this stuff as part of day to day life. I do now have solar. Really don’t think me and everyone else I know have been getting this consistently “lucky” for this long across such a wide range of devices. The 11-15v a nominal 12v battery system normally experiences is not a huge amount of fluctuation, and I have yet to encounter a 12v device that couldn’t take it. On the contrary, I’ve tried much dumber stuff and gotten away with it. There’s a 9v piano keyboard and a 19v computer monitor wired straight into that same battery. The only time I’ve actually killed something is by reversing polarity. Voltage too low=won’t turn on, voltage too high=gets hot, and all these years of wiring up random scavengings to see what happens have taught me most gear is surprisingly tolerant/resilient