Hi Folks,
Your expertise and wisdom may help me clarify thoughts
on the following.
I'm contemplating buying a couple of UPS units, at the
very cheap end, so no comms to the computer which could
be used to initiate a programmed shutdown if the mains
goes off.
So in turn I'm contemplating rigging a little circuit
which would supply a signal to a serial port while the
mains was on. The germ of the idea is to use one of
those very cheap power converters which can deliver
a DC voltage chosen from (say) 3V, 4.5V, 6V, 9V, 12V,
and set it up so as to put say 12V between 2 pins on
a serial port, when plugged directly into the mains.
Then it would be easy to have a little script running
in the background which would monitor the lines on the
serial port, and initiate a shutdown if the voltage
dropped to zero for (say) more than a minute.
That's the bare bones of the idea, and indeed enough
to define a basic soldering-iron job!
But I'm not sure I'm being circumspect enough here,
so would welcome comment!
With thanks, and best wishes to all,
Ted.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
E-Mail: (Ted Harding) <Ted.Harding(a)nessie.mcc.ac.uk>
Fax-to-email: +44 (0)870 094 0861
Date: 31-Oct-06 Time: 20:26:50
------------------------------ XFMail ------------------------------