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.
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