Your life will be less stressful once you assume all software delivered by any hardware-focused company is crap, and it’s better to upfront seek third-party workarounds—as early as before you decide to buy the hardware.
I disagree. The line between software and hardware is very blurry. Implementation of various features move between software and hardware all the time. Software is inseparable part of hardware for a long time now.
In this specific case, usb is part of the product. It’s part of the core functionality of this hardware appliance. If it is misbehaving — it makes the entire product garbage.
The same way saying that this car engine stalls and misfires all the time — they are not just very good at ECU software — but they are not a software company and therefore engine itself is excellent. I guess l the aluminium it is made of is what’s remains. It’s a high quality scrap then, not a product.
So when cyberpower UPSses:
- misimplement required and advertised features of usb profile (like offdelay I described before) — which is a core part of being a UPS and being able handle the shutdown
- Can’t STFU their usb stack to let connected devices sleep — which is power domain. Their alleged competency.
- The waveform they produce is not accepted even by their own other products, or any other sane UPS — too noisy and distorted: and this is literaly their one job,
This begs the question — what are they actually selling and how do they still exist as a company?
Their competitor does all of three by the way, so it’s not some impossible to reach perfectionist standard. It’s a bare minimum of what you need to be able to do to be called an ups.
I’ve got a couple CyberPower CP1500PFCLCD and haven’t had problems. When the power goes out the gear keeps running… but nothing has time to sleep either.
I think they’re what Amazon rebrands (example)? I wonder if they have their own custom software?
How do you know?
So… this is an evidence they implemented correctly an if statement. If power is lost — turn on inverter. Bravo.
If they hadn’t they would get a return immediately. It’s a lowest bar to clear. It tellls nothing about its performance as an ups.
Does it obey offdelay for you?
And how is this not a problem? It’s a consumer device. Consumer devices have to pass EPA certicwtion and that means sleep modes and low standby power. This device actively sabotages this and you don’t see it as a problem?
Who “they”? Amazon does not write UPS software. It’s part of the device. Amazon tells cyberpower make me 10M units from scraps and use this jpeg as a logo. It runs the same shitty software as other cyberpower devices. They are not going to be custominozng it, let alone improving, for the white label brand.
My PC client (the free version of CyberPowerPanel) keeps finding updates and offers me to install them… the problem is that those updates are not yet released. 
I contacted support once, I told the guy about the version of the update (7xxx) and he said something like… were did you find this version? We relesed only until 6xxx. 
I didn’t find it, your software did. Before the AI era…
Oh fucking he’ll but I’m not surprised. I called them once to ask about how the hell to initiate battery calibration cycle. After three different representatives they sent me to some engineer. Who held me on the line for 10 minutes then came back, said “this information is proprietary” and disconnected. No goodbye no conclusion. Just dropped the connection.
Proprietary my ass. APC lets you do it form a front panel.
But seriously, don’t install their shitty software. Actually, I just realized @Toyoo might meant this software in his comment above; while I was taking about software that runs on a UPS (some call it “firmware” incorrectly, but that’s the one I mean). The USB was waking the whole chain of devices. And of course I did not and would never install any software made by a fricking ups company onto my computer.
So both claims are true. They cannot write desktop software (understandable and maybe somewhat forgivable because you don’t have to use it) but their device software being of the same shitty quality is not forgivable or workaroundable. Who is to say won’t overcharge the battery one day to the point of explosion if they can’t handle usb and basic configurability.
On that desktop software then: uninstall that crap. Every OS knows how to deal with a UPS. There is HID profile for them. Even windows. The only reason to run it if you have 17 computers connected to the same UPS and want to manage shutdown. But even then there are much better alternative solutions that don’t require using their crap.
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Side anecdote. My APC has a network management card that I bought on eBay for couple of bucks that allows to expose it over SNMP (I despise USB as you may or may not have noticed by now). That card runs the whole web server for data collection and configuration. And has three bits of firmware: ups software, and software for its own two processors, one runs configuration engine and the other web server. This is not arbitrary — every function is handled by a separate processor. If one borks — the rest continue working. This is the correct design.
So, they ship the software (ok, firmware updater) as an exe file. Exe. Self-unpacking archive. For windows. Boggles my mind.
Inside, they have a .net based updater software. Oh why?!! Just why?! And three lose firmware bin files.
At first I tried to install .net and their shitty app into Crossover bottle I had to create to unpack that exe, becuse I don’t have windows, but then decided to maybe read documentation.
Turns out you don’t need any of that. You can scp a bin file to device, it accepts it reboots and bam — firmware updated.
For APC this is where the line between sanity and insanity is drawn.
Cyberpower does not have such a line.
I wonder if your sleep state functions properly with their CPP software? But you won’t test it, so we’ll never know.
BTW, I just read about how to setup the UPS without the proprietary utility software in Windows, and one guy said that you must create a new power plan and set it to high performace. On balanced, it didn’t hibernate as it should.
I don’t know what options you have on Mac, but if there’s something similar, tweak it.
I prefer their utility prog because it’s letting me set the sensitivity of the UPS, meaning the voltage interval, outside of which it will switch to battery. The defaults are horrible.
Indeed. Firmware is usually tested to a bit better standard because it’s often not easy to replace in field. But user-installable software? Even top-line hardware vendors don’t bother.
Yeah, “usually” does a lot of heavy lifting here…
If CyberPower removed the USB port – that would have been a fine UPS. On par with APC BackUPSes, that don’t pretend anythign but what they are – cheap consumer surge protector with a battery.
They decided to be fancy but bit more than they could chew. I only imagine their enterprise equipment is just as good as APC or Eaton or what have you – being built for enterprises for supportability and resilience, and not consumer junk for a price target – but I will never know, because I will go out of my way to not buy anything made by them.
Since I do not use “sleep” on my devices I would not have encountered that problem.
Well, maybe they made engines without software that worked well, but when they needed to have software that’s where the problems started :).
Oh yeah, those cards are great.
However, as much as I like my old APC UPSs, it seems that the newer models are worse. For example, in all APC UPSs that I have (that includes Smart-UPS and Back-UPS), it is very easy to replace the batteries - there is a special door or whatever. On the other hand, on a new APC Back-UPS, you have to take the APS apart and the way it is constructed makes it inconvenient to do so.