For those of you that have to have a large number of knob and
buttons to play with on your computer accessories, you will be very disappointed
to find that there is only one on the ULTRA-Power UPS, that being the power
On/Off button. This button also serves a dual purpose as a 'Test" Button for the
unit. When the UPS is operating in the AC mode you can activate the UPS's
self-test by pressing the button for less than 1-second.
If the UPS is operating in the Back-Up mode you can press the
button for 1-second to activate the silent-mode.
The LCD display while not being flashy does contain enough information to
let you know the state of the UPS. The most prominent and visible will
be the corrected line voltage. The graph on the left is an indication of the
"Battery Level", when the battery capacity is low the graph will begin to
dim, when the unit fails to charge or the the batteries fail the display
will begin to flash.
To the right of the graph are three symbols that will be
visible at various stages. In the first picture this is the "Normal
Indicator" which is present when AC power is hooked to the ULTRA-Power UPS.
In the second picture we see the "Backup Mode" this is what you will be
presented with when you lose power and the UPS takes over. The last symbol
will be red and it is an indicator that the UPS has been overloaded.
You will notice that the entire side of the case has been
punched with numerous holes to provide ventilation for the circuitry inside
the enclosure. The thing a person must not lose sight of is the fact
the the UPS starts out as a very powerful power supply. Not the kind
that you are used to talking or buying from Newegg but a power supply none
the less. As a power supply it is taking the input voltage and
cleaning it so you don't have to worry about EMI or RFI type problems, but
then it also has to be a battery charger as well.
Since this unit has two deep-cycle marine batteries in it
the part of the UPS's job is to maintain the charge on them without cooking
the electrolytic out of them. So you can see a UPS is not a simple
piece of equipment.
Moving to the rear of the ULTRA-Power UPS and here is
where you will find all of the hookups and connection points for the unit.
We will examine them in groups so you have a better understanding of what
each one does. We will start off with the four black receptacles,
these receptacles are protected from all of the things we pointed out
earlier and anything plugged into this will fall back to battery back up in
the event of a power failure.
Speaking from experience the time for the unit to kick-in
is less than a fraction of a section, it happens so fast you barely know
that it did if it were not for the message notifying you of a power failure.
