Maker Ryan Walker, of Interrupt Labs, has teamed up with Protectli to design an open supply uninterruptible energy provide (UPS) — utilizing 12 18560 batteries to maintain DC-supplied units ticking over within the case of an influence outage.
“We have designed an open supply UPS that redefines the connection clients have with their electronics,” Walker claims of the machine, the design and firmware for which is being made accessible beneath a permissive open supply license. “It makes use of 12 18650 upgradable batteries, an [Espressif] ESP32 to host an internet server, [Raspberry Pi] RP2040 for basic management, GPIO [General-Purpose Input/Output] to wire in exterior parts, relays, and extra.”
Whereas many UPS designs should deal with mains-voltage alternating present, Walker’s design opts for one thing easier: 12V direct present in, 12V direct present out — utilizing, neatly, two completely different sizes of barrel-jack connector so you possibly can’t combine up which is which. Beneath regular circumstances, the enter energy flows on to the output — but when the enter energy goes lacking, the UPS robotically switches to its financial institution of 18650 batteries till the enter energy provide comes again on-line.
The board has a choice of quality-of-life options above and past merely making certain continued energy, together with an on-board 128×64 OLED show for native standing and an internet server working on the on-board Espressif ESP32 module with help for Community UPS Instruments (NUT) for monitoring and management.
The UPS concentrates on offering a steady 12V provide, avoiding the complexity of AC-to-DC-to-AC conversion. (📷: Protectli)
As an open-hardware machine the firmware for each the ESP32 and the Raspberry Pi RP2040 microcontrollers are additionally being made accessible for customers to hack and iterate upon, ought to a characteristic be discovered lacking.
Extra data on the UPS design is on the market within the video embedded above, whereas schematics and supply code have been revealed to GitHub beneath the MIT license; further particulars, and a hyperlink to be alerted when growth is full and the business model is on the market, could be discovered on the Protectli web site.
