Help me disable my UPS alarms! Tripp-Lite OMNIVS1000

I have two Tripp-Lite OMNIVS1000 Uninterrupted Power Supplies (UPSs) in my house. As much as I love the fact that they condition the power for my electronics, regulate voltage swings, and provide backup power for short outages (which I believe extends the life of my electronics, see Protecting Your Electronic Hardware from the Power Company)...one thing drives me crazy. The "I am on battery power" audible alarm. See the video below.


It beeps with this piercing three ring tone every 10 seconds. This can be disabled manually by pressing one of the buttons. So, every time the power shuts off I have to jump (usually out of bed in the middle of the night) and run to shut the alarm off. But in the dark with the power off, it is easy to push the wrong button (there are two) and shut the unit off, which defeats the main purpose of having it for battery backup. If I manage to hit the right button and only mute it, it will finally, when the battery is nearly dead, generate another piercing solid tone. However this one cannot be disabled without shutting the unit completely down, or waiting it out until it shuts itself off. So when this happens in the middle of the night I need to get up and disable the audible alarm and if the outage persists, shut them down before the batteries go dead. It is a very manually intensive process, and I have two of them. You can imagine what happens when this occurs when I am out and my mom or a babysitter is home with the kids. I feel weird leaving an operating manual for my house for these unlikely contingencies, but it has happened before and I kind of feel bad not covering all scenarios.

I looked online for replacement UPS units but worry that they will have the same, or other, or more issues, and the ones I have actually do what I need them to do, I just don't want the noise. Even if I got another UPS, I would still probably use these units to backup additional devices, which would defeat the purpose of "replacing" them.

So in order to make an outage more bearable for all, I attempted to get this noise disabled. I was unable to find anything online to help me. If you are reading this, that is probably how you found this page. Hopefully I can at least save you the trouble of doing the same thing I did. So, I (safely) opened one of them up hoping to find a speaker that I could effortlessly unplug. I was unsuccessful. The control board is a single printed circuit board, with nothing that stands out to me as a tone generator, speaker, or noise maker. In addition all of the components are hard soldered to the board. Even when experimenting up close I can't tell where the noise was coming from. I am also unsure if I want to permanently disable the alarm or worse yet, break the unit by doing so, but at this point I am willing to try... if I only knew which doo-dad was the speaker module. Any guesses? I am including a picture below. I think it might be the white box at the top.

My next step might be flipping through my Digi-Key electrical parts catalog to see what a tone generator might look like.


One other gripe I have about this UPS is that it does not turn itself back on when power is restored, and I cannot automatically reboot my home server when the power comes back on (which would require a UPS reboot AND a PC reboot trigger). So whenever there is a >30 minute power outage, I need to push two buttons to reboot; the UPS restart and the computer restart,  which is extremely inconvenient if I am not home and trying to access home server resources. So I must choose between having a battery backup or having automatic reboot of my network when power is restored. If you have any thoughts or ideas please leave a comment below. Stay tuned and I will post an update as I learn more!

UPDATE: Disable via software! See below:

"Anonymous" left a link to LINK to an article that describes how to turn off the alarm via the Tripp Light software in "business mode". It seems to be effective. 

5 comments:

Unknown said...

el componente que emite el tono es un buzer y se encuentra segĂșn veo tu foto en la parte inferior izquierda es un cilindro como de un centĂ­metro de alto y como de ocho milimetros de diametro generalmente de color negro y con un orificio en el centro de la parte superior, tiene dos pines y esta soldado a la placa, sctsergio@hotmail.com

Anonymous said...

I've got two tripp Lite UPSs as well, and like you, not a fan of the beeping. I just disassembled one of them and removed the speaker (broke off). Assuming they're similar, It should look like a 1cm tall black cylinder with a hole in the middle. I recognized it looked like motherboard alarm from building my PC (http://i01.i.aliimg.com/wsphoto/v0/909642565/PC-font-b-Motherboard-b-font-mini-speaker-buzzer-speaker-font-b-alarm-b-font-chassis.jpg) Should look like that, but directly attached to the board. I just broke it off and it seems to be working fine. I did, however, run into some trouble getting the case to fit perfectly.

Eric Spurgeon said...

Sergio said (translated):
:the component that emits a tone and is buzer as I see your picture in the bottom left is a cylinder as a centimeter high and about eight millimeters in diameter and generally black with a hole in the center of the top has two pins and is welded to the plate,

Thanks Sergio.
Next time I open it up I will take a look.

Eric Spurgeon said...

Thanks Anonymous! I will take a look to see if I find one and report back.

Anonymous said...

Why do it the hard way? Use the Tripp-Lite power management software (free, on their site, local version) as described here to turn it off http://www.amazon.com/review/R2KMIKYOI2X6YG/ref=cm_cr_pr_viewpnt#R2KMIKYOI2X6YG