Apple

On Aug 5, 2007, at 1:11 PM, Mike Fischer wrote:

Hi,

I'm not sure this is the right place to ask but here it goes anyway:

A customer of mine makes software for a number of UPS systems. Currently this software is cross platform and is not integrated into Darwin/Mac OS X at all. I was tasked to write an Mac OS X Installer for them (to avoid the UNIX shell stuff they had on the Mac before). So far so good.

I have recently become aware of the fact, that Darwin/Mac OS X seems to have built-in support for UPS systems. But I couldn't find much information on how to actually integrate a UPS with the OS. The hardware usually comes with either USB or serial interfaces. The later would generally be converted using a USB<->Serial adaptor.

For example "man pmset" mentions UPS settings.

I have found the reference documentation for IOUPSPlugInInterface and IOUPSPlugIn.h. But this seems rather sparse.

I'd be greatful for any pointers on where to look for more information.

Note: I have not done any KEXT or IOKit programming yet.

Thanks.
Mike

The USB list <http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/usb> is probably a better place for these questions.

Mac OS X has built-in support for UPS units that conform to the USB HID Power Device spec <http://www.usb.org/developers/hidpage/#Power_Devices>. You don't need to provide any software for such devices.

It is possible to support serial UPS units as well but that requires some code. The best way to get help with this is to submit a DTS support incident. (If you're not familiar with DTS, you can read more at the URL in my email signature.)

Best wishes,

--gc

References:
	>Integrating an external UPS system? (From: Mike Fischer <email@hidden>)