WTI remote power strip
I have a Western Telematics, Inc RPB+ remote power strip. I picked it up on eBay.
Currently I control it from Bellman to remotely power up Dart, which is set to "power up after power failure" in BIOS. That means I can use "sudo poweroff" to cleanly shutdown and then use the powerstrip's BOOT command to power cycle it when I want to bring it back online. Since this server is big, and I don't use it all the time, this makes my power bill lower.
On the outside:
- 5 switched AC outlets, individually controllable
- Can switch up to 15A on one port, up to 15A for all ports.
- 9 pin RS232 port (you need a null modem cable to connect)
- Dip switch for setting baud rate
- An LED for each outlet on the front panel
Inside it has:
- a PIC 16C56 microcontroller, in a socket
- 5 nice relays and associated drivers to interface to PIC
- a 555 timer
- an ADM232 on the serial port
- a power supply
A PIC 16C56 has:
- 18 pin DIP
- 1.5K memory
- 25 bytes of RAM (whew! takes my breath away!)
- 1 8-bit timer
- It's OTP = one time programmable
To substitute a flash device I could drop in a 16F628A, then I'd get 3.5k of RAM and 224 bytes of RAM.
Operation
Manual File:Wti power strip.pdf
There are DIP switches to set serial port rate. I keep it at 9600.
From bellman,
minicom --device /dev/ttyS0
The prompt is RPB+>
The menu should come up. If it does not try typing "/S", that gives you status.
- Dart
The basic command is "/n ON | OFF | BOOT", where "n" is a port number 1-5.
BOOT powers down, pauses, then powers up.
