On 2018-02-08 I published a blog rant titled UPSes suck and need to be disrupted complaining about the deficiencies of crappy Uninterruptible Power Supply designs that perform poorly and pile hidden costs on their users in order to minimize vendors' NRE and BOM costs. I suggested that this whole product category needs to be disrupted by an open-hardware design that addresses the many deficiencies of existing hardware. UPSes are not complicated devices; there is no good excuse for the state of the commmercial art to be as inadequate as it is.

The response on my blog and G+ was intense, almost overwhelming. It seems many UPS users are unhappy with what the vendors are pushing.

This project is an attempt to do something about that. Our goal is to design a high-quality UPS that can be built from off-the-shelf parts in any reasonably well-equipped makerspace or home electronics shop. Our final deliverable should be PCB designs, a full parts list, assembly instructions, and full manuals for the hardware and software.

We welcome contributors: people with interest in UPSes who have expertise in battery technology, power-switching electronics, writing device-control firmware, relevant standards such as USB and the DMTF battery-management profile.

We also welcome participation from established UPS and electronics vendors. We know that consumer electronics is a cutthroat low-margin business in which it’s tough to support a real R&D team or make possibly-risky product bets. Help us, and then let us help you!

To get a handle on the state of the project it is probably best to begin by browsing the wiki. Then you should browse the design documents in the repository.

You might be especially interested in the task list showing completed and pending work.

You should also read the process document to learn how to contribute effectively.