When trying to add an APC UPS to either a RB493G or a RB411UAHR via the USB port the drop down box only shows the serial0 port and no USB port option. I've tried serveral different OS versions and none of them give me the USB port as an option to connect to the APC UPS. I have tried two different APC UPSs and I am using the factory APC USB to RJ45 data cable that comes with every APC ES550 etc.

What am I missing?

Thanks,

Brad

Just found a RB433UAH laying around and it "sees" serial0, usb1 & usb2 as available options when adding a UPS. It is running v4.10 and is able to connect & monitor the APC UPS statistics without any problem.

I tried downgrading the RB411UAHR to v4.10 and it still does not give me a USB port as an option when trying to add a UPS.

I upgraded the RB433UAH from v4.10 to v5.0 and it still "sees" the serial0 and usb1, but I no longer have usb2 as an option. I am able to choose usb1 when adding a UPS and connect to the APC UPS.

What is different between the RB433UAH and the RB411UAHR & RB493G USB ports and why did upgrading the RB433UAH from v4.10 to v5.0 result in usb2 disappearing?

What do I need to do in order for the RB493G to give me the USB port as an option when adding a UPS?

Thanks,

Brad

i am not 100% sure but ut may be because the USB ports on the RB493G and the RB411UAHR are not powered and you need to use a power injector, maybe. You can just use a powered usb hub.

Possibly, but it think I read in one of the release notes that MikroTik specifically talks about the RB4xx supporting APC UPS monitoring. I don't think power is needed to communicate with the APC UPS as the UPS is already powered.

Thanks,

Brad

They do support apc ups monitoring AFAIK. Cant hurt trying a powered usb hub.

So, can anyone from MikroTik explain what I may be doing wrong with the RB493G vs. the RB433UAH board? The RB433UAH running v5.0 can see the APC UPS, but the RB493G running v5.0 (or any RouterOS version) cannot.

Is there a specific setting somewhere in the RB493G that enables the USB port to be used?

Thanks,


Brad

Every USB device essentially needs the bus power - to initiate the bus enumeration process correctly. The RB433UAH supplies power to the USB port by default, while RB411UAHR and RB493 doesn't.

Is this is true and can MikroTik can confirm this? You mention power to the USB port "by default". Is there a setting to enable power to the RB493G USB port?

If this is correct, than I don't see the benefit of having a USB port on a RouterBoard that can't be easily used. Is there some sort of mini USB hub that can be powered by the RB493G, so that the USB port can be used to monitor a APC UPS? Just what we need; more clutter at a site..

Thanks,


Brad

"Default" is incorrect word - the USB power is hard routed at the PCB of the RB433 device, and the power convertor is implied there too and cannot be turned on or off in any way. The first and easiest way for you is to get the USB power injector and external power supply to power up the USB port and make it possible to enumerate USB devices.

The second way is to make some custom power convertor, which could convert the 18 volts of the main power supply downto 5 volts needed by USB port. This convertor has to be soldered to the appropriate pins of USB port. The result is the same, but no external boxes and wires will be used. Such a convertor could be built with LP2950CZ-5.0 linear regulator - but it can provide just 100 mA of current, so this port will be able to communicate self-powered USB devices only.

Same result could be obtained, when DC/DC boost convertor is used - many of them convert from 3.3 volts to 5 volts.

All these voltages (18 and 3.3 volts) are present at RB493's cooling fan connectors

Ok, using a voltmeter I find the RB433UAH does show 5VDC present on the pins of the USB port, but no voltage present on the RB493G. <sigh> What a joke...why woud MikroTik do this?

Poking around the RB493G board I find 2.2VDC, 3.3VDC, 7.7VDC, 22.9VDC and 2.2VDC....but no 5VDC. So, where do I go from here? Will tapping into the 7.7VDC be too hot for the APC UPS? Or will tapping into the 3.3VDC be too little voltage? I guess it won't hurt to try the 3.3VDC...

Thanks,


Brad

Possibly, 3.3 volts will be enough to discover a new connection - there are just some resistors in UPS powered from the USB.
But to make it correct please read my previous message and decide what circuit to build.

I had some time to play with my 3.3VDC idea and it worked! A simple jumper from the 3.3VDC pin to the USB pin was all it took to get the RB493G to recognize the APC UPS. So, it looks like all our RB493G routers will be getting this modification in order for our APC UPS monitoring script to work.

Do we know if MikroTik will make this mistake again on future boards? Will the RB2100 have a USB port with 5VDC or not?

Best,


Brad

RB411U, RB750U and RB433 do supply power to their USB ports

RB411U, RB750U and RB433 do supply power to their USB ports

I just checked a RB411UAH here on my desk and there is no power supplied on the USB port. Not sure if you have a newer version than mine or possibly just mistaken.

I am happy to report that the half a dozen or so RB493G's that I've modified are all working well and reporting my APC UPS statistics nicely. I would MUCH rather not have to spend the five minutes modifying each RB493G board to accomplish this and hope MikroTik is listening. Let's hope MikroTik supplies voltage on the USB port of the up and coming RB2100.

Best,


Brad

Indeed, the RB411UAH and RB411UAHR does not supply power to their USB ports. But RB411U does

the mentioned boards that don't supplu USB power need this adapter: http://www.routerboard.com/index.php?showProduct=99

the mentioned boards that don't supplu USB power need this adapter: http://www.routerboard.com/index.php?showProduct=99

In addition, customer has to purchase an additional 5VDC power supply.

the mentioned boards that don't supplu USB power need this adapter: http://www.routerboard.com/index.php?showProduct=99

In addition, customer has to purchase an additional 5VDC power supply.

Yuck! What a mess that would make of things hooking all that up. Seems to me the simpler solution is for MikroTik/RouterBoard to make sure all boards have 5VDC present at the USB port! Until then, jumping 3.3VDC across the board is the best solution for us.

We are very interested in the RB2100 due to it's SFP. Will the RB2100 have 5VDC present at the USB port?

Thanks,


Brad

I got my RB493G board last week and now when I was playing around with it and was going to experiment with a 3G modem connected to the USB, I don't have a micro-SIM or what form factor this board supports!? Anyway I was playing around with it and noticed that the board didn't recognize it so I search the forums and found this..
Man was this a disappointment.. And I don't really understand, why have a USB-port if it doesn't work without an external powersupply for the USB port?

@BelWave was that all you did? Soldering a cable between those pins? Do you think that can power up a USB 3G dongle or a memory stick?
Thinking about doing this as I don't want a second powercable and some extra stuff just to get the USB port working..


Thanks,
-Patric

It states, clearly, on the product page that you need power for USB. How can you be surprised/disappointed about something that is mentioned in the product details?

It has not always been so clearly posted.

I can also understand people having issues with this. If you bought a car and it did not come with windscreen wipers (even if the pamphlet told you so) customers would still be pretty put off by the product.

If Normis chose to be polite, he could explain that there is no 5v power supply on the RB493G so to support USB power they would have had to add a 5V regulator at a few cents extra cost and possibly larger circuit board size.

There are certain bits of information about MT products that I have to hide from the client. They would see this as a very low quality and questionable product for hokey engineering decisions like this.

he could explain that there is no 5v power supply on the RB493G so to support USB power

didn't I explain it in this same topic? like was said above, this information has been always available in our datasheets.

Normis,

Will the RB2100 routerboard (that has the SFP port) have a USB port with 5VDC?

PatricF,

Yes, all we've done is solder a jumper from the 3.3VDC pin to the USB port. That was enough voltage for the router to "see" the USB port and communicate with the APC UPS. I have no idea if the 3.3VDC is enough to power a USB 3G dongle or a memory stick, but I'm not sure what harm there would be in trying. We modify every RB493G we purchase by adding this simple jumper. It is valuable information to know when line voltage has been lost and we have a site on battery backup. This gives us time to contact customers and get to the site with additional power before we go offline.

Best,


Brad

I had some time to play with my 3.3VDC idea and it worked! A simple jumper from the 3.3VDC pin to the USB pin was all it took to get the RB493G to recognize the APC UPS. So, it looks like all our RB493G routers will be getting this modification in order for our APC UPS monitoring script to work.

Do we know if MikroTik will make this mistake again on future boards? Will the RB2100 have a USB port with 5VDC or not?

Best,


Brad

traducción del español al inglés


Thank you very much for this information BelWave I purchase a USB HUB USB port http://www.klipxtreme.com/dpg/kxProduct ... g=11&flt=7 with 5V power supply 2Amp and did not work, I soldered the jumper for your advice and now I can see the UPS does, however leave the 493G USB hub connected to UPS and leave it connected to USB Hub
Out of curiosity also connect a pen drive of 4 Giga KingstowDt101 the USB hub and does not recognize it will be normal or will I have to try other pendrive?

karma+1

all future products will have powered USB ports.

all future products will have powered USB ports.

Great to hear! Thank you Mikrotik for constant product improvement.

all future products will have powered USB ports.

Really good information to know! The simple RB493G modification we've been performing to monitor UPS status has worked flawlessly, but very happy to hear all future RouterBoards will have powered USB ports!

Does this include the soon to be released RB2100? When will the RB2100 be shipping or is it shipping already?

Best,


Brad

yes, this product will also have USB power (on those models which will have USB ports). no, it's not shipping, it will be available in Q4 this year.

I hope this isn't off.
I have a 411UAHR and haven't been able to get a usb power injector for it.
So I scavenge my archives and come up with a 5v dc adaptor and a male to female usb cable.
I've cut and joined what I think I should (green to green and white to white, both for data; red to red to red for +5v and black to black to black for grnd).
Question: does the male end (that goes into the 411) of the male to female usb cable require power as well or just data? i.e Does the injector supply power to the usb device only or to the usb port on the 411 as well?

I'm sorry, having some difficulty attaching a photo.

Hello everybody.
Can you please tell me which type of ups do you use? I have APC BACK 500 CS (it isn't smart) and in case I add power source to usb and use original RJ45/USB cable i can't see nothink in UPS bookmark in winbox.
I can see only choice Port: serial0 and it's not possibility to add another one. Is there something to be fulfill for configuration of USB port using for UPS connections?

Thanks for any idea.

APC UPS sometimes are set up as HID device, in this case port will not be displayed in /port menu. But when you attempt to add /system ups add port= you might get auto completion with required usb# port number as expected. That is solely due to APC making their devices to be recognized as USB HID. Older models usually will get the port settings as expected.

Janis: I tryed to add new ups trough Terminal. Now I was succesfull. But I can't still change the port. I can see only choice serial0 despite of USB in menu System Resources is printed. Have I to set up the USB?
There is possible to see the possibilities for setup.



On some czech forum I found that similar type of apc communicate trough USB port, not trough serial. But how is possible to set the port i didn't found.

with USB HID devices prot will not be displayed but in terminal you should be able to set the value of usb1 (u +tab)

also, if you use newer APC UPS you might encounter problem that new protocol is implemented by APC and they have not released any details how to get any useful data from them.

So thanks Janisk for avice. I try to add power source to usb made by voltage regulator. Schematic is here

This edit add +5V (using 78M05 is max 0,5A) to pin 1 of USB independent of power voltage value (it works approx. from 8V to 24V). Then APC info works trough USB correctly. For basic series BACK UPS 500CS you can read basic info like baterry charge, ups status etc.



So for some deices can be 3,3V enought, for some not. If you are not sucessfull with 3,3V (described above) try to add external power source. I hope this can help somebody else.

[quote="Radek"]Janis: I tryed to add new ups trough Terminal. Now I was succesfull. But I can't still change the port. I can see only choice serial0 despite of USB in menu System Resources is printed. Have I to set up the USB?
There is possible to see the possibilities for setup.

I am having the same problem. The RB493G is not recognizing the USB port at all and not giving me that option.
I am using rOS 5.14. I even tried the command line.

/system ups add port=usb1 disabled=no
input does not match any value of port
/system ups add port=usb0 disabled=no
input does not match any value of port
/system ups add port=usb2 disabled=no
input does not match any value of port

"with USB HID devices prot will not be displayed but in terminal you should be able to set the value of usb1 (u +tab)"
Didn't work.

/system resource usb print
# DEVICE VENDOR NAME SPEED
0 2:1 RB400 EHCI 480 Mbps
1 1:1 RB400 OHCI 12 Mbps

Also, I am using one of those external power adapters with a 5V supply from a powered USB hub.

What do I need to do to make the USB work?

Never mind. I tried it with the powered USB hub and then it worked. I guess that's my solution.

Never mind. I tried it with the powered USB hub and then it worked. I guess that's my solution.

Let me know please the type of HUB, recently I tried connect some USH hub and Flash together with APC and it didn't work (even separately). This was USB hub type like this


I didn't check power consumption, but together with PC the hub works fine.
Is there any compatibility list of possible HUB, or it is necessary to config connected HUB first?

Thx

Mine is a Vantec Go-2.0 powered USB hub. The APC I tried it with is an older one. I'll be trying it with a new APC tomorrow. I'll post on that after I'm done.

After some delays, the RB493G is installed with its Vantec Go-2.0 USB hub. And it kind-of talks to the new APC Back-UP ES 750. The only thing it is actually able to see is the Serial Number: 4B1023P45521.

However, while installing the box in its new home, I took my EeePC 901 Netbook with me. The netbook runs Ubuntu Netbook ReMix 10.4 along with all of the critical updates. It had no problem getting all of the data from the APC 750.

I mention this because I'm fairly certain MikroTik complaining that APC hasn't released the protocol is no longer worthy of continued respect. The information is out there and I'm willing to bet it's open source.

Would it be safe to connect rb411uahr usb port to an active usb hub? It means that there will be some voltage at the routerboard USB pins from active hub.

Thanks

Sorry for necroposting but I have essentially the same problem as described above.
I connect my APC UPS to CRS109-8G-1S-2HnD USB port but there's no usb port I can select, only serial0 is avaliable.
RouterOS 7.1.2, ups package installed.
The UPS is a quite old one (manufactured in 2005), I hope it's compatible.
I can see it in the router's usb resources. The USB cable works perfectly, Windows shows the UPS stats instantly after connecting to PC. USB OTG cable also works well, checked it with my usb flash drive.
I've tried to change USB mode to "force host", but no luck.
Is there something I missed to configure?

RouterOS 7.1.2, ups package installed.

Both in 7.1.3 and 7.1.4 (just released) have improvements in USP handling. So try to upgrade to 7.1.4 (if you're feeling lucky) and check if things improve for you.

Thank you for the advice!
Just updated to 7.1.5, but there's still no option to select usb as a ups port.

Same issue here with ROS 7.8,
unable to connect a APC Smart UPS-X to a CCR1036-12G-4S on the USB port.

The USB cable works for communicating with a PC, but not with the router. The UPS is not displayed on the resources/USB and I have only the serial0 and serial1 option on the ups/add port=

Same issue for me on a CCR1036 running 7.8, even tried 7.10.2 and same issue.

I am using a PowerShield Commander UPS and works fine with apcupsd on redhat.

On CCR1036 there is no usbhid device.

If device is not even in resources/USB then it's not connected to router or not getting power. Try connecting any other USB device if it appears in resources (it should even if it's unsupported, like PC mouse). If that doesn't work, try self powered hub or some self powered USB device for a test (for example external HDDs/docks/drives with power adapter are usually self powered, or printers etc.). If that works, you simply need to use powered hub or hack it to get 5V to the connector for UPS. If none works, something is probably wrong with your CCR, could be connector or PCB traces etc.
Btw to check if device is self powered or not, you can use usbtreeview tool on windows, it's listed as part of Summary for each device.

I've done a bit more troubleshooting.

It would seem that the UPS USB crashes the CCR1036's USB port.

If I plug in a USB stick it registers on the resources/usb ..
If I then unplug it and connect the UPS USB it does not register the usbhid.
If I then try and put the usbstick back in the CCR it does not show up in the resources/usb.
If I reboot the CCR and then plug in the usbstick it once again shows in the resources/usb page.

Do the same again and then generate supout.rif and send it to Mikrotik support. It's probably a bug in USB or UPS driver.

[admin@MikroTik] > /system resource usb print
Columns: DEVICE, VENDOR, NAME, SPEED
# DEVICE VENDOR NAME SPEED
0 1-0 Linux 5.6.3 ehci_hcd RB400 EHCI 480
1 1-1 American Power Conversion Smart-UPS 750 FW:651.12.I USB FW:4.2 1.5

[admin@MikroTik] > /port print
Columns: NAME, CHANNELS, USED-BY, BAUD-RATE
# NAME CHANNELS USED-BY BAUD-RATE
0 serial0 1 Serial Console 2400

[admin@MikroTik] > /system ups add port=serial0 # if I press [Tab], only serial0 is suggested
[admin@MikroTik] > /system ups add port=usb0
input does not match any value of port
[admin@MikroTik] > /system ups add port=usb1
input does not match any value of port
[admin@MikroTik] > /system ups add port=usb2
input does not match any value of port
[admin@MikroTik] > /system ups add port=usb1-1
input does not match any value of port

Is there something I missed to configure?

First, it was necessary to release the serial0 port from the console...