I’m buying a UPS for my LOREX NVR POE camera system. I saw the Amazon Basics 1500VA UPS on sale.
(Amazon Basics Line Interactive UPS 1500VA 900 Watt Surge Protector Battery Backup, 10 Outlets, Black)
It says it’s “simulated” sine wave, and I’m wondering how much that matters. Will this affect my system? Should I be looking for a “pure sine wave” UPS?
All electronics first filter the AC, convert it to DC, and filter it again. So, the ‘dirty’ power from any UPS doesn’t really matter.
Inside the device, this DC gets converted to high-frequency signals and filtered again before becoming the stable DC that powers the electronics. This process ensures the power is clean and stable, even if the input is noisy.
Most UPS systems are fine for electronics like POE cameras. The size of the UPS you need depends on how long you want the system to run during a power outage. Simulated vs. pure sine wave often doesn’t make much of a difference for this use case. Just avoid using a UPS to power things like motorized devices or surge protector strips.
@Paris
Interesting point. I had a room where computers kept failing, but after installing a UPS with surge protection, the failures stopped.
Could that just have been coincidence? Was the “line conditioning” part of the UPS actually helping? This was many years ago, by the way.
@Han
The term “line conditioning” is vague marketing. It could mean almost anything, and without specifics, it’s hard to say what it addressed. Power anomalies can include things like brownouts, surges, noise, or grounding issues.
Unless the exact failure inside your computers was identified, it’s impossible to say if the UPS solved the problem or if the issue was resolved by chance. A proper diagnosis would have involved examining what failed in those desktops.
Also, most UPS systems don’t actually have surge protection. Their “protection” is usually too small to matter. Real surge protection requires a whole-house solution.
@Paris
You’re right on a lot of points. I already knew most of this, but I was just a bit concerned about the hard drive and motherboard. I figured it wouldn’t be an issue, but I wanted to hear if anyone had bad experiences.
@Ren
Hard drives are designed to handle power loss. They only know power is off once it’s gone, and they finish their tasks before fully shutting down. Even in the old days, drives were built to handle this.
Computers are robust by design. Power outages typically don’t damage hardware unless there’s a severe anomaly. If you’re worried about rare events like lightning, then consider protection for the whole house instead.
Pure sine wave is mostly needed for things like refrigerators with AC motors. For electronics like cameras, simulated sine wave should work just fine.
These NVRs run on simple Linux systems. Honestly, I don’t think the sine wave type matters. I use simulated sine wave UPS for my Windows PC without any issues.
Blake said:
These NVRs run on simple Linux systems. Honestly, I don’t think the sine wave type matters. I use simulated sine wave UPS for my Windows PC without any issues.
It’s not about the operating system. It’s about the power supply. These devices use 12V DC, so the regulator inside handles converting AC to DC. With proper filtering, it should work fine with simulated sine wave.