Michael York

This add-in for the great Windows Home Server has finally been released the general public in beta status after months of internal testing in a Private Beta! Developed by Alexander Kent, GridJunction 1.2.0 Beta manages your supported Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS) via a USB connection to your home server and allows you to set a certain battery capacity to safely shut down your server at in an attempt to avoid any data loss. And it works. Flawlessly.

Installation:

As with any Windows Home Server add-in, you must copy the “.msi” installer into the Add-Ins folder of the Software share. Following this, you will need to log-in to the WHS Console, click on Settings, then Add-Ins, then Available, and click Install next to GridJunction.

The installation only takes a few seconds, and will prompt you to restart the Console after it is completed. Next, you’ll log back in to the Console:

Once the console has loaded, you’ll likely notice that GridJunction doesn’t take up valuable “tab space” along the top horizontal bar because simply, it doesn’t need to.

Instead, you’ll find GridJunction under Settings. You will now notice that the add-in has moved to “Installed”.

Usage:

The add-in has a clean interface and lays out everything you need to know about the status of your UPS system. GridJunction consists of just four tabs: Events, Actions, Settings, and About.

In the case of a blackout or power loss, GridJunction will display real-time events with the status of your battery…

The “Actions” tab allows you set a specific percentage of battery level to safely shut down the server at. This is the most critical feature of the add-in. The developer of the add-in, however, plans to add more functionality by allowing you to choose to run an executable at a certain point while the battery is discharging.

Finally, the “Settings” tab has a couple of options: one to automatically notify you when there is an update available for GridJunction, and another to activate a brownout filter. For those unfamiliar with brownouts, they are short drops in voltage, but do not result in complete loss of power. By activating this setting, it will delay power alerts for ten seconds to give the system a chance to recognize that it was a “false-positive”.

GridJunction 1.2.0 Beta is available for download at GridJunction.com.

GridJunction 1.2.0 Beta Changelog

GridJunction 1.2.0 Beta List of Known Supported UPS Systems

GridJunction 1.2.0 Beta List of Known Unsupported UPS Systems

The developer plans for another small release later this week to address some minor issues.