"Agile Otter" Tim Ottinger

4 Jan, 13 tweets, 2 min read

A little lesson on testing.

I got my new UPS today. I intend for it to supply my internet gear (modem, router, mesh, storage).

I plugged it into the wall, plugged everything in.

Note: this could have been planned better - some of my cables are too short so I need a higher shelf for the unit, but we worked through that.

Everything is working okay... or so it seems.

Plugging every item in one at a time helped me ensure I have all the right cords to the right things. This is rather like industriallogic.com/blog/test-driv…

All is good.

I did the self-test, and it passed. Grand.

Next morning, I pull the plug and all the devices go dark. What? Huh? How could that be?

Spin it around -- in my hurry and poor lighting I didn't plug devices into battery ports but just the surge protectors.

Sigh. Relocate the plugs. Try again.

Pull the plug - all the devices go dark including the UPS (again).

WHAT?

Check the manual - I plugged the UPS in, and it charged its battery and passed power through to the outlets, but I never TURNED IT ON.

There's a button on the front. You have to turn it on.

When you do, an "online" indicator lights. Sheesh.

When I first put the UPS in, I didn't realize that some family members were streaming video. I interrupted their streams. I thought I'd let them know, but maybe they didn't really hear me or understand that I meant "right now."

So I made the new tests safe-to-fail: nobody on!

Okay, devices on, no people using them, all clear.
UPS online. Self-test passes. Battery is fully charged (or close enough I can't tell).
Pull the plug.
BEEP! "On battery power" "180 Minutes Remaining"
No devices lose connection to the internet.
All is well.

Plug it all back in, everything is fine.

Had I not tested, I would have had a rather false sense of security. It was passing a happy-path tests (plugged in, AC to house is good, devices on) but I wasn't plugged into the right ports and the device wasn't even actually ON.

A bit of testing (preferably safe testing) and now I have earned confidence in the system. I don't know that I'll really get 180 minutes of power, but that's more than I typically need anyway. If our neighborhood power goes out (rare occasion), it's rarely for an hour.

But there I had to relearn a stepwise approach, safe testing, and negative-case tests with debugging.

I'm now more prepared for disaster, but wiser about careful assembly and reading instructions - it would have saved time for me to know what I'm doing and do it carefully.

My rush job got a desired immediate effect (the network was up) but if I'd stopped there I would not have achieved my real goal - my $200 UPS was just acting like a $15.00 power strip.

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"Agile Otter" Tim Ottinger

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