With the blustery winter weather comes the occasional power outage. Most of which are just a few seconds. I’m a well prepared techie, so I have 8 UPS Battery Back Ups in house to protect; my computer, another computer, database server, cordless phone, alarm clock, internet modem, router, wireless router, Tivo, etc. All very good, and it’s a nice feeling that my equipment is all protected against power failure…. Until the power actually goes out and the whole house starts beeping buzzing & alarming. Usually at night when I’m sleeping!

Why do I need to know the power is off? I don’t. Really, I’d rather stay sleeping unless it is an actual emergency. A power outage of less then a few minutes is certainly not an emergency around here, especially because I have all these UPSs. The biggest problem is the beeping!

Some UPS models can be adjusted in software to not beep, but that is less then reliable, and sometimes it needs to be reset after a power outage. When I tell something to not beep, I expect it to always not beep until I tell it to beep! Not all UPSs have this feature, and we have a variety of UPS units, made by different manufacturers.

Sufficiently annoyed, I set to remedy the situation by physically disconnecting the beepers in all 8 UPSs. Originally I was going to just clip the beeper wires to permanently disable them, but I thought that it would be even better if I could occasionally turn the beeper back on to hear what it had to say. Disabling the UPS beeper is fairly easy if you know what to look for.

After opening the UPS, look for a round thingy with a hole in it, usually about a half inch diameter to 1 inch diameter. That will be the beeper. Usually there is nothing else that could be mistaken for the beeper.

There are times when it might be useful to hear the little communication from the UPS, but so far I’m not impressed with the language. I especially don’t like this model of Belkin UPS because during a power outage long enough to use 80% of the battery, it completely shuts down power to the protected devices to save the battery. Lame! Wrong priority! Even worse, it won’t turn back on when power is restored until you push & hold the power button for 15 seconds. Really Lame! Oh, and even though it has a dedicated indicator light to communicate when it is time to replace the battery, that apparently doesn’t work. I didn’t know that it needed a new battery until the power blinked off for 15 seconds and this Belkin UPS died and wouldn’t turn back on. So if it is not even going to beep nicely when it needs something, I really don’t need to hear it beep to wake me up. That was the last straw.

What you want to do is unsolder the 2 legs of the beeper from the circuit board, then attach a pair of wires to a switch so you can reconnect the beeper on or off easily & positively. (See diagram). Mind the polarity of the beeper, usually it has a + at one leg, and a matching + on the board. Re-solder one leg back to the board, and run the wire from the other leg to the switch, and back to the board where that leg formerly connected to. With the switch open (off) the beeper isn’t connected to the board and therefore simply can not beep. HA!

The white junk on the side of the beeper is glue. I had to use a razor blade to carefully disconnect before de-soldering the beeper.

Here is the beeper reinstalled. Note I rotated the beeper slightly so there would be a little more room underneath for the wire, and to give physical space to prevent any unintended connections.

Run the wires to the switch. My that’s a big yellow transformer!

And mount the switch so you can get to it easily. I drilled an oval hole (2 holes next to each other) in the plastic or metal housing and screwed the switch in place. In choosing the location for the switch I considered the orientation of how that particular UPS usually sits where it lives. I want to easily see the switch too.

Hooray! Now I won’t be unnecessarily alarmed!

Apparently I’m not the only person bothered by unnecessary UPS beeping!

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