Uninteruptible Power Supply

I am new here. I am in an area that is prone to power outages, while I have a battery, I have to get up and hook it up to continue sleeping. Does anyone have experience with using an uninterruptible power supply like those used on computers? If so what do you use, and how well does it work? Thanks in advance!

I have mine plugged into a UPS with battery backup that gives me about 25 minutes of power and beeps to wake me up. It is a Belkin unit that I bought off Amazon. When the power goes off, it give me time to wake up, relax and continue to breathe through my mask in hopes the power goes back on momentarily (as usual), but if it is off longer, it allows me to shut things down properly.

Hi Jack,

That is a great question you brought up! I hope someone will have a good answer, as I too really need to find a way to use my Cpap when we lose power.
Since I had strep throat a few months ago, which was kinda a blessing, though not at the time, it made me wear my cpap machine to be able to breathe, because my air way of so swollen. Since then I have used it every night. I find that I need to use the Cpap now or otherwise I wake up gasping for breathe.
These last few days have been a nightmare. I was without power from Sunday, til today about 2 hours ago. I had no Cpap, and haven't slept because of it. So, I am now trying to find some way of running it, incase the power goes out again.
I was wondering how much time do you usually get out of a UPS, and any tips in things that I should look for, or brands that you think are well made, and function well.

Thanks,

Mike

Hi Jack,
IIRC somebody put together a link set on that topic. But John posted this and maybe it will help...
viewtopic.php?t=49115
Myself, I use an APC backup. Its only good for half an hour but it will beeeeeeeeepppppp! when it goes on battery, waking me up so I can try sleeping upright in a chair with my pulse oximeter to wake me if my SPO2 goes below 88%. When I am rich, I will get one of those little Honda e series generators. They are super quiet and will run 8 hours on half a gallon of gasoline.

A UPS for a conventional computer is a battery and inverter, charged by AC and switching over when AC quits.
So it is hypothetically a nice automatic switchover system.
But check that the CPAP machine can tolerate the quality of the UPS invertor output. Some circuits in appliances in general cannot.
But some CPAP units will operate on battery directly, with a separate cable. I do not know about connecting both power sources.

Your 420G will run on 12volts and takes relatively little current, so you are in luck. You could probably use a $50 jump start battery pack as a cheap uninterruptible power supply--but, you'd have to proceed cautiously at your own risk and do a bit of testing, to find one that is suitable. That's what I did several years back with a 420E. I bought a jump start battery pack (AGM battery) which had a 12 v 1 amp charger--essentially enough to run the CPAP. (The first one I tried worked fine for this, but that was just luck--proceed cautiously.) I plugged the CPAP into the 12v outlet (cigarette lighter stype) on the battery pack (You will need a suitable cable which you can buy from places like Cpap.com, or just from Radio Shack (take your CPAP along, so they can give you the right tip), which was plugged into 110v AC. Normally, the charger output kept the CPAP going. If electricity went out, the battery would take over. This did not work for the humidifier, though, which was on a separate circuit and woud just stop working when AC went off.

These days, unfortunately, I am using a Remstar Bipap AutoSV, which does not have a 12 voit input, and which also takes a lot more juice... I still use that battery pack, though, as a jump starter for my car. It's still going strong, and I've used it to jump start several cars, including my own.

My Intellipap will run directly off 12v. The humidifier will be passive only. Delvillbis says that the Intellipap will use approx 2.5 amps or 30 watts @ 12v. I just purchased a portable jumpstart at Habor Freight for $39.99 w/coupon.http://www.harborfreight.com/automotive ... 38391.html According to the documentation I should be able to run my Intellipap for approx 7 hrs. Added bonus the 12v charge cord for the jumpstart also fits the Intellipap so I did not need to buy the 12v cable. The jumpstart can stay plugged in at all times and the Intellipap can have both the 110v and 12v connected at the same time. So if 110v fails, it will automatically switch to 12v. I plan to test tonight to see how long I get out of the battery.....




Edited to fix typo

jmcanzo wrote:Delvillbis says that the Intellipap will use approx 2.5 watts or 30 amps @ 12v.

That is a tpyo right? 30A? My BiPap doesn't draw that much.

GumbyCT wrote:

jmcanzo wrote:Delvillbis says that the Intellipap will use approx 2.5 watts or 30 amps @ 12v.

That is a tpyo right? 30A? My BiPap doesn't draw that much.

OPPS! Fixed.. got my amps and watts mixed up.. LOL

I use a 120Amphour Marine deep discharge battery, with a Battery-Tender Plus float charger connected all the time. I used it with my Mseries cpap brick with humidifier for over a year as my main power with no problems. Now it is plugged into My Intellipap which auto switches between the AC mains and the battery. As we get power outages here rather frequently a battery system for me is a must.

physicsbob wrote:I use a 120Amphour Marine deep discharge battery, with a Battery-Tender Plus float charger connected all the time. I used it with my Mseries cpap brick with humidifier for over a year as my main power with no problems. Now it is plugged into My Intellipap which auto switches between the AC mains and the battery. As we get power outages here rather frequently a battery system for me is a must.

I'm a little afraid of "smart" chargers like the Battery Tender models. They are designed to charge batteries. They are not necessarily designed to power devices hooked to the battery while being charged. Some of the Battery Tender models do a brief part of their charge cycle up to 15.5 V for a short period of time in some cases. Is your "12VDC" device going to put up with this? Some other "smart" battery chargers have a "desulfation" function designed to break up sulfate crystals that can develop in lead acid batteries. This involves sending a 3.8 MHz AC current on top of the 13V DC charging voltage. Your DC powered device may not like this.

If your battery charger can be trusted not to put out too high a voltage, spikes, AC or RF noise, or other voltage problems, this is an excellent way to power your CPAP machine. I just don't know how to evaluate the risks for every charger. I can't give you my professional opinion it is safe.

In particular, just because someone else has done it and gotten away with it, doesn't mean you will. If you hook up the charger and measure the voltage, that doesn't mean the smart charger won't do something different under other conditions. Just because it doesn't eat your CPAP machine right away doesn't mean it won't do so later.

Yes, it will probably work just fine, but you can't count on it.

The Battery-Tender puts out 15.5 constant voltage in the top off charge mode when the battery reaches 80% charge. If the current draw is more than 0.1 amp it will switch to the battery voltage, with constant current. So when the cpap is turned on in this mode the charger switches to the constant current mode. If the charger is in float mode 13.0 V, it will stay in that mode if the cpap is turned on.
so the charging/ battery/ cpap operation is pretty automatic.

archangle wrote: I can't give you my professional opinion it is safe.

And we don't know what your professional credentials are.

archangle wrote:just because someone else has done it and gotten away with it, doesn't mean you will.

I do it, he does it. This isn't theory, this is life, REAL LIFE.

physicsbob wrote:The Battery-Tender puts out 15.5 constant voltage in the top off charge mode when the battery reaches 80% charge. If the current draw is more than 0.1 amp it will switch to the battery voltage, with constant current. So when the cpap is turned on in this mode the charger switches to the constant current mode. If the charger is in float mode 13.0 V, it will stay in that mode if the cpap is turned on.
so the charging/ battery/ cpap operation is pretty automatic.

You're assuming 15.5 volts won't damage the CPAP machine if it's not blowing. Even when the blower isn't running, the processor and a lot of other circuitry in the CPAP is still energized.

GumbyCT wrote:

archangle wrote:just because someone else has done it and gotten away with it, doesn't mean you will.

I do it, he does it. This isn't theory, this is life, REAL LIFE.

So is the guy who drinks a six pack and drives home every night and hasn't gotten into an accident yet. REAL LIFE experience. Drinking and driving is harmless.