My home server is powered with a UPS, so it can handle power outages gracefully (live through short ones, or shutdown gracefully if the outage persists) – which is nice and dandy.

The UPS (an Advice PRV 850) has four built-in outlets, that can drive up to four PCs and monitors. But the sockets are for “kettle cords”, which is a shame if I want to power other devices (e.g., router, modem) using the UPS…

So what can one do..? Well – why not hack standard outlets into the “kettle cord” socket? 🙂

WARNING: This posts describes the manipulation of electrical components in ways that were not intended in their original design, including messing with the internals of power cables and sockets, that later connect to the general electrical network. Such manipulation may expose you to risks of electrocuting, possibly inflicting damage to you, to other electrical devices (possibly in other houses in your area!), or to the electrical infrastructure itself! If you don’t know what you’re doing – please don’t do what I am going to describe in this post.

Hack Details

In a nut-shell, this hack is pretty simple and straight forward:

1. Prepare the kettle cord:
   1. Cut off the female plug from the kettle cord.

   2. Remove some of the external insulator to get to the internal wires.

   3. Expose the internal wires a little bit.
      

      

      Exposing the wires of the power cable

      

      Removing the external insulation of the power cable

      

      The exposed power cable wires

      
      

2. Open up the standard outlets:

   

   Open outlets

   

   Outlets zoom in

   
   

3. Remove the metal pins, and insert the exposed wires of the cord instead of the pins:

   

   Outlets front with inserted exposed cable wires

   

   Inserting the exposed cable wires to the outlets

   
   
   1. Do not mistake the color coding! (or you WILL short circuit your house)
   • Brown is phase, blue is neutral, and yellow/green is ground.
   • When looking from the front side: phase is the upper right, neutral upper left, and ground at the bottom.
   • This is true in Israel standard cords and sockets.
   • Do the research for your region!
4. Solder the wires securely to the respective pads:

   

   Soldering the exposed cable to the outlets

   
   
5. For added safety – cover the soldering with hot glue (in case a high current melts the soldering, the hot glue can hold the wire in place. the sockets may stop working, but at least it will not short circuit!):
   

   

   Hot gluing the exposed cable wires inside the outlets

   

   Hacked outlets internals covered with hot glue

   
   
6. Close the sockets and test!
   

   

   Testing the hacked power cable and outlets

   
   

Conclusion

Et voilà! Now I can also plug my router and modem to my UPS! Hurray!