This is a useful utility, and the author’s reasons are good: APC software doesn’t give full control even for beeps, much less for network notifications (tho I don’t use these). Don’t expect AppleScript or Automator would expand it.

More usefully, I’ll report:

* the utility works fine on my “ICBM” (heh), a late ‘09 iMac. I finally got a UPS just for it, APC’s BE750G and was annoyed by APC’s limited controls, tho happy that OSX itself does the basic controls nicely (aside: regret that I read the macintouch writer Robert Mohn’s recommendation for iDowell’s iBox and iPack UPS's only later, tho they cost at least twice as much: macintouch.com/reviews/idowell )

* the installer for apcusd is simple, but doesn’t warn that a reboot will be required to complete the install. It does open TextEdit to display two windows, one with the apcupsd.conf file, the other with a notice that you have to edit this configuration file for your specific UPS and should do this before agreeing to the installer's request to reboot. You might be able to skip this step but should read through the config file now to ensure its default settings match your situation. And you’ll need to later edit this .conf file if you want to add network reporting, which can’t be set up using only the simple CLI menu.

* This config file is at /private/etc/apcupsd/apcupsd.conf. But its permissions are read-only so you can't save changes using TextEdit, which doesn't allow superuser override. Solution: use the Terminal (which you'll have to use anyway for their CLI menu). Navigate to the directory and sudo-launch your favorite CLI text editor (vim, pico, etc).

Having a little Unix knowledge, I lived dangerously and edited various parameters as suggested by their comments. Recall that lines prefaced by # are comments, often useful example settings; but for functional parameter specifications you must remove the #.

* After rebooting, the CLI menu allows for the following choices:
1) Test kill UPS power
2) Perform self-test
3) Read last self-test result
4) View/Change battery date
5) View manufacturing date
6) View/Change alarm behavior
7) View/Change sensitivity
8) View/Change low transfer voltage
9) View/Change high transfer voltage
10) Perform battery calibration
11) Test alarm
12) View/Change self-test interval
Q) Quit

I’ve not yet tried #1 or #10, but the others work as expected.