Certain MGE UPS models are not properly recognised

I've been succesfully using apcupsd with an MGE/Eaton Ellipse ASR 1000 and Ellipse ECO models on older, non-Ubuntu based systems. Now I'm trying to use them on Ubuntu 16.04 LTS Server. It seems that these models are not properly recognised and only partial status values are available, making them largely useless on Ubuntu.

See info below for one of the problematic devices:

# dmesg | grep 'usb 1-1.6'
[14570.971851] usb 1-1.6: new low-speed USB device number 8 using ehci-pci
[14572.927443] usb 1-1.6: New USB device found, idVendor=0463, idProduct=ffff
[14572.927449] usb 1-1.6: New USB device strings: Mfr=1, Product=2, SerialNumber=4
[14572.927452] usb 1-1.6: Product: Ellipse ECO
[14572.927454] usb 1-1.6: Manufacturer: EATON
[14572.927456] usb 1-1.6: SerialNumber: 000000000

# apcaccess
APC : 001,028,0645
DATE : 2017-05-04 15:42:17 +0200
HOSTNAME : x
VERSION : 3.14.12 (29 March 2014) debian
UPSNAME : x
CABLE : USB Cable
DRIVER : USB UPS Driver
UPSMODE : Stand Alone
STARTTIME: 2017-05-04 15:42:15 +0200
MODEL :
STATUS : ONLINE
LOADPCT : 0.0 Percent
BCHARGE : 0.0 Percent
TIMELEFT : 0.0 Minutes
MBATTCHG : 40 Percent
MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes
MAXTIME : 900 Seconds
OUTPUTV : 0.0 Volts
DWAKE : 0 Seconds
LOTRANS : 0.0 Volts
HITRANS : 0.0 Volts
ALARMDEL : 30 Seconds
NUMXFERS : 0
TONBATT : 0 Seconds
CUMONBATT: 0 Seconds
XOFFBATT : N/A
STATFLAG : 0x05000008
SERIALNO :
END APC : 2017-05-04 15:42:18 +0200

Missing percentage values indicate something is broken in the protocol handling for these devices. Like this, most value based power actions are unavailable.

Proper output looks like this on a Proxmox PVE 3.4 system (kernel is RH 2.6.32 based):

# apcaccess
APC : 001,028,0707
DATE : 2017-05-04 14:33:41 +0200
HOSTNAME : pve3test
VERSION : 3.14.10 (13 September 2011) debian
UPSNAME : pve3test
CABLE : USB Cable
DRIVER : USB UPS Driver
UPSMODE : Stand Alone
STARTTIME: 2017-05-04 14:33:37 +0200
MODEL : Ellipse ECO
STATUS : ONLINE
LOADPCT : 10.0 Percent Load Capacity
BCHARGE : 087.0 Percent
TIMELEFT : 38.4 Minutes
MBATTCHG : 40 Percent
MINTIMEL : 3 Minutes
MAXTIME : 0 Seconds
OUTPUTV : 230.0 Volts
DWAKE : -01 Seconds
LOTRANS : 184.0 Volts
HITRANS : 264.0 Volts
ALARMDEL : 30 seconds
NUMXFERS : 0
TONBATT : 0 seconds
CUMONBATT: 0 seconds
XOFFBATT : N/A
STATFLAG : 0x07000008 Status Flag
SERIALNO : 000000000
END APC : 2017-05-04 14:33:48 +0200