In reply to a post by max360:

@ baby_frogmella The reason I choose AC-LR was due to its range and it�s positioned in the centre of the house, it covers all 3 floors, expect the very end of my kitchen due to a structural wall.
Another AC-LR would cover the entire house. Can I mix/match AP�s?

Yes you can mix & match APs but considering you'll have FTTP in the future, you should have gone for the higher spec HD AP - it has better wifi radios (higher throughput & better range) than the AC-LR.

Nice setups everyone. im in the process of building out my home network and working towards a 10g network for no other reason than because i can

This is my current setup

1x Unifi SW-8-POE 150w
1x Unifi SW-8-POE 60w
1x Unifi USG-4P-Pro
2x Unifi AP-NanoHD
1x Unifi AP-XG
1x CloudKey (i want to upgrade to a gen2 soon)
1x Invoxia Voice Bridge
1x Powerwalker 1200W 2200VA UPS

a selection of unmanaged gigabit switches as well to make up the missing ports until i can get a SW-16-XG and SW-48-POE 500w

And to much connected smart home stuff to list until i get more time.

Edited by Robin1989 (Sat 01-Dec-18 17:29:36)

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

you should have gone for the higher spec HD AP - it has better wifi radios (higher throughput & better range) than the AC-LR.

Better throughput, yes if the client supports more than 2x2 MIMO or using lots of clients simultaneously.

As for range, the UAP-AC-LR has antenna gains of 2.4 GHz: 3 dBi, 5 GHz: 3 dBi and the UAP-nanoHD 2.4GHz: 2.8 dBi 5 GHz: 3 dBi

In other words, the antenna gain is less in 2.4GHz on the UAP-nano-HD. I suspect that the range won't be any better. Yes, it has a theoretically higher transmit power, but that can't be legally used in the UK anyway and, besides, it doesn't help picking up weaker signals from distant clients. That's what you need better antenna gain for and why the UAP-AC-LR is called 'Long Range'.

I haven't actually played with a UAP-nanoHD but if I do, I'll report back. My standard survey access point is a UAP-AC-LR so I'd be able to do a direct A/B comparison.

I have two more potential projects in the pipeline at the moment and the UAP-nanoHD may be the right choice for one of them.

In reply to a post by max360:

@ caffn8me
Great job, very neat setup there.
What�s UPS would you recommend for my setup please?

Thank you I like to make things neat and tidy because it makes ongoing maintenance much easier.

I really rate the APC Smart-UPS 750VA - either the LCD version (as seen) or the older model. I use several of each in different locations - including at home. They're pretty bomb proof. I've had older lower range APC models (Back-UPS) die, and not because of battery failure. I do have one in the rack pictured - primarily because I had it spare and brand new and, secondly, because the space isn't wide enough to fit a third Smart-UPS.

One site has 2 x Back-UPS Pro 900 and these have proved to be reliable with a slightly longer runtime than the equivalent Smart-UPS 750. This model was chosen because the place it was to be installed wasn't quite wide enough to fit the Smart-UPS 750. These don't have hot swappable batteries though.

Internet and wifi continue to work for about an hour and a quarter after power is cut. This happened last time I was there when the smart meter was being replaced and the chap from EDF couldn't get the new one to communicate with base.

The APC Smart-UPS 750VA models (and other VA ratings in that range) allow hot-swapping of the batteries which can be a really useful feature. I usually disassemble the battery pack when it dies and replace the batteries with Yuasa ones. They last longer than the APC supplied batteries.

I use apcupsd on the Raspberry Pi to monitor the UPS status and alert when the mains power status changes or the battery needs changing. I also get alerts of self tests on a weekly basis.

Does this help?

Edited by caffn8me (Sat 01-Dec-18 22:54:43)

That�s very helpful. Many thanks, much appreciated.

In reply to a post by Robin1989:

Nice setups everyone. im in the process of building out my home network and working towards a 10g network for no other reason than because i can

And why not, indeed?

Yours looks like a very nice setup. I'll soon be able to get 10Gbps FTTP at home, although that's going to have to wait for a while as it's £600 per month and I have more pressing things I need to spend money on at the moment.

I only have one site with a CloudKey and it's now telling me there's no SD card fitted. It started doing this after the last firmware upgrade. This is likely to be a corruption issue and I won't know until I get physical access again.

I don't think I'm going to bother with the CloudKey in the future, certainly not the first generation. I often have a Raspberry Pi onsite anyway for other functions and it can easily be used as a Unifi controller. To address the SD card corruption issue I've started using ATP aMLC and Transcend SuperMLC industrial SD cards. They're very much more expensive but are less prone to corruption. I'm also using compact USB flash drives in a RAID array for log storage (/dev/md0 below);

robusta:~ $ df -k
Filesystem     1K-blocks    Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/root        7680696 4523344   2812704  62% /
devtmpfs          470116       0    470116   0% /dev
tmpfs             474724     128    474596   1% /dev/shm
tmpfs             474724   12324    462400   3% /run
tmpfs               5120       4      5116   1% /run/lock
tmpfs             474724       0    474724   0% /sys/fs/cgroup
/dev/mmcblk0p1     43436   22547     20890  52% /boot
/dev/md0        29412348 2541632  25353612  10% /var/log
tmpfs              94944       0     94944   0% /run/user/1000

This makes it quite economical, resilient and still compact.

The Voice Bridge works well on the two sites I've set one up but home on the back burner I'm building my own VoIP system with Asterisk running on a Raspberry Pi and a dedicated FXS/FXO gateway. This is for a project which will happen when fast acceptable internet arrives, but it's a late C17 manor in a rural notspot (currently it has flaky ADSL at about 3Mbps) and it's outside the scope of the ongoing county-wide broadband access project at the moment. I do have a solution which involves a point-to-point link (probably Unifi NanoBeam over 4km) but that means getting friendly with someone in the next county where there is good FTTC so they can host a connection and end link.

The walls between adjacent rooms are four feet thick in places and made of granite so wifi and DECT phones are useless. I can get wifi around through the roof spaces with access points above the celing in each 'compartment' and then I can use wifi VoIP phones to access the landline.

I'm currently running:

Virgin Media SH3.0 in modem mode, 350/20
1x USG 3P
Various Unifi Switches
2x UAP-AC-LR
2x UAP-AC-Pro
Lots of Unifi Cameras
Server (i7 8700, 32GB RAM, 62TB of HDDs, running Unraid with Plex, Ombi, Radarr, Sonarr, etc)

https://imgur.com/TIengJF

In reply to a post by caffn8me:

The APC Smart-UPS 750VA models (and other VA ratings in that range) allow hot-swapping of the batteries which can be a really useful feature. I usually disassemble the battery pack when it dies and replace the batteries with Yuasa ones. They last longer than the APC supplied batteries.

How long do the Yusa batteries last for? - i.e. how often do you have to replace them?

I'll have to look when I get back home. I'm sure I've got some Yuasa ones over four years old. The APC supplied batteries are a generic Chinese brand and I have had them die in about 3-4 years [piccy].

Nice

This is turning into a bit of a Unifi themed thread but folks shouldn't feel they can't post with other brands of equipment.