*** Official Ubiquiti Discussion Thread ***

[WJA96]

Finally got round to mounting my G4 Bullet on the front of the house earlier this week. Working well with good quality picture and Smart Detections are also quite cool (only had G3 Flexes thus far).

One issue which I was expecting is, because it's mounted high, the IR is fairly weak at night. Received the IR extender yesterday which I'll try to get fitted this weekend and see what difference it makes.

To be honest, UniFi cameras are a joke. Most £40 basic Dahua and Hikvision cameras have 30-60m IR projectors and having to pay extra for a IR extender on a £160 camera is just ludicrous.

 

[Etheco]

To be honest, UniFi cameras are a joke. Most £40 basic Dahua and Hikvision cameras have 30-60m IR projectors and having to pay extra for a IR extender on a £160 camera is just ludicrous.

Would you say even the basic UniFi cameras are over priced for what you get in quality ? I have considered getting a few cameras put up and like the idea of just using ethernet.

 

[WJA96]

Would you say even the basic UniFi cameras are over priced for what you get in quality ? I have considered getting a few cameras put up and like the idea of just using ethernet.

Heck yes. For the price of a fairly poor Unifi camera you can have something like a HikVision ColorVu or a Dahua TiOC. The 8MP TiOC lists at about £125+VAT and it's a full PoE IP camera that not only has full colour night vision but is a simple audible/visual alarm as well. For me, just based on night vision, I prefer the £110+VAT 5MP TiOC which can see out to 40m in the dark rather than the 20m of the 8MP version but in either case the build quality, features and image quality utterly destroy anything that UBNT sell in their Unifi camera line-up.

 

[Etheco]

Heck yes. For the price of a fairly poor Unifi camera you can have something like a HikVision ColorVu or a Dahua TiOC. The 8MP TiOC lists at about £125+VAT and it's a full PoE IP camera that not only has full colour night vision but is a simple audible/visual alarm as well. For me, just based on night vision, I prefer the £110+VAT 5MP TiOC which can see out to 40m in the dark rather than the 20m of the 8MP version but in either case the build quality, features and image quality utterly destroy anything that UBNT sell in their Unifi camera line-up.

Okay thank you, Will look them up.

 

[ChrisD.]

I'm moving house next week and I will be moving from FTTC to FTTP. Is it just a case of putting my zen username and password into my USG and then plugging that into the activated port on the ONT?

 

[VaderDSL]

I'm moving house next week and I will be moving from FTTC to FTTP. Is it just a case of putting my zen username and password into my USG and then plugging that into the activated port on the ONT?

Yep That's it.

 

[ChrisD.]

Yep That's it.

Brilliant, thanks. I'm trying to reduce the time of the 'planned' outage. The ONT is under the stairs in a cupboard and it will take me a while to run cables. Would a USG Pro and a US-16-XG be fine in a cupboard with the door closed?

 

[WJA96]

Brilliant, thanks. I'm trying to reduce the time of the 'planned' outage. The ONT is under the stairs in a cupboard and it will take me a while to run cables. Would a USG Pro and a US-16-XG be fine in a cupboard with the door closed?

Yes. They’re designed to be rack mounted in a cabinet with the front door shut. They’ll be fine.

 

[balanceballs]

I have finally bought a little rack but realised it's got no ventilation!!? I'm going to see if it's feasible to cut a large hole in the back without impacting the structure, or just leave the door off. I may just have to cut some holes in it though and try to rig a fan into it somehow but any thoughts on having a non-ventilated rack with the following in?

USW-8-150w (worries me the most as passively cooled)
USG
Cloudkey2
Patch panel

I may be replacing the latter two with a Dream Machine Pro though, that was why I bought the rack. Again, thoughts on that as an upgrade? It's part of my bigger plan to move to gigabit internet which is available quite soon in my area.

The other option is that I get rid of the Ubiquiti stuff altogether and perhaps just use some of their APs (with poe injectors or a different poe switch) and a small PC which can run pfsense as a router, have some network storage, plus run a few other small servers for me. I am finding it hard to locate decent used hardware at a reasonable price though to build my own server with.

 

[WJA96]

I have finally bought a little rack but realised it's got no ventilation!!? I'm going to see if it's feasible to cut a large hole in the back without impacting the structure, or just leave the door off. I may just have to cut some holes in it though and try to rig a fan into it somehow but any thoughts on having a non-ventilated rack with the following in?

USW-8-150w (worries me the most as passively cooled)
USG
Cloudkey2
Patch panel

I may be replacing the latter two with a Dream Machine Pro though, that was why I bought the rack. Again, thoughts on that as an upgrade? It's part of my bigger plan to move to gigabit internet which is available quite soon in my area.

The other option is that I get rid of the Ubiquiti stuff altogether and perhaps just use some of their APs (with poe injectors or a different poe switch) and a small PC which can run pfsense as a router, have some network storage, plus run a few other small servers for me. I am finding it hard to locate decent used hardware at a reasonable price though to build my own server with.

USG and US-8-150W are not designed to be rack mounted. USG-Pro (4P) is fine to rack mount.

 

[b0rn2sk8]

In terms of ventilation, I wouldn’t be too worried, the heat comes from how much power those devices are consuming, much of that switches true power consumption happens at the devices it’s powering.

It’s not going to be air tight so there will be natural convection.

 

[WJA96]

In terms of ventilation, I wouldn’t be too worried, the heat comes from how much power those devices are consuming, much of that switches true power consumption happens at the devices it’s powering.

It’s not going to be air tight so there will be natural convection.

Im assuming you’ve seen the thread on the UBNT forums where all the rack mounted US-8-150W switches die and the users moan because they abused a small, hot, box?

 

[balanceballs]

I think I'll be OK as the switch will just be sat on a vented shelf in the rack with nothing on top of it.

Think I'm gonna pull the trigger on the dream machine pro after doing a bit more research this evening. Look out for a usg and cloudkey gen2+ on ebay soon

Also found a removable panel on the rack so it's got a massive hole at the top now, I can rig a fan in there too but tbh it's in my garage which is colder than all other rooms anyway as there's no insulation, heating or sunlight. Will see how it goes once I get time to rig it all up

 

[TangoEchoAlpha]

I'm hoping someone more experienced with Ubiquiti kit than me can help clear up some confusion I have!

I currently run an EdgeRouter 6P. I upgraded the firmware today to the latest version on the UI website, 2.0.9-hotfix.2 and that seemed to go absolutely fine - I need a feature available in more recent firmware revisions.

However, when I SSH into the router, I'm starting to see the following message upon login:

Linux ubnt 4.9.79-UBNT #1 SMP Tue May 11 13:21:10 UTC 2021 mips64
Boot image can be upgraded to version [ e301_003_6be37 ].
Run "add system boot-image" to upgrade boot image.
XXXXXXX@ubnt:~$ show system image
The system currently has the following image(s) installed:

v2.0.9-hotfix.2.5402463.210511.1317 (running image) (default boot)
v2.0.1.5174690.190312.1614

The date and time was wrong as it hadn't done a NTP sync yet, now shows as correct.

I'm not sure why I would need to upgrade the boot image in this instance, show system image has the correct image as running/default?

Thanks in advance

 

[Dave85]

Normally your safe to update the boot image but you don't have to. if you look you find instances of people getting bricked devices although it's pretty rare. It usually just fixes issues that occur with the hardware config before the rest of the os has loaded but as with anything from UI I would suggest if it's working fine and the changelog doesn't show something critical to leave it. change log at the bottom. https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/360009932554-EdgeRouter-How-to-Update-the-Bootloader

 

[TangoEchoAlpha]

@Dave85 Thanks, I'll leave it be for the moment

 

[Erm yeah that’s hard to pick one]

Looks like my USG 3GP is in its way out. Th network would randomly freeze, lockup, crash. So
I grabbed something quick and got a HUAWEI AX3 quickly off that place named after a rainforest. I went for the quad core version.

Keeping it simple I ran the AX3 only for 48 hours. I’ve then added tonight

UAP-AC-LITE X2
US-8-150W
Raspberry Pi 4, 4GB as the controller.

Disabled the Wi-Fi on the AX3 so just using it for routing.

So far solid, nice to have Wi-Fi cover around home (wife and kids have stopped moaning now). The AX3 is pretty quick.

I have lowered the AP’s to low power and finding them a roaming a lot better and faster.

 

[mattyg]

Has anyone set up a Unifi AP in a commercial setting that uses Purple portal or another Gateway thingy to capture customer data/experience etc

I have added one of Purple's little add on boxes but the throughput seems really poor so I was looking at adding an AP. I have multiple unifi bits at home but I'm not really experienced in setting one up. If I buy Via a well known retailer they can set it up so its just plug and play but wont set it up for the Purple portal side

I've found these instructions but I've now idea what most of it means
https://support.purplewifi.net/support/solutions/articles/11000048773-ubiquiti-unifi.

I dont have a controller I've used said retailers Cloud controller offering

Any idea if I'll be able to sort this with helps from you guys. Or is it really straight forward once I get the bits together

 

[chroniclard]

Looking to boost my parents wifi coverage, wondering if a U6-LR would cover a large 5 bed house or if multiple of the smaller devices would be better.

Am I correct thinking I can disable the Sky router wifi and just use the LR ?

 

[the-evaluator]

It's impossible to answer that question with any certainty. It's very depenant on things such as the structure of the building, placement and config of the AP and the surrounding RF environment. So it's possible it will, but also possible it won't.

No reason why you can't disable wifi on the Sky router. I'd recommend you do that.