I have a handful of unused Unifi injectors, both their older 24V passive ones and their newer 802.3at ones. I'm starting to use the 802.3at ones for POE doorbells that aren't (yet) connected to any kind of switch, just to work as dumb doorbells until tenants move in and install their networks.
Name brand access points that don't use a controller
- Thread starter Lord Evermore
- Start date
Well... Whoopty-do for you, I guess? How does a network doorbell work without a network, even if it has power? I didn't think they had actual bells connected or internal.
Wireless chime? Not everything needs Ethernet to function, plenty work well standalone but offer app features when you connect it to wifi or wired network.
I prefer ZigBee over wifi IoT for that reason.
@Paladin Yes, I can confirm this with Ring Wired Doorbell Pro units. They are hard wired to the low voltage electric that would normally go to the previously existing doorbell button, and inside, that wiring would route back to the transformer that is wired in somewhere (often inside the actual bell that would be in the house... that goes "DING!"). Technically, if you don't connect it to wifi, it still functions as a normal (yet painfully overpriced) doorbell. I wired up a few of those for customers many years back and as far as I'm aware- they are still working.
But @stevenkan specified these are PoE-powered doorbells just waiting to be connected to a switch. Not low voltage doorbells on the existing doorbell power. I guess there's no reason that it couldn't also include a chime like the Ring, and I suppose the physical bell could be considered a backup in case network connectivity is lost. (Although it doesn't seem like it would be very effective since the thing generating the actual sound would be outside, not inside like a normal doorbell or even a standalone wireless chime set.)
All my smart stuff work too without network or internet, over their own little non IP wireless protocol. PoE is often enough just power, like for a wireless camera. I assume the installer know what they are doing and it works well locally. It can be 433/800/900 Mhz or non wifi 2.4 Ghz to the chime.
Optionally, connect to the internet to get the ding dong and video on your phone.
Yes, this is pretty edge use case. The existing building had no wiring for a doorbell, because these are 1- and 2-bedroom units, I suppose they thought any resident could just hear someone hammering on the door.
Since I'm going a significant refurb anyway, I figured I'd run Ethernet to the where a doorbell would normally go, and install a POE doorbell camera, as a feature-to-be-activated-later. But I don't want to manage that, and the tenant hasn't even moved in, so there's no ISP or network equipment. There's just Ethernet, a patch panel, and an AC outlet.
So connected the POE doorbell to a POE injector, so it will have power and talk over 433 MHz RF to the remote chime unit that plugs into an AC outlet.
I confirmed that the chime will go DING even if the doorbell has never been configured, so long as both sides have power.
When the tenant moves in, they can take control of it by connecting it to a network and setting it up in the app.
Just to sorta get this back on-topic, I also ran Ethernet to a hole in the living-room ceiling, in case they want to properly mount an access point that is less than $50 and doesn't require a controller
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I would fucking love that. A centrally located ceiling mounted AP means perfect wifi with no furniture or meatbags in the way for all but the largest appartments.
Just to follow up, I ended up ordering a couple of these for my own curiosity and potential use at work or maybe at home. Not sure yet where I will use them. The ones I got were not part of the ones with bad firmware listed above. I would guess that by now, all of those affected were already replaced or trashed.
It took me a couple of hours to figure out the upgrade procedure because there is a bit of a trick. If they come with the lightweight AP firmware installed (which is most likely), you need to make sure they are running a sort of recent but not too recent firmware release. I had to fiddle a bit because the old, old firmware has a bug that prevents the Mobility Express image from installing properly because it makes it seem there is not enough space on the flash storage for it. If you go too new on the lightweight firmware, they seem to have actually removed the option to upgrade to Mobility Express... even though they still provide the software and updates. No idea why.
Anyway, I found that updating to version ap3g3-k9w8-tar.153-3.JPK.tar (from 2020) allows the Mobility Express install and you can go straight to the latest release for this AP, 8.10.190.0. I did that process on both access points. Then I configured the first one as the Mobility Express manager, and then booted the second one and it automatically joined the first one. Configuring an SSID and other settings across the 2 of them was very simple from there. The firmware upgrade process was the only hassle really.
For anyone who has worked with Cisco equipment to a decent degree, these should be a cheap and viable choice for a home wifi upgrade to get a lot more coverage area and good performance. For anyone hoping for a level of integration of ease of setup that you might get from a more consumer oriented option, it will probably pretty obtuse and challenging but still very satisfying if you figure it out.
Oh, goodness. I didn't leave it like that:And they probably will want to do that, if only to cover the hole in their living room ceiling
I ordered one from eBay, too. Should be here tomorrow. Also ordered a Tenda injector and compatible AP mounting bracket from Amazon. I love wasting free rush shipping with Prime. The injector was delivered for morning overnight (though it didn't get here until noon, but it was raining heavily) even though I had nothing to use it on, and the bracket along with some cat treats was regular overnight. If they're going to charge so much for Prime when all I want is cheap and fast shipping, I'm going to make the best use of it I can. And I'm not even paying, since I went onto another free trial and then they extended it for another month.
Damn Cisco. Create an account to download the firmware and it's instantly put on "compliance hold" so I can't download anything for who knows how long.
AAAAAAaaaand of course there's no way to change the firmware (or log into the device at all) without a console connection (they seem to have done away with the "mode button" automatic flashing), and despite having two Cisco console cables, I've somehow ended up with no USB to serial adapter on-hand and no computers with a serial port naturally. Should be able to get one tomorrow morning, just frustrating to have to wait even longer.
AAAAAAaaaand of course there's no way to change the firmware (or log into the device at all) without a console connection (they seem to have done away with the "mode button" automatic flashing), and despite having two Cisco console cables, I've somehow ended up with no USB to serial adapter on-hand and no computers with a serial port naturally. Should be able to get one tomorrow morning, just frustrating to have to wait even longer.
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All of my residential APs for the last 20 years have been ceiling mounted. I did the same for my parents.
It's a rare landlord that takes anything like that into consideration. And most would crank up the rent for it because it's an "amenity". Totally justifies an extra $100 a month for eternity.
I even ran Ethernet in the houses that I rented, for access points, cameras, my home office setup, etc.
I'm one of those weirdos that just likes to wire up anything that doesn't move.
It's worth noting that a landlord can only increase the rent for an amenity if the market will bear it. (Or they need to justify the change to a regulator.) If there are more units seeking tenants than tenants motivated to move, the price will reflect that instead.
For example, I went to my doctor's office yesterday:
This bugged me the whole time I was there.
I used to service the equipment at a client office that for some stupid g-d reason, insisted NOTHING be ceiling mounted other than air ducts and lighting... so every (and I mean every) one of their almost 50 access points throughout the company location, was either on the floor or on a desktop/countertop like this. Each unit had a separate nearby power insertion unit (passive POE) even though the rack of switches were almost entirely POE supportive switching gear. To clarify; they owned the location, they did not lease.
To head off logical lines of thought readers may be having: we were not the original installers of said wireless network, we did bring up how this is very much less than optimal for multiple reasons, and because of a sleazy sales/marketing guy who left after the deal, got stuck in the written contract having to support the existing wireless in the configuration it was in for 2 years. We counted down the day the contract ended and promptly dropped them. Same customer/company took issue with our company's stern stance of NOT loading computers, laser printers, passive POE adapters, and what-not on the same power strips/UPS units because we tired of the calls of equipment failure due to surges, brown-outs, and drops. "Power is power, right?!".
Things tend to be designed with one, maybe two applications in mind (ceiling, wall, no obstruction, industrial, specific range, damp environment, etc). Forcing into something outside that design will almost immediately pop up and remind you why it wasn't designed for that.
To be fair to whoever did that (having been a third-party IT provider, and knowing nothing about that office), sometimes clients don't want to pay for the work to get things installed properly, and the cost can be significant depending on the design of the building. If there's no easy access to space above the ceiling, like solid drywall, paying someone to fish cable can be several hours of labor cost, especially if the network closet is back in a far corner. On the other hand, a lot of medical offices are new construction with drop ceilings and easily-accessed wall spaces, so the work would be cheap, but the management might be cheaper. More than once, just finding a convenient corner or a shelf was the best we could do. That counter does look like about the worst placement possible, though, like they suddenly had the idea to place an AP and just looked for the nearest jack.
I got the 3802i a few days ago and got the latest software from Cisco, and the serial adapter at Office Depot. (I just went to pick it up in-store, and asked a cashier which aisle it was on. Saw it was nearly double the price shown online. So I sat in a chair and ordered it online, and watched her go pull it for me since OD has 20-minute pickup, and even asked if that was what she was doing as she walked past with the handheld scanner. She acknowledged the stupidity of the pricing. Don't know how OD can make money by charging less to have employees do more work.)
I could post a long review but the short version is that after finally getting it configured, performance is significantly better than my Asus router or Arris cable gateway, even at the same link rate of 866Mbps, the highest my laptop's adapter can go. I spent a significant amount of time troubleshooting a sudden drop in performance, and finally realized it was after enabling WPA3. I went from 70MBytes/s transfer rates (from/to my wired desktop) to 1MBps, but I'd changed other things at the same time and it didn't occur to me that WPA3 could be such a heavy load as to cause that. I don't know if it's because of the laptop or the AP being unable to keep up. In Mobility Express mode the AP is running both controller software and the AP's own functionality, so perhaps the CPU just can't keep up in that mode, but that would make me think the CPU is already heavily loaded in standard operation. And I can't see the laptop not being able to keep up with it. But, since the laptop would be the only device I have supporting WPA3, it's not that big a deal for network security since WPA2 still has to be enabled.
Also, the web interface of the Mobility Express controller is kind of limited, not allowing a lot of the advanced configuration that is available in the hardware Cisco controller web interface, but it is all available via command line. But I can use the web interface to DOS the neighbors by "containing" their "rogue" devices!
I could post a long review but the short version is that after finally getting it configured, performance is significantly better than my Asus router or Arris cable gateway, even at the same link rate of 866Mbps, the highest my laptop's adapter can go. I spent a significant amount of time troubleshooting a sudden drop in performance, and finally realized it was after enabling WPA3. I went from 70MBytes/s transfer rates (from/to my wired desktop) to 1MBps, but I'd changed other things at the same time and it didn't occur to me that WPA3 could be such a heavy load as to cause that. I don't know if it's because of the laptop or the AP being unable to keep up. In Mobility Express mode the AP is running both controller software and the AP's own functionality, so perhaps the CPU just can't keep up in that mode, but that would make me think the CPU is already heavily loaded in standard operation. And I can't see the laptop not being able to keep up with it. But, since the laptop would be the only device I have supporting WPA3, it's not that big a deal for network security since WPA2 still has to be enabled.
Also, the web interface of the Mobility Express controller is kind of limited, not allowing a lot of the advanced configuration that is available in the hardware Cisco controller web interface, but it is all available via command line. But I can use the web interface to DOS the neighbors by "containing" their "rogue" devices!
Just missing the "warranty void if removed" notice, to make things interesting.
moosemaimer
Ars Scholae Palatinae
Every time I've gone to Staples to pick something up and discovered the shelf price was significantly higher than the website, the cashier has unquestioningly given me the lower price when I showed it to them on my phone. Don't know if you could call it false advertising when it's posted on the shelf, but still kinda sleazy.
Most companies show "price when purchased online" on their website immediately below/beside the price, but Office Depot doesn't. I suppose the combination of that price being shown only online and the tag on the shelf existing would be enough to get them out of legal trouble still, but not having that disclaimer on the site at the least would open them up to the possibility of a lawsuit.
I got a couple of these APs, the first one I was able to convert to ME no bother. The second one seems to have a more recent version of s/w on it (8.10.130.0) and the change to ME fails. The issue I'm bumping into is that I can't download the earlier version of the CAPWAP software to then be able to do the ME conversion. Am I SOL on this, or do I need to go hunting around the internet for an "alternative" source?
Yup, you will have to troll around for a file. I ended up finding a download of ap3g3-k9w8-tar.153-3.JPK.tar just to get the lightweight AP firmware updated and then it worked ok after that.
https://cios.dhitechnical.com/ - It's not up to date on everything but it has ap3g-k9w8-tar.153-3.jpj3a.tar available. (Search the file name is the easiest way to find it.) Then you can get the latest ME software direct from Cisco.
Well, that was a great big pile of weird. The first AP, I was able to just download the ME firmware to my laptop, run an TFTP server on that, and use the IP address for the laptop's wireless connection in the
When I came to do the second one, I factory reset it in the same way as the first, connected it up in the same way, but it just didn't seem to be able to connect to the TFTP server on the laptop. I tried deactivating the Windows firewall, but there wasn't even any evidence the AP was trying to download the file, it kept complaining about timeouts or the file not being there. I could ping the IP for the laptop, but the TFTP just didn't seem to work.
That's when I started to think it was something to do with the existing firmware version on the AP and I started trying to downgrade the lightweight firmware version to the one Paladin mentioned, and of course then I found I was unable to access those versions from Cisco, hence my post just above.
Anyway, in a fit of exasperation / desperation / genius I turned on the TFTP server on my TrueNAS box, stuffed the ME images on there and issued the conversion command one more time, exactly as I had before, just changing the IP address to that of the TrueNAS box.
And whaddya know, it grabs the file and converts itself with no bother.
I got them both talking to each other with one as controller and the other as a subordinate AP, now I just need to work out how to do wireless bridging / "mesh".
ap-type mobility-express tftp://xxx.xxx.... The AP happily pulled the image off the laptop and converted itself without issue. Hooray I thought, that was easy.When I came to do the second one, I factory reset it in the same way as the first, connected it up in the same way, but it just didn't seem to be able to connect to the TFTP server on the laptop. I tried deactivating the Windows firewall, but there wasn't even any evidence the AP was trying to download the file, it kept complaining about timeouts or the file not being there. I could ping the IP for the laptop, but the TFTP just didn't seem to work.
That's when I started to think it was something to do with the existing firmware version on the AP and I started trying to downgrade the lightweight firmware version to the one Paladin mentioned, and of course then I found I was unable to access those versions from Cisco, hence my post just above.
Anyway, in a fit of exasperation / desperation / genius I turned on the TFTP server on my TrueNAS box, stuffed the ME images on there and issued the conversion command one more time, exactly as I had before, just changing the IP address to that of the TrueNAS box.
And whaddya know, it grabs the file and converts itself with no bother.
I got them both talking to each other with one as controller and the other as a subordinate AP, now I just need to work out how to do wireless bridging / "mesh".
Windows firewall and the way applications register themselves in it is so stupid and useless. Applications servers register themselves so that the application is allowed for inbound connections, and it NEVER works. I always have to manually add a rule to allow the actual port involved. For an FTP server it registers itself, and it would be nice for it to work because passive FTP doesn't use a static set of ports, so I have to add the rule for port 21 then on the client manually set it to use an active connection so it will only use port 21 rather than having to pick out a static range of ports and configure them in the server app and firewall (I'm only ever doing this for temporary transfers).
Weird that the transfer worked for you with one AP but not the other, but when I converted my 3800i, I had the same issue and ended up having to completely disable the Windows firewall even when I put in a rule for port 69, rather than spending extra time troubleshooting it.
Weird that the transfer worked for you with one AP but not the other, but when I converted my 3800i, I had the same issue and ended up having to completely disable the Windows firewall even when I put in a rule for port 69, rather than spending extra time troubleshooting it.