nayr's home automation build out...

[Q™]

...40MPG with ~1200lbs in tow @ 70mph, used the goodwill $$$$ from the TDI cheating scandal to chiptune it.. used to get 36mpg pre-scandal

That's 40 Fahrvergnügen mpg nayr...8 real world!

 

[nayr]

hah, its the opposite in the Diesel world.. stock my TDI was rated for 30mpg in the city and 42mpg on the highway.. in reality I get ~36mpg in the city, and on the highway I get 45-52mpg depending on the speed of traffic... then I got an aftermarket chiptune, and it went up even higher..

Early next year I will take my TDI back to the dealer to get a new exhaust and factory tune, they will cut me a check for $6500+ to re-emburse me for the lost value since the cheating scandal.. then I will drive it right back to the shop and get my aftermarket tune reinstalled for just the shop labor and it'll be like it never went back to the dealer.. and my bank account will have enough money to finish off installing this TDI motor out of a 2002 beetle into my 1975 Westfallia.

Its the only new car I ever purchased, and damn did I get a hell of a f'n deal out of it.. I always planned on being the only owner of it and putting 300-500k miles on it.

oh and the home wifi network is getting an upgrade, I alpha tested an early release of Ubiquiti's new AC access points last year.. then they revised the hardware before releasing it.. without warning they kindly sent me a package of final retail units.. I love Ubiquiti gear!

I am installing a new roof top swamp cooler and running ducts throughout the house, damn its some hot and miserable work.

 

[Redemption]

.

 

[gpower07]

hah, its the opposite in the Diesel world.. stock my TDI was rated for 30mpg in the city and 42mpg on the highway.. in reality I get ~36mpg in the city, and on the highway I get 45-52mpg depending on the speed of traffic... then I got an aftermarket chiptune, and it went up even higher..

Early next year I will take my TDI back to the dealer to get a new exhaust and factory tune, they will cut me a check for $6500+ to re-emburse me for the lost value since the cheating scandal.. then I will drive it right back to the shop and get my aftermarket tune reinstalled for just the shop labor and it'll be like it never went back to the dealer.. and my bank account will have enough money to finish off installing this TDI motor out of a 2002 beetle into my 1975 Westfallia.

Its the only new car I ever purchased, and damn did I get a hell of a f'n deal out of it.. I always planned on being the only owner of it and putting 300-500k miles on it.

oh and the home wifi network is getting an upgrade, I alpha tested an early release of Ubiquiti's new AC access points last year.. then they revised the hardware before releasing it.. without warning they kindly sent me a package of final retail units.. I love Ubiquiti gear!

I am installing a new roof top swamp cooler and running ducts throughout the house, damn its some hot and miserable work.

I am uquibitti AC beam getting 400mbps+ all day long.

 

[nayr]

yeah I can max out my internet with any of my wireless devices anywhere on my property, and thats the primary objective.. run them all at lowest power and put them in the rooms most likely to be occupied high on the wall or celling, tweak the MinRSSI features and everything roams well.

My primary WiFi network is 5GHz only, and requires x509 TLS Certificates to join.. it gives you full LAN access.. then I run a Guest (PSK) network that has limited LAN access, really only media and printer access.. then I run an open wifi network that only allows limited internet access, no lan access at all... both the guest and openwireless networks can only use OpenDNS DNS servers configured for a very restrictive set of sites.. I also run a x509 TLS Wifi network only for my wife's work laptop, because I dont let it onto my networks.. it runs windows.

I used to plug my MacBook Pro into the LAN when I wanted to transfer big files back and forth to it, now I dont even bother as I can get amazing wireless speeds that rival the wire.

 

[thesleepy_slee]

@Redemption which PIR sensors are you using? I plan to add some in my house, that KS for the advice. Nayr already gave a couple of examples, but I can't find it again

 

[Redemption]

.

 

[TechBill]

hah, its the opposite in the Diesel world.. stock my TDI was rated for 30mpg in the city and 42mpg on the highway.. in reality I get ~36mpg in the city, and on the highway I get 45-52mpg depending on the speed of traffic... then I got an aftermarket chiptune, and it went up even higher..

Early next year I will take my TDI back to the dealer to get a new exhaust and factory tune, they will cut me a check for $6500+ to re-emburse me for the lost value since the cheating scandal.. then I will drive it right back to the shop and get my aftermarket tune reinstalled for just the shop labor and it'll be like it never went back to the dealer.. and my bank account will have enough money to finish off installing this TDI motor out of a 2002 beetle into my 1975 Westfallia.

Its the only new car I ever purchased, and damn did I get a hell of a f'n deal out of it.. I always planned on being the only owner of it and putting 300-500k miles on it.

oh and the home wifi network is getting an upgrade, I alpha tested an early release of Ubiquiti's new AC access points last year.. then they revised the hardware before releasing it.. without warning they kindly sent me a package of final retail units.. I love Ubiquiti gear!

I am installing a new roof top swamp cooler and running ducts throughout the house, damn its some hot and miserable work.

I have a question about the Ubiquiti AC AP. Will one of those give good coverage for a mid size house about 2,000 sq ft or I need to install more than one?

Thank you

Bill

 

[nayr]

Sure a single LR AC unit will 'cover' your mid size house, but good coverage? hardly.

5GHz is where the throughput is, if you want really fast Wifi without interference from microwaves and neighbors you try to put everything you can on 5GHz... higher the frequency the faster it is, and the less its able to penetrate solid objects like walls, cabinets, our own big fat asses, etc...

If you want good 5GHz coverage, and by that you need a strong enough signal throughout the house that your devices will stay on 5GHz w/out migrating to the 2.4GHz band, then one will never do.

my 1200sqft house I have 3 AC Units running right now I get > 85% signal strength anywhere inside.. on 5GHz, 99% signal on 2.4GHz.. the 2.4 radios are all configured for lowest possible power settings, and the 5Ghz radios are all configured for highest possible power settings.

From the majority of the rooms we spent the majority of our time in, there is an access point within line of sight or damn near close to it.. all my clients negotate the fastest connection there radios can handle.. my AC clients always have data rates between 400-800Mbps

I consider my house to have good coverage, because any device from anywhere is more than capable of maxing out my internet connection.. and many of them can transfer files locally at speeds that rival my wired GigE network.

 

[gmaster1]

I just gotta say I laughed when I read that you did a similar thing with your Asterisk box and smart home lights.



(Crappy photo as I took it from a video I made) but basically I have these VVX500's around the house and you can program the home/idle screen to sit at any webpage (HTML5 capable). I just threw a PHP script on the RPi that checks the status of the outlets to sync all of the wall tablets and phones et cetera. Having one of these by the bed makes being lazy extremely easy.

 

[SyconsciousAu]

I dont let it onto my networks.. it runs windows.

I always knew you were windowist!

 

[nayr]

wireless network got an overhaul with those new units, they perform great and you guys are going to love what Ubiquiti has in store for you.. sorry I cant say (NDA) but it'll make some people's day when they announce these.

I got Radius based VLAN working, so depending on the certificate you authenticate with depends on what network you get on.. pretty awesome, now my Wife's windows PC dont have to use the public wifi and be subject to internet filtering.

I also ordered another 4MP LXIR Dahua Bullet-Box, this time with 12mm optics.. will cover another street parking area and front yard.. with it in place I will have the entire front covered from one end to the other.

 

[rotorwash]

I love the Unifi gear as well. I'm using the Ap-ac-pro access points and am happy with them. Do you have any issues w the 5ghz radio? There seemed to be a few issues with it. I love keeping wireless separate from router/firewall. That way you get the best of both worlds!

 

[nayr]

just retired an ac-pro in exchange for one of the new ac-lr, the pro was a pre-ac radio and not the greatest.. the new features in these new access points such as bandsteering, radius vlan, and others made it worth the swap.

Ive got a ac-lite on my office wall thats setup for 5GHz only, an ac-lr in my living room/dinign room celing, another ac-lr in the hallway right outside my 3 bedroom doors, and an outdoor+ on the chimney that only services a public wifi network...

all the 2.4G radios are on low power and use Min-RSSI w/Bandsteering to ensure proper roaming, the 5GHz radios are on medium power w/no Minimum RSSI and roam fine.. all devices with a 5G radio have no problems favoring the 5G network, but my primary x509 auth wifi network is setup to be 5Ghz only.. all legacy devices are resided to the guest network.

I run 3 wifi networks:
Galileo - WPA2-Enterprise x509-TLS, 5GHz Only, Unrestricted LAN access.
Galileo (Guest) - WPA2-PSK, Both Bands, Walled Garden w/Content Filtered Internet.. holes poked through firewall for access to printers and mediaserver.
openwireless.org - No security, Both Bands, Content Filtered Web Access + VPN Access Only.

 

[bp2008]

Do you have any issues w the 5ghz radio?

I certainly have 5ghz radio problems with my ac-lr. It would keep going into a bad state where devices could connect to it but not pass any traffic at all. I got a beta/pre-release firmware that was supposed to detect this bad state and reboot the 5ghz radio automatically and this was working for a couple weeks but earlier today I found the 5ghz network had stopped passing traffic again. I don't really need 5ghz though, as 2.4ghz works perfectly fine in my house.

 

[nayr]

I cant say Ive had anything like bp2008 described, I run 5GHz primarily so I'd of noticed anything like that.. my old ac-pro simply did not like to attract devices to 5Ghz, rarely would anything use it on that access point, but the new bandsteering made a vast improvement..

I am running the alpha release channel on non-released hardware, so ymmv..

 

[thesleepy_slee]

Yes, those ubiquiti are really great. One thing missing though is ability to perform some actions when some devices join network. This is more for home automation than for wifi network, and may be the reason why this is not included by ubiquiti by default.
I have seen some dev have done things to maximize use of ubiquiti API, but it would be good if this was available by default.

 

[thomas2013]

just retired an ac-pro in exchange for one of the new ac-lr, the pro was a pre-ac radio and not the greatest.. the new features in these new access points such as bandsteering, radius vlan, and others made it worth the swap.

Ive got a ac-lite on my office wall thats setup for 5GHz only, an ac-lr in my living room/dinign room celing, another ac-lr in the hallway right outside my 3 bedroom doors, and an outdoor+ on the chimney that only services a public wifi network...

all the 2.4G radios are on low power and use Min-RSSI w/Bandsteering to ensure proper roaming, the 5GHz radios are on medium power w/no Minimum RSSI and roam fine.. all devices with a 5G radio have no problems favoring the 5G network, but my primary x509 auth wifi network is setup to be 5Ghz only.. all legacy devices are resided to the guest network.

I run 3 wifi networks:
Galileo - WPA2-Enterprise x509-TLS, 5GHz Only, Unrestricted LAN access.
Galileo (Guest) - WPA2-PSK, Both Bands, Walled Garden w/Content Filtered Internet.. holes poked through firewall for access to printers and mediaserver.
openwireless.org - No security, Both Bands, Content Filtered Web Access + VPN Access Only.

What is openwireless.org? And what is idea putting VPN on a separate Wi-Fi?

Sent from my Nexus 6 using Tapatalk

 

[nayr]

GeoFencing works better than wifi detection, most phones and other battery powered devices wont maintain a connection when they are not being used to save battery life..

openwireless.org is a free public wifi program I participate in, content is filtered for adult sites and stuff but I allow VPN traffic also so your free to bypass the filters and use an external network.. ie, you can vpn home and use your home connection w/full encryption..

If your running a VPN Server for remote access to your IP Cameras like you should be, you should also be using that VPN Connection when your on an unencrypted public wireless network.. to prevent others on the network from snooping on your traffic.

 

[gmaster1]

MicroCenter had a handful of them open box for $61/ea so figured why not. Turns out they do work well. Playing with min RSSI helps in a few spots for sure. I had one sitting on a desk running active during some benchmark tests and I thought it was going to start on fire (theatrical). The heat dissipation really requires them to be upside down (as intended) or at the very least vertical. But yeah these newer versions really redeem their older generations.