Rewiring the Network Core: Part 2 – Beats, Wi-Fi & Brittle Cables
As was mentioned previously, I’ve been upgrading the network installation in the central hall of our home. The new vertical rack cabinet is now installed.
The paint job is a little splotchy. A contractor we had working for us the other day commented on the “neat cloud effect” I had achieved. I had to admit it wasn’t intentional, but it’ll do for now. It’s mostly hidden from view. At least the color is a good match for the wall.
As you can see, power is still being supplied by way of a pigtail out the bottom to a nearby outlet. That’s temporary. It will be replaced by a wire fished through the wall.
You can also see the holes in the floor where network cabled once passed from under the house. I need to get wooden plugs to fill those holes. The cables now run into the wall, onward to the patch bay in the cabinet.
Fitting in all the bits
Tipping open the rack, the patch bay and Unifi switch are readily accessible. The rack rails are mounted at their rear-most position, which allows the maximum space for the patch cables. I bought some 6-inch and 12-inch cat 6 patches to keep the patching compact and tidy.
I must remember to install all the little Ethernet plugs into the unused jacks. It’s important to keep dust from settling into the jacks when a switch is mounted upward facing.
The 1RU Cyberpower UPS is just behind the patch bay. Its power cord, which is quite long, is coiled at the bottom of the enclosure. I may yet make it shorter, just to eliminate an unnecessary mass of cable clutter.
Hue & Lutron Hubs
We use a combination of lights in the house; Lutron Caséta dimmers for installed light fixtures and Philips Hue smart bulbs for lamps.
To the far right you can see a Philips Hue hub tucked along side the rack. This is powered by way of a POE splitter that’s behind it, out of view. There’s also a POE-powered Lutron Caséta Smart Hub hiding in there, too.
It wasn’t clear to me that it would be ok to have the IoT hubs located inside the grounded, metal enclosure. So far, it doesn’t seem to be a problem. That is, all the lights are still working.
It’s not clear that there’s significant advantage to powering the IoT hubs using the POE splitters now that all the hardware is nicely housed. I could just use the original wall-wart PSUs plugged directly into the UPS. That would eliminate a couple of status LEDs inside the cabinet.
I am positively elated that none of the status lights are visible when the rack is closed. They were so annoying in what should have been a dark hallway at night.
Front Porch Music
The music player (RPi4 + HifiBerry AMP2) and related power supply fits into the cabinet. The 4-foot DC cord and coaxial power connector for the AMP2 board makes the entire assembly a bit fiddly. To avoid a bulky coil of power cord that would make the coaxial power connection at the Pi unreliable, I velcro’d the PI4 to a location in the upper right corner, and run the DC power cord to the PSU down the side to the bottom right.
Laced in nicely, it’s tucked out-of-the-way and does not impact the opening/closing of the door. I also swapped out the long EIC cord for one just long enough to reach the UPS.
In other zones, the PiCorePlayer on the RPi feeds a set of powered audio monitors. Power to the speakers is automatically switched based upon the state of the associated player. This mechanism is what go me started with Home Assistant.
This particular music zone is powered on 24/7. That’s because the RPi4 gets its power from the AMP2 board. In order for it to be available to the web interface for the Lyrion server, the whole thing has to remain powered on.
Upon reflection, I may yet add a smart outlet to switch this zone. It could have power toggled on a scheduled basis. No point having it run overnight. We’d not likely be on the porch listening to music after 10pm. [Update Below]
And the Band Plays On
Everything the hall rack is on a UPS. The rack in my office, including the Lyrion Music Server, is on our Eaton UPS. As a result, even when the power goes out, the music will still be playing on the front porch!
The UPS in the hall rack is small, but it’s only running small loads. One day I’ll pull the power and see just how long it lasts. I know the Eaton 1500 VA UPS in the office runs everything there for about 40 minutes.
A New Wi-Fi AP
Prior to this little renovation there had been a Ubiquiti Unifi AC Pro access point hanging on the wall. A pair of these had been the conclusion to the long-running search for reliable Wi-Fi that goes back to the earliest days of this blog.
It was quite old. When I tried to clean it, I found the plastic shell reacted to the cleaner I used, becoming quite sticky. I expect the device would be a magnet for dust & dirt, so I replaced it with a new Unifi 6 Pro access point.
I initially thought I’d install it to the ceiling, but Stella preferred it to be completely hidden. So for now, I’ve installed it in the attic just above the hallway.
The attic is not climate controlled. I’ve had a temperature probe up there for a while. It’s actually an expansion module for our Netatmo weather station. I added it back when I installed an automatic attic fan in August of 2023.
Data, and thus instrumentation, is just so addictive. Knowing is so much better than guessing.
The Netatmo system let me look back in time and determine the maximum temperature encountered in the attic. This turns out to be around 121F.
I cross-referenced this against the manufacturers stated operational range for the Unifi 6 Pro. They claim Ambient operating temperature -30 to 60° C (-22 to 140° F). I also checked in the Unifi forum on Reddit, where others reported no issue with APs in hot attic spaces.
On that basis, the Wi-Fi AP is currently out-of-sight in the attic. That makes Stella happy. The new AP came with a clear plastic cover. I left this on, to keep the dust & dirt from accumulating on it.
Upgrading Ethernet Cables
The existing Ethernet cables are Cat 5e that are probably 15 years old. Just plain vanilla cable. Not even riser rated. The outer jacket on the runs up into the attic have become quite brittle. These runs serve three IP cameras and a Wi-Fi AP just above the front porch.
It seems that I need to replace the existing cables. I ordered some Cat 6 outdoor rated cable that’s intended to withstand hot and cold. In truth, I don’t need multi-gigabit speeds that Cat 6 provides. It’s just the baseline of what’s currently available.
I probably needed to re-run all that cable anyway. We hope to have the attic insulation upgraded in the coming year. I’d like to have all the attic wiring mounted so as to be accessible above the fill level of the new insulation. That way it would be easier to address any technical troubles that might arise down the road.
While I’m at it, I’m going to replace several existing cable pulls that go under the floor. Being older and smarter, I’d like to have more slack at each end. That would allow me to flow and dress the cables nicely into the new enclosure.
For now…
The project is progressing nicely. Stella is happy to have the tangle of gadgets tucked away in something relatively unobtrusive. These things always take longer than you expect. That said, I do enjoy the physicality of such a project. It’s gratifying to see things come together.
Update: 5/9/2024
A quick experiment with a smart outlet shows that it may not be practical to power down the Pi + AMP2 combination. When the Pi powers on it registers with the Lyrion Media Server, so the zone is operational. However, the power cycling breaks integration with Home Assistant.
I posed a question to the HiFi Berry user forum. They report that the power drawn by AMP2 at idle is actually less that the power drawn by the Pi. So perhaps there’s no reason to worry about any of this.