Ubiquiti – Graves On SOHO Technology

Sunday Afternoon at The Micro Center

Last weekend I ventured out to our local Micro Center. I hadn’t been there for several years. It was an interesting and enjoyable experience, even if I didn’t buy anything on this occasion. In some fashion, it was a grounding experience.

I have a long relationship with The Micro Center. When I first moved here from Toronto in 1998 it was an eye-opening place. That was before Amazon.com, when computer stores were still a thing, and software was bought on floppy disk or CD-ROM. The Micro Center was a place I could go and lay hands on things before making a purchase. As a lark, one day I was there with Stella and I hugged a fancy new computer. Thereafter, she started to call it “The Michael Center.”

On Sunday, August 10th, 2025 The Micro Center in Houston was busy! It had not occurred to me that this was the last weekend before kids started back to school. It was also a tax-free weekend for back to school supplies. The place was fully of families getting things their kids would need for school.

The Lenovo Twins

I was there just to look around the place, but I really wanted to lay hands on a Lenovo T14 laptop. It’s one model in the running to replace my 2019 X1 Carbon and my aged desktop. I found a T14 there on display along side a T16. This was enough to convince me that 16” is just too big a laptop for my tastes. I wish I’d brought my X1 Carbon with me. The T14 is markedly heavier, but had a built-in Ethernet port and is vastly more upgradable over time.

I came away from the Lenovo display wanting to get hands on their P14 model, which is a mobile workstation. Sadly, such was not available at The Micro Center.

It’s really difficult to move away from the X1 Carbon. It’s basically ideal for mobile applications. However, soldered in memory means that the only upgrade opportunity is the NVMe drive.

Ubiquiti Unifi UXG-Max Router: The Most Boring Installation in Memory

December 19, 2024
Michael Graves
infrastructure, networking, Uncategorized

The transition to AT&T Fiber meant jumping from 60/10 mbps service to 500/500 mbps service. Our old router was SmallWall on a recycled HP T620 Plus thin client. SmallWall is a fork of m0n0wall, which I used for years previously. And a history lesson, m0n0wall was the progenitor of pfsense.

Alas, that little hardware/software combination simply wasn’t up to this new, and much faster, ISP. It could only manage to pass 120 mbps. The CPU tracking in SmallWall didn’t show it to be overburdened. I suspect other aspects of the hardware were the problem. It has a dual-ported Intel NIC. They’re 1G ports, connected to the host via a PCIe x4 connector.

I could have swapped out the T620 Plus for something newer and faster. However, I decided to extend our installation of Ubiquiti Unifi gear by adding their Unifi UXG Max router. That would allow me to see the ISP/router performance in the Unifi UI, which is handled by the Unifi Controller app running on a local Raspberry Pi400.

We came to use the Unifi line by way of their Wi-Fi access points. That was the end-state of what had been a long-running search to deliver reliable Wi-Fi. When our Ubiquiti PowerAP N died we deployed Unifi AC Pro access points. So began our foray into “software defined networking.”

Lights Out, Please! Enlightened Devices Support Darkness

Today, the simple fact is that IoT devices are excessively, unnecessarily, intrusively bright. This is not the first time I’ve addressed this matter. Sadly, the trend does not seem to be improving. All manner of techno-gadgetry has power or status LEDs that typically cannot be disabled. In the hallway of our home, where the network core and IoT hubs reside, there are several devices with status lights that likely made the product designer proud, but they convey no useful information at all. They merely make it impossible to have a dark room.

“You are beginning to damage my calm.” – Jayne, Firefly.

I am recently reminded of this in the course of dealing with our elderly Labrador. She’s had trouble sleeping the past few weeks. This is quite common in very old dogs. We’ve tried many things to help her sleep at night. Anti-anxiety medication only sorta works. Brown noise helps a little to mask the noise of nearby traffic.

Last weekend we installed a couple of calming pheromone dispensers. These are like Glade scented plug-ins, except they dispense a pheromone that is supposed to have a calming effect.

Each pheromone dispenser covers 700 square feet. So, two of them handle our entire home. Further, they last about 30 days under normal circumstances. Pheromone refills are $22 each.

Further Adventures in Power-Over-Ethernet Land: POE Extenders

January 13, 2023
Michael Graves
networking

For the past month or so we’ve had a couple of foster dogs on the property. They are a Husky and a Rottweiler, both less than a year old, who were wandering nearby and I (unthinkingly) took them in. This has caused me to want improved coverage of the yard by our security cameras. I need to keep an eye on them so they don’t become destructive.

In particular, I want to add another IP camera to our front porch. The two existing cameras were intended to monitor our on-street parking. So, they are west facing, pointing toward the street. I’d like to add one looking at the porch and the front door. That view would include several chairs. The Rottweiler is inclined to play with the cushions from the chairs on the porch, which I simply cannot allow.

We’re a Unifi House

Each of the existing cameras has a Cat 5e home run to the Ubiquiti Unifi POE+ switch in the central hallway of the house. I selected the Gen 2 managed Unifi switches for the best combination of price, POE+ and a fanless design. I like silent.

While I could run another Ethernet lead, that would be tedious, and hardly seems necessary given the limited bandwidth and power requirement of our Grandstream IP cameras.

Welcoming the Ubiquit Unifi 24 Port Gen2 Switch

July 29, 2020
Michael Graves
networking

Late last year I replaced my core network switch with a 24 port Ubiquiti Unifi (US-24-250W) managed switch. The Unifi switch was offered on E-bay at an attractive price. It fit into our existing Unifi cloud-key managed Wi-Fi arrangement, so I splurged.

Unifi-Stuff

In general, the Unifi switch was a good upgrade. It let me make greater use of POE. It made Wiresharking SIP traffic more convenient.

Alas, I stumbled upon an issue that I had not expected. It was noisy. The noise was the result of a pair of cooling fans.

The Sound of Silence

For the past couple of days my office has been blissfully, almost eerily silent. Silent like I’ve not heard in several years. It’s enough to make me want some kind of background sounds, which is something that I’ve never wanted previously.

This newfound silence has been brought about by a combination of things. It cool enough outside that the door is closed. The mighty Fujitsu Halycon air conditioner is taking a much needed break. Today, it’s not so cool that I need a heater.

Most significantly, I’ve turned off the 24-port Netgear switch that serves as our network core. The other day I swapped an older 10/100 switch into service so I could clean out the old Netgear unit. Racked and untouched for along while, it was terribly dusty inside & out.

This old Netgear GS524T has two built-in 40mm fans. They’ve been making noise forever. It’s been getting steadily worse. The 10/00 switch that I have as backup is fanless, so the familiar whine of the wee fans has been silenced for now.

In fact, according to my Netatmo Weather Station the ambient noise level in my home office is around 36 dba. That’s pretty quiet.

Just now, staring at the approaching holidays, I don’t really want to spend on a new & much better switch, so I think I will replace the fans in the old one. It’s a $20-30 project. I’m told that folks do this routinely in the case of Ubiquiti switches. They replace the noisy stock fans with quieter fans from Noctua.