Home Lab and Hardware

I am giving up on MikroTik WiFi

Andrej Friesen

Andrej Friesen

— 3 min read
I am giving up on MikroTik WiFi
MikroTik wAP (top) ac and cAP ac (bottom)

A few weeks back I got myself a nice MikroTikSwitch. I really like the CRS328-24P-4S+RM which is in use for a few months now. I thought their APs could be a good addition to my network as well. I can not use my FritzBox anymore because it is degraded to work as a modem only right now.

So I got myself a wAP ac and cAP ac.

Yeah, I know MikroTik has a DAMN steep learning curve. Especially their RouterOS. So the next weeks were all about learning about WiFi and RouterOS. I learned a freaking ton about radio and WiFi in general. It was fun. I love learning new things. Understanding something you use every day, take for granted and suddenly have a better understanding of that.

But then it was not fun anymore because despite my efforts I could not get a stable WiFi with MikroTikas I had with Fritz devices only.

My Googles Home devices used for multi-room audio could not be used in a group. WiFi devices kept disconnecting. WiFi was mostly slower. The range was awful in a 60 m2 apartment. After reading and watching and configuring the devices I give up on MikroTikWiFi devices for now.

I mean sure, it is really dense like in any other big city. But before switching the FritzBox 6490 Cable + a Fritz Repeater 1750e were doing way better.

I might that I was not smart enough to figure it out. But now I decided I just want good WiFi.

I asked in the company slack what a home lab nerd wants these days and one of my coworkers had an UAP-AC-Pro-Gen2 lying around and did not need that for a few months. Perfect for testing!

Starting the controller software in Home Assistant since I am lazy.

Does not work. The AP stays in adopting and the update is not possible.

After reading the docs the UniFi Controller Add-On I saw that I had to change the hostname/ip in my AP.

Installation
The installation of this add-on is pretty straightforward and not different in comparison to installing any other Home Assistant add-on.

  1. Search for the "UniFi Controller" add-on in the Supervisor add-on store and >install it.
  2. Start the "UniFi Controller" add-on.
  3. Check the logs of the "UniFi Controller" to see if everything went well.
  4. Click the "OPEN WEB UI" button, and follow the initial wizard.
  5. After completing the wizard, log in with the credentials just created.
  6. Go to the settings (gears icon in the bottom left) -> Controller (tab).
  7. Change the Controller Hostname/IP to match the IP or hostname of the device >running Home Assistant.
  8. Check the box Override inform host with controller hostname/IP.
  9. Hit the "Apply Changes" button to activate the settings.
    Ready to go!

You can SSH into the AP with ssh ubnt@<YOUR-IP> and password ubnt.

What can you do? Just type help:

BZ.v3.9.19# help
UniFi Command Line Interface - Ubiquiti Networks

   info                      display device information
   set-default               restore to factory default
   set-inform <inform_url>   attempt inform URL (e.g. set-inform http://192.168.0.8:8080/inform)
   upgrade <firmware_url>    upgrade firmware (e.g. upgrade http://192.168.0.8/unifi_fw.bin)
   fwupdate --url <firmware_url|firmware_name> [--dl-only] [--md5sum <sum_of_fw>]
            [--keep-firmware] [--keep-running] [--reboot-sys] 
                                   new firmware update command
   reboot                    reboot the device

Set inform address: set-inform http://:8080/inform and then everything should work. While I was in the terminal I also updated the AP via the command line.

Now the UAP-AC-Pro-Gen2 is in test mode. Let's see if this guy is any better than my MikroTik attempt.

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