Best placement for Ubiquiti U6 Pro: longer cable through water to a better position, or shorter cable to a questionable position?

[Adsibob]

I touched upon this in another thread about the waterproofness of the U6 Pro, but thought it deserved its own post:

 

This is the basic plan of my front yard/driveway:

The yellow line shows one possible path of an outdoor rated ethernet cable, siting the AP at the yellow triangle, pointing both down the side alley and towards the wifi doorbell (which is in desperate need of a better signal). The advantage of the yellow path is that we will get a very good signal for both the doorbell, only 3.4m away and down the alleyway where in due course we are likely to install a wifi camera,or if that is too close for an optimal signal, I can also raise the U6 Pro up higher off the ground as the fence there is very tall, about 2m high. The downside of the yellow route, is that apart from needing a longer cable (25m as opposed to 10), the cable will pass through a plastic water channel (marked as slot drain Driveline on the plan). This is easy enough to do, but means the cable will often be wet (but who cares, it's a cable designed for burial) and could impede the effectiveness of the drainage, though unlikely, as the drain is almost 10cm wide and the cable will at most be 1cm diameter.

 

The downside of the red route is that the U6 Pro will have to be mounted quite close to the ground and about 80cm in front of it, there is going to be a big car parked, which will block the direct line of sight to the doorbell, so could interfere with the signal. Also, less chance of the signal travelling down the side of the alley way. Aesthetically it will also be more prominent there, whereas could be installed more discreetly if I go for the yellow option.

 

I think I've answered my own question, but can anyone think of any issues with the yellow plan. Will a cable that is 15m to 20m longer than the red route make a very big difference to responsiveness of the doorbell?

Edited July 22, 2023 by Adsibob

[Alan Ambrose]

Err, not possible to run cat5, armoured if you like, with PoE? No need for battteries and no problem with wifi signal.

[Adsibob]

15 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

Err, not possible to run cat5, armoured if you like, with PoE? No need for battteries and no problem with wifi signal.

Are you talking about running CAT cable to the doorbell, as opposed to creating an external WiFi? If so, we actually have the capability to do that, as the electrician decided to power the doorbell with CAT 5 cable, but the PoE doorbells are stupidly priced, and I prefer to have an outdoor WiFi network so that I can install a few devices outside.

 

 If that wasn’t what you meant, I’m afraid I don’t understand your question/point.

[Alan Ambrose]

OK apologies if there was a mis-communication. My thoughts, hopefully a bit clearer:

 

+ I think Ubiquiti kit is good but I believe U6 Pro is described as ‘indoor’ i.e. prob not waterproof. Poss to cover area from indoors - I don’t quite get the scale of your drawing but I’m imagining max coverage 5-10m?

+ my pref is to run PoE cable to everything possible and avoid wifi except for mobile / occasional devices for the reasons mentioned.

+ from memory cat5 signals are a fraction (50%?) of the speed of light so local cable length is irrelevant. Any delays will be software / wifi authentication / round trips over the internet to China etc.

+ the Reolink PoE doorbell is about £100 with no ongoing charges. I don’t get why you would use cat5 for power and not for signal, if I understood you correctly.

+ there are some phone apps that will let you temporarily position an ap and then measure the signal at the places where you need it.

+ any cable route is good where it works installation-wise for ease of routing / avoidance of damage etc. I probably wouldn’t have the cable sitting in water if I could avoid it, just because of long term permeability of the sheathing.

 

Hope that helps.

Edited July 22, 2023 by Alan Ambrose

[Adsibob]

19 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

+ I think Ubiquiti kit is good but I believe U6 Pro is described as ‘indoor’ i.e. prob not waterproof.

No, that’s not right. It’s definitely rated for outdoor. The spec list states it’s IP54 rated: https://www.4gon.co.uk/ubiquiti-unifi-access-point-wifi-6-pro-p-10059.html

23 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

my pref is to run PoE cable to everything possible and avoid wifi except for mobile / occasional devices for the reasons mentioned.

I agree, but it’s too late for that, unless I tear stuff up that was finished over a year ago. I will not do that.

 

24 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

the Reolink PoE doorbell is about £100 with no ongoing charges. I don’t get why you would use cat5 for power and not for signal, if I understood you correctly.

Simply because the cheap Ring doorbell was wired with CAT 5 without my knowledge. The house was all finished, only then did we discover our walls’ steel rods were acting as a faraday cage making the doorbell wasn’t working so well. There is not an easy way to link the internet router to the end of the doorbell’s power supply. I also don’t want to set up my own video recording station, Ring is convenient and I’ma sucker for convenience and have bought into their system.

 

29 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

long term permeability of the sheathing

Intuitively, I’m also a little nervous about it sitting in water, but isn’ta direct burial cable exactly designed for that?

[MikeSharp01]

1 hour ago, Adsibob said:

IP54

The IP rating is sometimes deceptive. The first digit is dust ingress so 5 is not bad. The second is water and 4 is not great - it will stand splashing but you can expect some water ingress to be possible especially in exposed positions. You realy want ip65 or 66 to be sure of keeping British weather out and 67 if very exposed.

[Adsibob]

4 hours ago, MikeSharp01 said:

The IP rating is sometimes deceptive. The first digit is dust ingress so 5 is not bad. The second is water and 4 is not great - it will stand splashing but you can expect some water ingress to be possible especially in exposed positions. You realy want ip65 or 66 to be sure of keeping British weather out and 67 if very exposed.

Ok, good to know, but I’ve bought the AP already and unlikely to be able to return it, although the vendor did state that it would be fine for outdoor use. I will call them on Monday to try and return it. The alternative would be to build a cover for it. I had planned to install it on a fence, in a fairly well sheltered spot, but it is uncovered. How much of a cover would this need? Its projection from the fence would only be 35mm, not sure that includes the mount. Say the mount might take it up to 45mm or 50mm at the very max. Would a small roof that projected from the fence by 90mm be sufficient?

[TonyT]

Put the access point in a small water proof joint box?

 

box thickness will be less than stud wall so signal shouldn’t be that badly affected?

[MikeSharp01]

If anybody wants a good explanation of the IP rating system RS do a very comprehensive one: https://uk.rs-online.com/web/content/discovery/ideas-and-advice/ip-ratings

 

[MikeSharp01]

8 hours ago, Adsibob said:

build a cover for it

You could put it into an IP65 plastic box like this one from TLC EG this one or one of its bigger siblings: https://www.tlc-direct.co.uk/Products/WKIP886N.html don't forget the breather, which is IP68 to help with any condensation, which will be minimal if the unit is on 24/7 it will keep the box warm but the breather will still be of value.

 

[PNAmble]

Ubiquiti normally are pretty clear which are outdoor. I’ve got one of these indoors.   With the one I referenced on the other post outdoors. 

I’m also a fan of POE especially cameras. I have a full Ubiquiti system including cameras, avoids cloud storage and ongoing fees providing a rock solid connection.

 

you could always add a poe splitter outside and put multiple access point if you are having difficulty.  Wi-Fi doesn’t normally travel around corners. 
 

Personally I’d deploy cat6a cables. 

 

 

[Adsibob]

1 hour ago, PNAmble said:

Personally I’d deploy cat6a cables.

What do you see as the added advantage of CAT 6A over CAT 6 for this particular use? I ask because when I googled this previously, I found the main difference came to this:

 

“Cable requirements are often dictated by the equipment that is currently installed, or will be installed in the near future. 99% of all network equipment will support Ethernet data cable speeds of 10 Mbp/s to 1 Gbp/s (1000 Mbp/s). Take stock of your current equipment. Does any of your equipment require or even support 10 Gbp/s (10,000 Mbp/s)? Do you have plans to upgrade your equipment to support this higher speed? If the answer is “yes”, then you should use Cat6A cabling. Most of the time, however, the answer is “no”. In this case, Cat6A speed cable will not benefit you in any way, but it will certainly cost more.”

 

 So I’m not sure of the justification for spending more for this requirement.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Adsibob

[Adsibob]

1 hour ago, MikeSharp01 said:

You could put it into an IP65 plastic box

How would that impact its WiFi signal?

[PNAmble]

20 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

What do you see as the added advantage of CAT 6A over CAT 6 for this particular use?

Performance and upgradability.  But depends upon what you do with your network and what performance is important to you.  

[dpmiller]

36 minutes ago, Adsibob said:

How would that impact its WiFi signal?

It won't. Not measurably.

[MikeSharp01]

1 hour ago, Adsibob said:

How would that impact its WiFi signal?

Very fractionally - perhaps a few percent, if you think about it - unless your AP has external aerials it is already transmitting through plastic.  

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> You could put it into an IP65 plastic box

 

Yeah agree, plastic or fibreglass. Would be liberal with my use of glands, silicone grease, mastic etc. Under some overhang protection or a little roof to keep most of the rain off, if possible, have a slope on it, probably some drain holes etc.

 

>>>  our walls’ steel rods were acting as a faraday cage

 

I wondered if something like that was the problem.

 

>>> but isn’ta direct burial cable exactly designed for that?

 

There are two sorts of outdoors cat5 - one is just standard cat5 with better UV protection, the second is the armoured stuff which usually also has a interference-resisting braid or foil screen. I still prefer to clip round the bottom of a fence etc or run in corrugated conduit rather than directly underground. I prefer to 'do it once, do it right' but there are no rules re cat5, so you can choose your own level of risk. If underground and in a conduit you can swap out the cable later if you need.

[Adsibob]

So just going back to the drawing board on this one, because the reality is that PoE is always going to be better than wifi. With the doorbell, we can rig this for PoE. There are a few compromises, but we can do that.

For the camera, we could also do PoE, but only if I use a Powerline adaptor to send the internet through our electrical circuit. I have just tested this at the power point on the inside of the house which is nearest the point outside of the house where I would install the IP camera, and even with the kids streaming Netflix HD, I'm still getting 72Mbps download / 61 Mbps upload and latency of 15ms unloaded / 39 ms loaded through the powerline. That is much slower than our stupidly fast connection on standard CAT6 cables, but clearly plenty fast enough for an IP camera. So the questions I have are:

 

1) Will a powerline adaptor send power as well as internet through it? Googling this it seems the answer is "it depends" but it wasn't clear to me on what it depends. Perhaps the model. I have a TPLink AV600 powerline adaptor, and with the brand new electrical wiring in the house, it's giving us a great "ethernet" connection. If not, is it just a case of using an injector alongside the powerline?

 

2) How hard is it to drill through an external wall? It's a solid brick wall with about 50mm of insulation and then silicone based render on the outside. There is a breathable membrane on the inside as well as a void, both of which were installed to deal with a historic damp problem (1930s house) but the damp was fairly low level, and this hole will be almost 10 feet from the ground, so I'm not too worried about penetrating the membrane. Will i need to waterproof the hole?

[dpmiller]

can you not just put the U6 Pro or a cheapo wifi extender in the hallway that'll shoot through the front door to the doorbell and squeeze a wee bit of a signal through the wall for the camera? Any sockets on that outside wall, just inside the doorway?

[Adsibob]

1 hour ago, dpmiller said:

can you not just put the U6 Pro or a cheapo wifi extender in the hallway that'll shoot through the front door to the doorbell and squeeze a wee bit of a signal through the wall for the camera? Any sockets on that outside wall, just inside the doorway?

I could, but the front door is made of steel and glass, mostly steel, and the Ubiquiti Dream Router is already relatively close to the front door (albeit in the adjacent room) so I was surprised how bad Ring’s signal is. But maybe this is something worth trying, as actually the location of my UDR makes the line of sight to the Ring doorbell really full of brick (and steel), so that isn’t the AP that the doorbell connects to - it prefers one on the first floor. I will experiment with one of the existing APs that I have. 
 

But this is unlikely to provide a decent signal to the other device, which is the camera for the side alley. The problem is that my ground floor walls, are double brick, with an aluminium wrapped insulation on the outside, and a grid of steel rods to hold up a membrane and void on the inside, a structure Michael Faraday would have been proud of.

Edited July 23, 2023 by Adsibob