AP7 Outdoors? Made my Own
Because It looks like we will not have a Outdoor rated unit any time soon, I designed my own.
IP65 rated and made from PETG so High Heat rated and Great UV resistance.
Added a Temp and Humidity sensor on the top to make sure the unit stays within its rated Temp range. If it has a issue with temperature I can redesign with some cooling. Added a Light Pipe so I can see the status light.
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Ill post it once I get some time on the model to make sure I do not have any issues. It passed the water hose test without a hitch. Have 2 going up one white and one brown to match the house. Will watch the temps closely. I had modeled the internal structure of the AP7 for the PCB and Antenna placements. But decided that was overkill, and would not be needed. Settled with a Outer Skin approach.
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Very nice! forwarded to our team. BTW, the ceiling mount has a huge heat sink and it is sealed a lot better than the desktop. (https://firewalla.com/products/firewalla-ap7-ceiling)
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@firewalla Plan on getting the Ceiling mount when it drops in 5 days. But the signal radiation pattern is not conducive for a true Omni radiation. If not worried about getting dinged for Power levels, the AP7 is truly hackable as all of the antenna connections are using U.FL IPEX connectors.
But, the stock Patch antennas seem to be really good, and so far it has shown to have great range.
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Update. Doing any modification on a device to make it do something that it was not designed to do has tradeoffs. The Unit has around 30 watts of power to dissipate so lots of heat. When doing a external housing to maintain the original device, you have to deal with the heat. You also have to take into account the external heat loads. I live in FL so this load can be big.
I redesigned the housing to include a USB powered fan running off the AP7 USB port. I also optimized the airflow through the device.
Some things to note:
The AP7 is not conformal coated, you might want to do this yourself if mounting outside. I wonder on the the 95% non condensation rating seeing it does not have conformal coating. I do not think it would qualify for this rating without Conformal coating. Maybe AP devices are different from the requirements of Power electronics.
The range outdoors is outstanding with the stock patch antennas, surpassing my TP Link EAP625 units, when tested with NetSpot. Well done Firewalla!!!
The ODM manufacturer did a good job on the mechanical and electrical design, but is lacking with QC as one patch antenna is not aligned properly even tho the ME designed in placement locators. (We know Firewalla is all about the Software! so its OK that they are letting a ODM do the Hardware).
I will try to get a couple Ceiling mount units and see if I can do a turnkey housing to make a outside housing that can be passively cooled. Regardless I will post the STL files for anyone who want to use the devices outside. I currently have 3 operation and blanketing well over acre on out farm.
Lastly, on a negitive note. The way Firewalla does the mesh is NOT as good as TPLink, when you move from AP to AP, it is sometimes slow to hand off and like to switch for 5Ghz to 2.4Ghz when you move from device to device. Im hopeful they will work on this to streamline the "Mesh" part of the system. TPLink has been doing this for a lot longer so Im sure the Firewalla will catch up.
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I too have slightly worse roaming. I had 3 of the linksys ac8500? replaced with 3 firewalla, same locations. now when i go outside firewalla seems to hang on 5ghz vs the stronger 2.4ghz and I'll get spinning wheel loading things until i see my wifi on phone dip low then reconnect higher. The linksys likely just kept me on 2.4 as i never noticed a drop on those. I think firewalla is keeping me on 5ghz too long and I just need to drop to 2.4 for the quality over potential speed. I'd say firewalla just need to prioritize a stronger signal for devices over speed as I'd imagine most users need signal quality when walking around not speed. esp since the most roaming thing is a mobile phone. I've just been waiting for it to get better with any updates. But my guess is you are correct in something with a 5ghz to 2.4ghz roam.
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I think it has something to do with the way the AP7 does the "Band Steering" it hangs when switching for 2.4 to 5Ghz. I have tried to disable Band Steering and did not see much improvement. I also turned of monitoring for my IPhone and that did not help either. Ultimately the "BandSteering" need some Love.
Open App, click on “Wi-Fi” icon -> Wi-Fi gear icon at top right corner -> Enable “Band-steering” Try it both ways enabled and Disabled see if you find any improvements.
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I didn't think the band steering was an active roaming type application. I think it runs periodically to band steer a client to a better signal but this would be like a couple times a day? Not a roaming thing. I could be wrong. I think its just whatever logic used in handoff needs to be tweaked for quality over speed.
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