Not so long ago you could read in one of our
articles about the revolutionary UniFi OS from Ubiquiti, which allows you to manage not only the network, but also monitoring, building access, telephony and other functions. It all sounded very cool in theory, but today in our new
Batna24 building we built our own network with Ubiquiti equipment and now we can see in practice how UniFi OS and all the hardware works.
Where did it start?
Our company
Batna24 has decided to move to a new building at
1 Maja Street 23 in Częstochowa. Already at the design stage we had to think about the local and wireless network, which will support our equipment and mobile devices. We decided to use Ubiquiti equipment, because in addition to the obvious advantages presented in the previous article, Ubiquiti provided an excellent installation tool called
UniFi Design Centr.
UniFi Design Center or how to design a network
When designing our network, we used
Ubiquiti's free
UniFi Design Center tool to plan our entire UniFi network deployment. With this tool, we easily selected the fixtures and installed them in the most efficient location possible. You may ask, how is this possible? You have to take the characteristics of the devices, calculate, distribute..... But no, this is much easier!
Let's deal with them in order:
1) The first thing we need to do is to go to the official Ubiquiti
UniFi Design Center website, register or login to our created account.
2) The second step is to create a new plan, name it and add the actual plan file in
PNG,
JPG or
PDF format.
3) Now, using the built-in tools, scale the attached plan and draw walls, doors, windows and other building elements that may affect the signal from access points or the view from CCTV cameras.
4) After we finish drawing the elements of the floor or room structure, we proceed to add the devices we would like to use, and in the settings, by enabling the display of the range of the 2.4 GHz or 5 GHz signal for access points, we can
easily see how the signal will propagate through the rooms. This allows us to choose the best location and number of access points to maximize wireless performance. The same is true for surveillance cameras - by roughly locating a camera, we can see the camera's angle in a room and if it's not a good angle, we can simply move it to a new location.
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At this stage, we will already have a floor or room plan ready, with the best placement of cameras and access points.
However, we can also run wires and network cables between the devices all the way to the server rack with the network devices. We can also add door access systems and even VoIP phones. At this point, the question may arise: why do it? After all, the most important thing is to know how the
WiFi signal will be covered and what kind of surveillance
camera review it will have!
First, we will see a full verification of the local network, and second, with one click we can know the current prices of all devices and materials from the official Ubiquiti website. You can see current prices with good discounts on our
Batna24.com page in the
Ubiquiti section.
Ubiquiti UniFi OS or how to manage everything
After buying and installing all the equipment, the first step is to connect and configure all the devices. Connecting all the devices into one network is usually done by professionals, and all we have to do is connect the equipment, configure it and start working.
The heart of our system is the UDM-Pro, which can serve as a router, switch, firewall, DHCP server and video recorder. Thanks to two WAN inputs it is possible to connect redundant (backup) links to the Internet, e.g. via LTE thanks to the U-LTE-PRO device. But the most important advantage is the UniFi OS, which allows you to manage the whole network, its settings from a web browser or a cell phone, even if you are in another country, on another continent! You can also manage UniFi Access, i.e. open and close doors, view security camera footage in UniFi Protect and much more from a single browser or mobile app.
All devices, switches, access points, IP-cameras can be configured from the user-friendly UniFi OS interface. You don't have to connect to each switch individually and configure it. The settings of one device can be copied to another, which saves time. This makes the system administrator's job much easier. When new firmware updates are released for your devices, you'll know immediately and you'll see a firmware update icon next to the device, which will update the system on that device when you click it. You don't have to do anything manually, everything happens automatically.
The possibilities of this system are unimaginable: in addition to the standard network settings, you can see real-time statistics of Internet usage, categorized. It is also possible to restrict access to various resources, such as YouTube or Facebook, so that employees can be more productive.
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And this is not all the features of this system, there are so many that it is impossible to list them all now... Let's look at how another system works, under the control of the same device and controller.
UniFi Protect or video surveillance with superior quality
It has become a necessity to have good video surveillance in your office or home for your own safety, and sometimes just to remember where we placed this or that(it probably happened to everyone).
UniFi OS allows you to manage recorded video, view live cameras or configure cameras with one of Ubiquiti UDM-Pro, NVR-Pro, UNVR, depending on your application and number of cameras.
UniFi Protect is a great solution for managing cameras and recordings in real-time via the cloud, with all recordings stored locally on the device, providing excellent security. You don't have to pay for cloud storage, and you can access your recordings from anywhere.
We installed the NVR-Pro on our network, which can hold up to 7 hard drives with a capacity of 16TB (this is not a hard drive limit, Ubiquiti says they do not test hard drives with larger capacities). Connected to the NVR-Pro are 24 Ubiquiti G4 Pro cameras that record in 4K resolution. With this configuration, the UDM-Pro shows that it can store our data for 66 days!
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You don't need any special software to view your videos, just open a browser and log in to your Ubiquiti account or through the mobile app on your phone and you can manage your camera settings and IP camera recordings.
Finding unwanted moments in your videos just got a whole lot easier! UniFi Protect will bookmark your footage when it notices movement in the frame. Now you don't have to waste a lot of time looking for the exact moment you need, just bookmark the video and you'll see what you need at the right moment.
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In addition to simple video recording, UniFi Protect has a huge number of settings, from simply changing video quality (image resolution and frame rate), to highlighting specific areas in the camera image for clearer tracking, as well as features like license plate recognition.
And with the new UVC-G4-PTZ camera, you can see clearly in UltraHD resolution with 22x optical zoom, allowing you to see from hundreds of meters away, even at night! These cameras are typically mounted on city buildings to monitor traffic and crowded areas.
Room access with UniFi Access
A particularly interesting solution from Ubiquiti for indoor access control is UniFi Access. It is a door access control system developed based on proprietary PoE technology.
The entire UniFi Access system is also controlled via UniFi OS using a browser or mobile app. The access control system includes a master hub (UA-HUB), an NFC card reader (Access Reader Lite) and an NFC card reader with screen and two-way communication capability (Access Reader Pro). An optional UVC-G3-Flex video camera can be connected for additional image or video recording capabilities while reading NFC cards.
The Access Hub can control the door opener with various settings and schedules. Sirens, fire alarms, and sensors can also be connected to the Access Hub.
Our access system at Batna24 consists of 2 Access Hubs, meaning access is to 2 doors. One door gives access to the archive where important documents are stored, and restricted access is a must in this room. In addition to restricted access, we also have a full event log containing information on who entered the room and when.
The second access-controlled door is located at the main entrance of the building, where employees with NFC access cards can pass through. However, Access Reader Pro allows couriers or visitors to establish a video connection with two lines of communication, and the access control administrator can open the door using a mobile app.
Summary
We've never regretted installing Ubiquiti devices and we're about to explain why. The biggest advantage is that all devices can be managed and configured from a single UniFi OS, without having to be physically near the devices. With the USW-Pro-Aggregation switch, all of our switches have tremendous bandwidth over fiber.
Even at the network design stage, using the UniFi Design Center tool, we knew exactly how much and what kind of equipment we needed and where it was located. In the current configuration, our network consists of 10 switches (48-port and 24-port) with and without PoE, 24 video cameras, 2 video recorders, 11 access points with Wi-Fi 6.However, this does not mean the end of the project, because we have further monitoring projects planned, and the UniFi system allows for easy scalability. There are dozens or hundreds of gigabytes going through the entire system every day, and the hardware handles it perfectly!
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