But on ground floor (in Italy we call ground floor, what is US is first floor) I have R7000 router which is also giving WiFi signal, and covers well.
That is why I was thinking
Ground floor (first floor US): R7000 for ethernet connection and WiFi connection
First Floor (second floor US): AP (connected to R7000 via ethernet), for ethernet connection and WiFi connection
Second floor (third floor US): AP (connected to the AP below wirelessly because now no cabling), for WiFi connection only.
p.s. sorry about confusion on floors, is not my fault if part of the world is not using our system which is the best
Yes correct. 5GHz works only in very short distance and few walls. Please note that in Italy all floors are with concrete and iron, so between floors 5Ghz rarely passes. Also walls there are (each 6,5meters) columns made of concrete and iron, plus bricks between columns … i.e. the 5GHz rarely works between 2 walls, and with one wall in the middle it drops a lot
p.s. again I also do not understand how in the rest of the world you can live in wooden houses (like neandhertals) and not reinforced concrete homes
I’m gonna toss my $0.02 in here for Unifi/Ubiquiti as well. I have a Unifi Security Gateway and a single UAP-AC-PRO in my 1500 square foot house. The outside walls are concrete block, inside is standard US-spec 2x4s and drywall, and I can comfortably get a signal almost a block away on 2.4GHz. Farthest reaches of the backyard get halfway decent 5GHz signal, and this on my Nexus 6P phone.
The controller software runs happily on an RPi right alongside Hass (I did exactly this until I broke down and got a dual Xeon server, as I was wanting to play with Plex as well as Ubiquiti’s video recorder stuff) and really only needs to be running during configuration or if you operate a guest wifi. The Android app does work well, my non-techie son was able to get the whole thing set up without me there in probably 10 minutes. He wouldn’t know a subnet mask if it walked over and bit him.
I’m about to order some ubiquiti gear to hopefully address irritating network issues caused by my router. This has me thinking about a proper server upgrade - current processor is too weak for plex and I’ve now ended up with a couple of mini servers running on pcs picked up from the side of the road and pis to compensate. Can I ask what hardware you went with here and how it’s coping with plex, homeassistant and so on all running on the same hardware.
I’m tempted to leave current server as simple storage and build something to just run all the grunt work but would be nice to reduce the power bills over the longer term.
@BarryHampants
I was running docker containers on Synology RS810:
unifi: low resource use so any hardware is OK
HA: low resource use so any hardware OK
Nginx: low resource use so any hardware OK
mysql: no issues but not sure if this could vary based on use
mosquitto mqtt: low resource use so any hardware
motioneye: caused plex to have issues when transcoding, more cameras use more cpu
Plex: No issues directplay, if plan to transcode you need to look at cpu requirments
motioneye(camera nvr) and plex can use high resources
I run old Dell with intel core 2 duo and it runs motioneye without issue alongside plex
Plex is another issue. If not transcoding it seems anything will do. Transcoding requires a high end processor for high resolution. If your streaming to phone or tablet you can cheat and use low resolution and still achieve good quality.
MP4 doesnt require transcoding on most devices CPU .
My RS810 had passmark around 640. Plex transcoding would bring system to halt
Current Dell with Intel has passmark around 1240 (i think) and this runs OK. Transcoding runs OK for single 1920x1080 stream…great for a few 320x?? mobile streams
I’m currently using an older HP N40L which has a slightly higher average passmark than your RS810 - none of my household devices need transcoding but Plex forces it on synced devices for some reason. I generally use Emby now via Kodi but kids prefer Plex.
Plex library scans and such push the CPU to 100% and even samba seems to max it out now and then. I’m in no hurry so I might think on it for a while and see how things go when my new router is all set up. It’s such a shame I can’t just upgrade the CPU.
I’m sorry I didn’t see your question until now. I’m running a surplus HP Proliant DL380 G6, it came with 16Gb of DDR3 ECC ram and eight 146Gb SAS drives which are running RAID-5 for about 1Tb of storage. It’s almost always around 1% CPU utilization and about 13Gb of free ram. Plex transcoding and encoding DVD rips peg the CPU around 80%.
For around $300 delivered, it’s a check of a machine.
No problem - I ended up getting a second hand HP Elitedesk with an i5, and 16Gb of ram setting that up with Debian. This has been a massive improvement to Plex and Emby. The N40l is pretty much just a NAS now.
