What do you use for WiFi?

Look it really depends on the context. For me the ability to have custom firmware of my choice comes first. I’ve had enough of hw/appliance vendor stopping patch development 2 years after product shipment. So long term support, although community based is a must. Then come nice things such as running both 2.4Ghz and 5Ghz on the same SSID plus virtualizing them for a guest/IoT SSID…
Hardware-wize, I’ve yet to face any issues both with Assus or Linksys.
Maybe my setups are too small :slight_smile:
Can you tell me what to watch out for?

Cloud not needed for self hosting
You create login locally on server

I have controller in docker with self created dockerfile

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Likewise, you can buy a “Cloud Key” device, which really just runs the UniFi management stack on a small embedded Linux box. (Think something on the scale of a raspberry pi, though the newer ones are more capable.) But even then, you don’t have to use their cloud service.

So you have a choice of: just run the UniFi software on your desktop computer; install it on some LInux server, run the container image, or buy their little appliance.

None of these things require the cloud service.

Also, the components pretty much just run, even without the management software running (unless you depend on it to do some captive portal thing, other fancy subscriber management). So you can configure your UniFi WiFi stuff from your desktop/laptop and then turn off the software.

However, I use the UniFi device tracker component in Home Assistant for presence, and it works really quite well. I run the UniFi management software in a docker container and mostly just ignore it.

It’s amazing how well their hardware works. For just a few dollars more, you can get radio hardware that’s not the cheapest possible thing that you can build and be impressed at how much better it works than commodity products. I’ll never go back.

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Could you explain me why that software is needed at all as I’m a bit confused that one need to run some software stack just to have WiFi in their house? :wink:

The software minimally is used to configure the UniFi access points and UniFi swtiches (if you have them). At that point you don’t need to keep it running at all. It’s also the thing that can push out software updates to your UniFI access points, too. But you can do all these things on demand, rather than being required to run any support software.

However, the UniFi software collects useful information about the usage of your network, which devices are associated, etc. I use this as the basis of presence detection by watching for when my and my wife’s phone connect to the WiFi network. As I have more than one access point, rather than polling each AP, I can just ask the UniFi management software using the component in Home Assistant.

It can also do other stuff to manage QoS, captive portals and other fancy stuff. Of course, if you don’t use or need any of that (and I don’t in my home network), you don’t have to run the UniFi management application.

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cool, thanks.
hope it’s easy to use that HA component if needed.