Pulling heat from the back of the board, behind a chip, is fairly common. Since they are made in a flip chip design where the actual logic is closer to the PCB than the top of the casing you can see , where you would normally attach your heatsink. Because of that, pulling heat through the back of the PCB is surprisingly effective and can make a massive difference.
I thought there might be vias through the board on the exposed copper area behind the the supposed main chip, to improve thermal conduction, but BC didn't mention any.
The grey square is a cermet RF shield. A telematics unit I worked on recently had one bonded to the top of the SoC to cut down on emitted RF. (I had to ask what the heck it was!) As a bonus, they also conduct heat pretty well.
I’m always a huge fan of taking things apart when they are broken. It’s something I’ve done since I was little. It is always fun to try to find the fault.
Now that was lovely and complex, it shows just how far we have come from sitting in trees and throwing feces at passer byes. Thank you BC I enjoyed this video.
RF is an unholy blend of plumbing and witchcraft. I never directly worked on them, but I used to get adjacent to some high power RF transmitters in the past, and also did some mechanical maintenance on some microwave stuff, under direction. Huge respect for people that work in that field.
Why does every high tech end up beeing a combination of witchcraft and plumbing? Rf -> plumbing, Partical accelerators -> plumbing, spacecrafts -> 80% plumbing.....
This is even more accurate given that the 'coax' in high power RF equipment is literally made of copper pipe 😅 Jeff Geerling's video on the radio station is great.
I'm an IT admin and have used Ubiquity products extensively. An excellent value proposition, but their software always feels... immature. There's always a bit of jank in there. Once you finally get something working, never touch the configuration or it will die in a screaming heap. Quite an odd experience compared to other products. Hardware wise, impeccable.
Im a IT admin also and have been using Ubiquiti kit for the last 15yrs. Personally i like their software, the UniFi management console is excellent and its the best kind of price. Free. I also use a lot of Cisco Meraki AP deployments, and i will admit the reporting and features are superb, but then again you would expect so given the price for the licencing.
As a lower budget IT admin, I prefer units that are easily loaded with open firmware to do whatever I want, not locked down gear like Cisco and Ubiqiuity .
Ubiquity devices work great and last long. I have some that are no longer supported by the latest controller software (or at least it says so, I have not tried to see if it would actually work) so I have to use an older version of that. On one hand, the software can sometimes do stupid things, but I really like that the devices basically have Linux inside then and I can ssh into them and run tcpdump or whatever.
@@johndododoe1411 Ubiquiti works great though. So does Mikrotik. Both are not open source though, but while I use Linux based routers for more complicated stuff, Mikrotik routers/switches and Ubiquiti WiFi work great for mess messing around.
Microwave antennas are truly some kind of voodoo magic nowadays. I mean the most exotic ones i knew about in the 90s where butterfly antennas, but about a year ago i discovered a channel showing prototypes for 3d printed 3 dimensional mesh antennas with extreme directionality. And i thought i was the smart kid who can build a Yagi or a HB9CV type antenna.
@@hillppariI haven't noticed that with my ubiquiti equipment, but I only have the larger flying saucer style ones. Rarely even noticeably warm, but they are solid plastic. Cisco APs, such as the 3802, which is a giant chunk of aluminum gets rather toasty on the other hand.
Whoa Clive, quite a surprise! Going in the @mikeselectricstuff direction with different kind of products for teardown, different bench as well. Mikrotik and Ubiquiti are some really fine gear, always appreciated here :).
I got my first ubiquiti router, switch, and APs 2 years ago and love them. They feel powerful for something "consumer grade". It was a bit pricey, but it's been very reliable. Glad to see they are built well.
I've used solid blocks as heatsinks for chip based amps and find they work well for transient power like audio. Lets the chip run warm which can feel weird to our hand but they test really well at a predictable temp. Sitting at eg 35°C might feel warm but the chips like it more than atmospheric 5 to 25c and hot peaks then cold again. At first having these amps that ran 'hot' but sounded great and were stable as, no drift etc (which would be ideal for RF) seemed odd but having them sit at 35 to 40 was way better than having massive temp swings and the cooldown happening once music has gone from a peak back to very quiet. Also in bi and tri amped setups it let the amp chips run at a more unified temp rather than the tweeter amp never getting into range
As the PS4 and XBox incidents both showed, thermal cycling is far more of a danger than most people realize. In some cases, it's better for equipment lifetime to just keep it running and hot 24/7 than to ever shut it down!
Ubiquiti products have always been good value for money. I remember 10 years ago setting up a point to point link between Tenerife and neighbouring island La Gomera using a couple of Ubiquiti dishes (about £70 each) and getting 73Mbps throughput over 34 miles! The same tech is still being used there today to link radio station transmitters on the islands.
@@edc1569Ubiquity gear is expensive and designed to be useless for anyone not locked into their enterprise software, so I doubt it sells in huge numbers to divide the design cost down to cents per unit sold .
In my experience not as much as you might think, but only on the front end. The people assigned to design things like these typically have spent lots and lots of hours in their training and in previous similar designs. That’s where the bulk of the time investment is. In the case of the antenna design, thousands of people have contributed tens of thousands of hours *each* to perfect the sorcery seen here. Compare with some of the simpler, cheaper stuff Clive has laid open for us. If your first reaction was that a not particularly bright eight grade child could have designed it, you might be right.
I fondly forgot all the RF stuff the moment I finished with the exam so many years ago. Great video of a very well engineered device (including the RF bits!)
I do often get impressed by quality of industrial eqipenment some organisation get access to. Its extremely hard for small trader to even hear about good makes, they usualy aren't even available via chains to normal or smaller companies. I have heard about ubiquity in passing, but its nice to see an example and would love to get hands on one seeing how clean power is heat control towards sensitive components etc. SO far only worked with Dreytec and SMC on better grade networking. Thanks for reminding about brand to look into
I just had to open one of these today. Same exact issue (the support broke, rain went into it and corroded everything). I recalled watching it here, so I went back and used this video as a reference. I think I can fix it now. Thanks! :)
Now I feel like I'm getting good value from my home ubuiqui network, including the access point I have in the garden. Slightly sad that that is a £100-£150 AP destroyed through improper usage 😮
Lots of heat is produced in voltage control and monitoring circuits so mounting them on opposite side helps with heat. Also it looks like the board is made to create Faraday cages around a number of components so putting certain parts on the other side of the ground plane of the board would help with that
they are really good bits of kit. we use them a lot at work both APs and switches and they seem to be really well built. the only let down is there software which can be a bit buggy at times but other than that they are well worth the money. I myself have a Amplifi Alien router and its way over kill for what i need but does the job. Its also actively cooled with the fan turning on when the unit gets to 62'C (even though it spent most its time this summer at 50'C). One thing to note is this. turn the brightness of the LEDs down, it's common for the LEDs to go really dim after about a year of use which can be a real pain if you have them installed outside, my guess is that they are driving the LEDs pretty hard at full brightness so a 50-75% brightness level should extend there life a bit more
Wow this was really fascinating. I work as a network engineer and it still blows my mind how all this stuff works. Thanks for the video, I'd love to see some more network device teardowns, maybe one of those wifi smart plugs?
Thanks Clive. So this device actually uses heat-SINKs. In recent times the term 'heat-sink' has come to be used for a radiator rather than a heat-sink proper. Cheers.
Posting this comment through my U6-LR, ES-8-150W, and ERPoe-5. My entire home network is Ubiquiti (except for the Motorola cable modem) and I am extremely happy with it. 👍🏻
Clive, you mentioned copper on the outside of this device. Back in the 20th century, I was on a job that was doing some work for a government agency, but was not the FCC, and, for lack of a better definition, was a shed, made with copper clad panels, and they had copper corner brackets, that had what looked like a copper scouring pad for a restaurant, and this material was placed in the corners behind the corner plates, and the government agency had to have a 100% rf shielded room for sophisticated radio testing. We were not given much information because of the nature of work this agency did, but I'm sure you would have liked to see the actual setup we were dealing with.
I have no clue about RF but it does fascinate me I find it interesting but looks complicated when I have had a look at it on Google etc. It’s always nice to see well built equipment and components but for me it’s the industrial equipment that’s my favourite the chunkier and more robust the better.
Another great video Clive! I thoroughly enjoy your videos and really appreciate the time and effort you put into the channel. I have plenty of other damaged Ubiquiti products that I'd be happy to send your way. Let me know if you're interested.
My home WiFi runs on Ubiquiti hardware. I have an U6 Mesh installed for outdoor duty (Installed upside down - my fault. Fortunately it's in my terrace, under a roof). It works great and has enough range to pretty much cover my entire yard. Ubiquiti APs are essentially setup and forget. You install them and they just work. Unlike most consumer-grade stuff out there.
"Not to worry" and "one moment please" are now parts of my vocabulary on a daily basis. Folks look at me funny, but not to worry, it's all for the best.
Nice ... was looking to buy Ubiquiti for my house ... you helped me decide to go for it :) They're actually quite competitively priced for 'prosumer' units (i.e. aimed at nerds like me).
I use Ubiquity at home simply because it works. It was amazing how much Wi-Fi jank is out there - I spent hundreds of dollars on top end routers with the latest in Wi-Fi and the majority if doesn't work well - some device will barely work with it without a lot of fussing. Replaced it with a Ubquity and all my Wi-Fi problems went away - everything just magically connects with no issues at all. Not having to deal with Wi-Fi issues at all was something I appreciated - life is too short to deal with jank.
Although we use Cisco at work for indoor and outdoor wifi, we use Ubiquiti NanoStations for point-to-point links, I've also got a Unifi access point at home (UAP-AC-PRO) which covers the whole house from one unit sitting in the kitchen cabinet. A lot of bang for the buck.
I have not had great luck with ubiquiti's outdoor stuff. After having 3 AP's fail I went to the much cheaper TP-Link units and so far they have outlived the ubiquiti devices for my application. Mine failed after they had water ingress through where the antenna connected, the o-rings and everything were in place and they were outdoor rated and they only lasted about 1-2 years at most. The units here look like they are better built than the ones that I was sold, probably a much later design ( and I think they learned something about antennas and exposure to weather ), the TP-Link units are similar in the fact that it's all closed except the end that should be the bottom.
I started to run into more and more stability issues with ubiquiti software and made the switch to tp-link omada, it's the only other viable option that doesn't immediately bankrupt me. I've been pleasantly surprised. TP-link has matured a lot over the recent years. The switch has been quite a positive experience. The software and products are at least as capable as ubiquiti and maybe even better. Also tp-link supported ppsk already for quite a while, ubiquiti only just introduced this feature, too little, too late.
Unifi devices are weird to me. I have a few at home. They're super reliable and easy to set up/configure yet they give off a bit of an Apple vibe? Yet I then go looking at Cisco or Ruckus gear and you seem to need degrees and licences and god knows what to make them work. I do like them though. A solid 9/10 rating.
Unifi’s founder and boss Robert Pera is ex-Apple. Apple ignored Pera’s idea of using ubiquitous (geddit?) standard WiFi chipsets for wireless ISP gear to deliver connectivity in rural areas and that’s how Ubiquiti was born.
Those four modules in a row will be the SDR's, one per antenna, or, if SDR functions are done within the Qualcomm main processor, then they could be amplifiers for each of the antennas. Might also explain the heavy metal shrouding around each one... and it would make sense for them to be very close to the qualcomm chip... It's shame the writing was so small on them, since these are arguably part of the secret sauce in Unifi RF kit...
@@dougle03Also, beam forming with multiple antennas to focus on rapidly moving equipment on a stage will probably need some clever SDR logic to constantly adjust signal phases for both direction and signal modulation .
Don't call evrything "SDR", it's quite much a all or nothing in modern technology. SDR is a way to do some processes but isn't a device in it's own. And 4x combined LNA & PA seems very plausible. Likely some serious beam-forming and DSP stuff going on in the big chip next to them.
These types of items should just be classed as a fisher-price activity centre for engineers ... oooh what does this do?... what's that.. what does this taste like?...... ah good memories 😁
there are some old channels devoted to making wifi antennas. some of the shapes and designs are crazy. how they work? nobody knows. they're not as popular anymore because it's very hard to make 5GHz antennas by hand and the cheap 6 antenna routers which get good range out of the box.
Damn! Thanks Big Clive for the look inside. That's some complex engineering for sure. Sheesh! This is just for WiFi? The circuit board looks like an aerial view of Hong Kong or something.
Pretty much every modern router (4+ antennas) looks like that. This one probably has a more powerful processor and RAM and so on compared to the humble TP-Links and Xiaomis I have. Also, it is all rather modular and they probably get to copy paste stuff from reference designs by Qualcomm etc.
@@ZaphodHarkonnen Well.. that the routers takes less than 1 kW to do it's thing is kinda amazing. The stuff going on inside them is wild indeed. Try pulling in a 40 to 80 MHz block and do stuff with it using DSP/SDR techniques, and you would likely find it very demanding!
That's a shame you experience of larger deployments is a little tarnished. I have deployed a few dozen large sites based on Ubiquity solutions and the way the management of the devices is done is of huge beneft to streamlining deployment and ongoing management. If you are managing the config of individual A/P for example, yeah, you can ave a nigtmare, but doing it the smart way via the Ubiquiti Management software is just a superb expereince.
Installed 40 in a church years back and had dropouts, roaming issues, etc. Installed 5 in another church, and same kind of thing. For whatever reason a computer would connect just fine, then hand off to an AP across campus and the signal went to crap. Yes we adjusted all of the threshold values, put them on different channels, and even locked some devices to specific APs. My coworker just convinced my boss to go with ubiquity cameras, 2 sites, 4 nvrs, 120 cameras and everything was going fine until about 6 months after installation. Cameras rebooting, some just go offline, ubiquity AP drops signal to a G4 doorbell.... it's just not made for enterprise. We probably have 1 maybe 2 issues with our Aruba switches and APs a year, if that.
10:06 I opened one of the Nokia PON routers and I found those on top of wifi chips they were just glued with thin double-sided tape They are ceramic heat sinks
Oh wow, I do this thing for a living and lemme tell you about it The empty pad that you saw is actually directly underneath the CPU with lots of ground vias for heat conductivity from below. The 4 little chip is the FEM (front end module) which combines both TX power amplifier and RX LNA, I haven't read the spec for this one yet but judging by the 2 different color, I'd say it's a 2x2 for 2.4GHz and 2x2 for 5GHz (some vendor will combine it so that there's only 2 antenna instead of 4) The black thingy in the base is just an ethernet transformer for isolating it
Spec is 4x4 for 5GHz and 2x2 2.4GHz, but it's possible they operate either dual band in dual 2x2 configuration or single band 4x4. The main SoC (IPQ5018) has a 2x2 radio too, though, so I imagine one pair of those frontends is dual band. If I had to guess I'd say the bottom two.
Yeah Power over Ethernet (PoE) at 1GHz and up needs a cluster of 4 center tapped signal transformers, with the center taps on the cable side extracting (or injecting) the 48V DC running in each twisted pair along with the 100+ MHz AC signal . So each pair carries either plus or minus DC running the 2 wires in parallel and also running 2 pairs (4 wires) in parallel to get enough current capacity to feed 15+ W of phantom power through a signal cable . I'm guessing the top circle is controlled with i2c (2 wires signal, 2 wires power). Lots of magic probably went into shaping those antennas to work with wavelengths of 5 to 13 cm .
Cool to see inside one. Im a Ubiquiti Certified Installer and have been deploying their kit for the last 15yrs. All their stuff is really good quality and also pretty cheap compared to competitors in the market.
@@johndododoe1411 Thats right your guessing. Ubiquiti kit is dead simple to use, one of the reasons why so many people use them for professional grade wifi at home. The phone App means they can be setup by anyone with minimal IT skills and no server side / cloud management needed for simple 2 or 3 AP deployments.
Holy cow Batman, more 6G Death Beams ! Heat sink fins and RF, at this low power, do not play well together. RF 'windows' in the case is clever👍 Thanks Clive, very interesting. , ;)
Never had a problem with any Ubiquiti installations. Once you get the knack for the quirky installation process it's a cinch. Would be hard for the average user though.
That first ic, next to the rj45 is probably the PoE controller that handles the initial detection and classification with the PSE injector. Everything else comes after that.
Please do a teardown/fault analysis of their U6-Enterprise or U6-Pro access points, the ones that arc/spark when grounded. Hunt for "u6-pro sparks" and the forum post (with video) should be the first hit. Yep, top quality hardware design alright! 😂
The Qualcomm QCN9024 is the 5GHz Radio PHY chip. The chip under the grey block is the Qualcomm IPQ5018 SoC. It has CPU and a 2.4GHz Radio PHY in it. The 4 little chips next to the antenna connectors are the FEM (Front End Modules) from what I understand. Ethernet is also handled by the IPQ5018. Qualcomm is one of the best manufacturers when it comes to WiFi. That one big chip could either be Flash or RAM. Maybe something different. That's all I know about APs. Sidenote: the U6-Mesh and the U6-PROFESSIONAL share the same hardware. Also counts for the u6-inwall. I have 2 U6-PROFESSIONAL APs at home and 2 are at work. They work great except one of them at work seems to have kicked the bucket (still troubleshooting not sure yet)
Way above my paygrade, but fascinating none the less. I'd like to be able to understand the rf antenna stuff but the ol' brain goes nope. Cheers Clive. ✌🇦🇺
That unit REALLY exudes "the essence of unrepairability"! (But luckily most Ubiquity kit is highly reliable). The only way you could design those antennas would be using a dedicated antenna simulator like CENOS or IE3D - and the heat sinking would also need a similar thermal cooling simulation package. I don't think I would have enjoyed being the production manager on that particular product. 😐
I collect boards like this and pin them to my "technology wall" as engineering works of art. Forget the RF voodoo.There's like the power of 100 IBM PCs on that little board.
reminds me a lot teardowns of early and pioneering electronic and electric products that are so overbuilt then years or decades later, can be made cheaper doing without the expensive parts.
Had a NanoStation which suffered the same fate, completly filled with rain water. I drained it (water was black), rinsed the board in the sink and let it dry. Afterwards i re-soldered the leg of the Buck-Converter which was gone due to corossion and the damn thing worked again!
@@dougle03 similar - was installing unifi for a while then went through UDM upgrades that bricked the devices ended up buying one to set up with the latest updates and transplanting into sites coupled with suppy issues during the [andemic and after - moved to TPLink Omada, better support, warranty and availability
@@MrBrax yeah I will say Ubiquiti's stuff is not as effortless as it used to be/or rather seem, and as WiFi standards have advanced more issues have cropped up; I do like the more granular configuration options provided by other vendors even though UniFi's radios themselves seem well considered/engineered; I'm quite happy with Unifi in a home environment or very small deployments, but I'm mostly a novice to it all
Actually corrosion is a lot less of an issue than most ppl think. I repair corroded stuff rather often & although heavy corrosion does usually require specialized chemicals & procedures, sometimes all it takes is a small burnisher, Qtips & brushes. (in this case it looked like 3 or 4 components might need to be replaced near the LAN port, but other than that it looks wholly fixable. The missing ribbon cable connection would be irritating but still replaceable. I think it's still fixible even after your tear down. The pads you were removing come in 5 varieties, Non-reinforced, reinforced, Phase-Change & Solid. Both the non & reinforced are usually a very oily form of silicone with a nano powder that is thermally, but (not electricly) conductive metal inside. The reinforced also has a thin silica or fiberglass gauze inside to give it more rigidity. The solid is usually ceramic like & would usually also have putty on that other end, but to make it removable it looks to sit pretty flush against the heatsink & the heatsink to the case to not be an issue. The other solid varient is a thermal epoxy which is either 2-part, or a solid sheet that you expose to UV that wil melt enough to bond 2 surfaces together (similar to a UV 3D Printer would use) The last, Phase Change Material is like the gallium metal used as thermal paste for the main processor of the Playstation5, in that it is solid at one temp & only liquifies under heat, but unlike most materials the more heat you apply the tighter molecular cohesion htey have with itself. So it holds onto the surface & itself instead of melting everywhere. As for the wireless antennas- the shape, total length, length between turns & the # of turns all matter with regard to the kind of signal you are trying to transmit or receive. The lane tracings are wide becaust it increases the total bandwidth it can transmit at.
Although that's true, as long as there isn't corrosion within the package itself (which you can usually tell by measuring it's values through either a tester or oscilliscope, I usually use a process that removes the corrosion, then give it a good cleaning, protect areas that could short & re-electroplate it. If the lane traces are gone I can usually use a 128th" drill bit (& CAD machining) to cut just below where the trace was (depending on if it's a multi-layer board or not) & fill it with graphite & e-electroplate it.
The bit that is incredibly interesting about those weird shaped antenna, including the ones that are on/in PCBs made out of trace material, is that those weird folded over F shapes actually form a capacitor/inductor with the trace/antenna material around it which, especially at those higher frequency where the amount and shape of solder on a joint matters, are vital the the proper and efficient operation of the antenna as a radiator/receiver. Though I do agree, RF voodoo is weird. I am of the opinion to become an RF technician one must sacrifice a chicken over ones tool bags as the last step in training......
I have all ubiquity stuff in my house, and while I don't have that exact access point, the ones I do have get very warm. I had to replace one recently because it stopped performing well.
I've used Ubiquiti products extensively at customer locations in my IT business. Not just their WiFi items but cameras, networking and proximity control as well. Always well built and reasonably priced (especially since their competitors generally charge ongoing license fees). However it is well known that their support organization sucks. So if you have a problem, you are on your own.
I work for an ISP and misconfigured antennas near properties cause so much grief and customer call outs. We even have kit to narrow down rogue access points so those users can configure them correctly to stop interference to others
FREE WI-FI: Which sitcom was it, where a character was choosing from a fast food restaurant menu, and they chose the "Free Wi-Fi" ....... "I'll have the free whiffy!" 🤣
The round base with the round circuit board and the ethernet connector contains what looks like buck regulator circuitry to drop the 48v to 52v POE voltages to something more suitable like 5v or 3.3v.
I read recently that chip numbers are easier to read/photo through a polarised filter. Not been able to try it yet, but thought to mention it here cos it sounds very plausible
I have some ubiquiti devices, an AP and a PoE switch, very are good in many ways, but software quality has been going down I think, and they have been doing the corporate thing of announcing/making bad changes and only backtracking after major pushback. And you can just do it locally, but they do really push you to use the cloud and app (terrible idea for regular home (smart) devices, much worse when it is the infrastructure of your network…). Probably will go with MikroTik or whatever it is called next time.
That first side around what I guess is the back of the main processor looks like a little city, very cool. I'm thinking the weight of the heatsink is twofold, one to disipate heat but I think also to add weight as with many products people think something expensive should feel weighty, just my opinion on that last bit though.
What a great find, you deserve a special thanks for bringing it to your channel, you could have just let it lay in the garbage. With all that heat dispersal apparatus, I wonder how much power one of those use, of course they are restricted by regulations on the power they emit.
I had something similar happened with the Wi-Fi access point one of many I had installed at a condo facility. A painter had removed an access point from the mounting arm and then re installed it upside down of course this allowed rain to enter and completely destroy it. destroyed it
A while ago I designed a small radio telescope that uses old sky dishes. I tried designing a helical antenna to increase sensitivity and reduce noise, All I ended up with was a 120dB headache. In the end I found a double helix antenna off the shelf that was suitable and off the shelf LNA and down converter. Unfortunately I do not own the IP for that otherwise I would share it here.
Aww, I was most curious about the individual transmit/receive chips. I figure half of them are running at 5.8ghz and the other half at 2.4ghz, that's why you're seeing pairs of matching antenna shapes between each side. I
Ubiquity is a good balance of performance for cost (high end prosumer/low end professional.) I'd bet a Cisco or Aruba outdoor device wouldn't have the ingress problem.
Pulling heat from the back of the board, behind a chip, is fairly common. Since they are made in a flip chip design where the actual logic is closer to the PCB than the top of the casing you can see , where you would normally attach your heatsink. Because of that, pulling heat through the back of the PCB is surprisingly effective and can make a massive difference.
Particularly true for ceramic body chips.
I thought there might be vias through the board on the exposed copper area behind the the supposed main chip, to improve thermal conduction, but BC didn't mention any.
Even without understanding the complexity of the circuitry and RF black magic, it’s still fun to see such a well engineered product.
BUT WHERE'S THE REVERSE ENGINEERED SCHEMATIC?
The grey square is a cermet RF shield.
A telematics unit I worked on recently had one bonded to the top of the SoC to cut down on emitted RF. (I had to ask what the heck it was!)
As a bonus, they also conduct heat pretty well.
I’m always a huge fan of taking things apart when they are broken. It’s something I’ve done since I was little. It is always fun to try to find the fault.
Now that was lovely and complex, it shows just how far we have come from sitting in trees and throwing feces at passer byes. Thank you BC I enjoyed this video.
RF is an unholy blend of plumbing and witchcraft. I never directly worked on them, but I used to get adjacent to some high power RF transmitters in the past, and also did some mechanical maintenance on some microwave stuff, under direction. Huge respect for people that work in that field.
Why does every high tech end up beeing a combination of witchcraft and plumbing? Rf -> plumbing, Partical accelerators -> plumbing, spacecrafts -> 80% plumbing.....
@@clockworkvanhellsing372Waveguides maybe?
@@clockworkvanhellsing372 That's why plumbers charge so much for their services.
@@clockworkvanhellsing372 It’s obvious if you think about it, you need pipes to move the magic about.
This is even more accurate given that the 'coax' in high power RF equipment is literally made of copper pipe 😅
Jeff Geerling's video on the radio station is great.
Ubiquiti produces really nice gear. I am not at all surprised about the complexity of the engineering of their products.
I'm an IT admin and have used Ubiquity products extensively. An excellent value proposition, but their software always feels... immature. There's always a bit of jank in there. Once you finally get something working, never touch the configuration or it will die in a screaming heap. Quite an odd experience compared to other products. Hardware wise, impeccable.
Your thoughts on their software are echoed by others. It seems to be the weak point.
Im a IT admin also and have been using Ubiquiti kit for the last 15yrs. Personally i like their software, the UniFi management console is excellent and its the best kind of price. Free. I also use a lot of Cisco Meraki AP deployments, and i will admit the reporting and features are superb, but then again you would expect so given the price for the licencing.
As a lower budget IT admin, I prefer units that are easily loaded with open firmware to do whatever I want, not locked down gear like Cisco and Ubiqiuity .
Ubiquity devices work great and last long. I have some that are no longer supported by the latest controller software (or at least it says so, I have not tried to see if it would actually work) so I have to use an older version of that. On one hand, the software can sometimes do stupid things, but I really like that the devices basically have Linux inside then and I can ssh into them and run tcpdump or whatever.
@@johndododoe1411 Ubiquiti works great though. So does Mikrotik. Both are not open source though, but while I use Linux based routers for more complicated stuff, Mikrotik routers/switches and Ubiquiti WiFi work great for mess messing around.
My home and most of my clients use Ubiquiti. Well engineered and last long. Nice apps for mobile too.
We use it too. UISP is handy, good products. We have microtik and ubiquity all over the place here
The beam forming multi-phased array antennas on these are especially cool tech.
Microwave antennas are truly some kind of voodoo magic nowadays. I mean the most exotic ones i knew about in the 90s where butterfly antennas, but about a year ago i discovered a channel showing prototypes for 3d printed 3 dimensional mesh antennas with extreme directionality.
And i thought i was the smart kid who can build a Yagi or a HB9CV type antenna.
I use Ubiquity at home, total overkill but very well engineered and reliable.
they run quite hot so keep some airgap to your ceiling
I've got a U6 Pro. Totally worth the investment purely due to the reliability. It's never required a reboot.
Unfortunately the quality of their software is absolutely dreadful.
@@hillppariI haven't noticed that with my ubiquiti equipment, but I only have the larger flying saucer style ones. Rarely even noticeably warm, but they are solid plastic. Cisco APs, such as the 3802, which is a giant chunk of aluminum gets rather toasty on the other hand.
@@milhousevhnever had any issues.
Whoa Clive, quite a surprise! Going in the @mikeselectricstuff direction with different kind of products for teardown, different bench as well. Mikrotik and Ubiquiti are some really fine gear, always appreciated here :).
I got my first ubiquiti router, switch, and APs 2 years ago and love them. They feel powerful for something "consumer grade". It was a bit pricey, but it's been very reliable. Glad to see they are built well.
Ubiquiti is nice kit and I've had the pleasure of working with many of their devices. The fixed wireless tower APs and subscriber modules are fun.
I've used solid blocks as heatsinks for chip based amps and find they work well for transient power like audio.
Lets the chip run warm which can feel weird to our hand but they test really well at a predictable temp.
Sitting at eg 35°C might feel warm but the chips like it more than atmospheric 5 to 25c and hot peaks then cold again.
At first having these amps that ran 'hot' but sounded great and were stable as, no drift etc (which would be ideal for RF) seemed odd but having them sit at 35 to 40 was way better than having massive temp swings and the cooldown happening once music has gone from a peak back to very quiet.
Also in bi and tri amped setups it let the amp chips run at a more unified temp rather than the tweeter amp never getting into range
As the PS4 and XBox incidents both showed, thermal cycling is far more of a danger than most people realize. In some cases, it's better for equipment lifetime to just keep it running and hot 24/7 than to ever shut it down!
Ubiquiti products have always been good value for money. I remember 10 years ago setting up a point to point link between Tenerife and neighbouring island La Gomera using a couple of Ubiquiti dishes (about £70 each) and getting 73Mbps throughput over 34 miles! The same tech is still being used there today to link radio station transmitters on the islands.
Yeah, I do like their PowerBeam/NanoBeam kit, not a fan of the UniFi based stuff though...
It really makes you wonder how much time is used up in engineering to get something like that to fit into such a small space.
Its soo small and still is pretty powerfull, all inside a cilinder
Seconds per unit sold luckily.
@@edc1569Ubiquity gear is expensive and designed to be useless for anyone not locked into their enterprise software, so I doubt it sells in huge numbers to divide the design cost down to cents per unit sold .
In my experience not as much as you might think, but only on the front end. The people assigned to design things like these typically have spent lots and lots of hours in their training and in previous similar designs. That’s where the bulk of the time investment is. In the case of the antenna design, thousands of people have contributed tens of thousands of hours *each* to perfect the sorcery seen here.
Compare with some of the simpler, cheaper stuff Clive has laid open for us. If your first reaction was that a not particularly bright eight grade child could have designed it, you might be right.
High six, low Seven figures of NRE
I fondly forgot all the RF stuff the moment I finished with the exam so many years ago.
Great video of a very well engineered device (including the RF bits!)
I do often get impressed by quality of industrial eqipenment some organisation get access to.
Its extremely hard for small trader to even hear about good makes, they usualy aren't even available via chains to normal or smaller companies. I have heard about ubiquity in passing, but its nice to see an example and would love to get hands on one seeing how clean power is heat control towards sensitive components etc. SO far only worked with Dreytec and SMC on better grade networking.
Thanks for reminding about brand to look into
I just had to open one of these today. Same exact issue (the support broke, rain went into it and corroded everything).
I recalled watching it here, so I went back and used this video as a reference.
I think I can fix it now. Thanks! :)
Now I feel like I'm getting good value from my home ubuiqui network, including the access point I have in the garden. Slightly sad that that is a £100-£150 AP destroyed through improper usage 😮
£173 including VAT on their website. Well-designed and constructed product for that money.
Lots of heat is produced in voltage control and monitoring circuits so mounting them on opposite side helps with heat. Also it looks like the board is made to create Faraday cages around a number of components so putting certain parts on the other side of the ground plane of the board would help with that
You say this was rain damaged? In Scotland! I don't believe you 😂
they are really good bits of kit.
we use them a lot at work both APs and switches and they seem to be really well built. the only let down is there software which can be a bit buggy at times but other than that they are well worth the money.
I myself have a Amplifi Alien router and its way over kill for what i need but does the job. Its also actively cooled with the fan turning on when the unit gets to 62'C (even though it spent most its time this summer at 50'C).
One thing to note is this. turn the brightness of the LEDs down, it's common for the LEDs to go really dim after about a year of use which can be a real pain if you have them installed outside, my guess is that they are driving the LEDs pretty hard at full brightness so a 50-75% brightness level should extend there life a bit more
Wow this was really fascinating. I work as a network engineer and it still blows my mind how all this stuff works. Thanks for the video, I'd love to see some more network device teardowns, maybe one of those wifi smart plugs?
Wow! What a fascinating and well engineered piece of kit! Thanks so much for sharing your exploration of it with us.
Puts the home Wi-Fi nodes to shame. You get what you pay for, I suppose. That node does look very well made and quite intricate. Good post, thank you.
Thanks Clive. So this device actually uses heat-SINKs. In recent times the term 'heat-sink' has come to be used for a radiator rather than a heat-sink proper. Cheers.
Posting this comment through my U6-LR, ES-8-150W, and ERPoe-5. My entire home network is Ubiquiti (except for the Motorola cable modem) and I am extremely happy with it. 👍🏻
Clive, you mentioned copper on the outside of this device. Back in the 20th century, I was on a job that was doing some work for a government agency, but was not the FCC, and, for lack of a better definition, was a shed, made with copper clad panels, and they had copper corner brackets, that had what looked like a copper scouring pad for a restaurant, and this material was placed in the corners behind the corner plates, and the government agency had to have a 100% rf shielded room for sophisticated radio testing. We were not given much information because of the nature of work this agency did, but I'm sure you would have liked to see the actual setup we were dealing with.
I have no clue about RF but it does fascinate me I find it interesting but looks complicated when I have had a look at it on Google etc.
It’s always nice to see well built equipment and components but for me it’s the industrial equipment that’s my favourite the chunkier and more robust the better.
Another great video Clive! I thoroughly enjoy your videos and really appreciate the time and effort you put into the channel. I have plenty of other damaged Ubiquiti products that I'd be happy to send your way. Let me know if you're interested.
My home WiFi runs on Ubiquiti hardware. I have an U6 Mesh installed for outdoor duty (Installed upside down - my fault. Fortunately it's in my terrace, under a roof). It works great and has enough range to pretty much cover my entire yard.
Ubiquiti APs are essentially setup and forget. You install them and they just work. Unlike most consumer-grade stuff out there.
"Not to worry" and "one moment please" are now parts of my vocabulary on a daily basis. Folks look at me funny, but not to worry, it's all for the best.
Nice ... was looking to buy Ubiquiti for my house ... you helped me decide to go for it :) They're actually quite competitively priced for 'prosumer' units (i.e. aimed at nerds like me).
I use Ubiquity at home simply because it works. It was amazing how much Wi-Fi jank is out there - I spent hundreds of dollars on top end routers with the latest in Wi-Fi and the majority if doesn't work well - some device will barely work with it without a lot of fussing. Replaced it with a Ubquity and all my Wi-Fi problems went away - everything just magically connects with no issues at all. Not having to deal with Wi-Fi issues at all was something I appreciated - life is too short to deal with jank.
Do not let this man near a hospital!
"Well this device keeps people alive, lets take it apart!"
A tecnologia embutida é uma coisa absurda! Obrigado pelo vídeo.
É uma construção muito impressionante.
Although we use Cisco at work for indoor and outdoor wifi, we use Ubiquiti NanoStations for point-to-point links, I've also got a Unifi access point at home (UAP-AC-PRO) which covers the whole house from one unit sitting in the kitchen cabinet. A lot of bang for the buck.
Never seen inside one before...very neat!
I have not had great luck with ubiquiti's outdoor stuff. After having 3 AP's fail I went to the much cheaper TP-Link units and so far they have outlived the ubiquiti devices for my application. Mine failed after they had water ingress through where the antenna connected, the o-rings and everything were in place and they were outdoor rated and they only lasted about 1-2 years at most. The units here look like they are better built than the ones that I was sold, probably a much later design ( and I think they learned something about antennas and exposure to weather ), the TP-Link units are similar in the fact that it's all closed except the end that should be the bottom.
When I worked at an ISP and we had to provide internet for outdoor events we had great luck with Ubiquiti radios.
These are relatively new products, quite cool to see a (relatively violent) teardown! Purchased a few just last week, funny coincidence!
Does anyone else find well-built gear kinda sexy. Proper engineering is such a beautiful thing.
I started to run into more and more stability issues with ubiquiti software and made the switch to tp-link omada, it's the only other viable option that doesn't immediately bankrupt me. I've been pleasantly surprised. TP-link has matured a lot over the recent years. The switch has been quite a positive experience. The software and products are at least as capable as ubiquiti and maybe even better. Also tp-link supported ppsk already for quite a while, ubiquiti only just introduced this feature, too little, too late.
Awesome bit of kit there BC! That would have been a costly mistake for someone!
Unifi devices are weird to me. I have a few at home. They're super reliable and easy to set up/configure yet they give off a bit of an Apple vibe? Yet I then go looking at Cisco or Ruckus gear and you seem to need degrees and licences and god knows what to make them work. I do like them though. A solid 9/10 rating.
Unifi comes from Apple I think. Apple used to have the Airport or some such Wi-Fi device.
Some apple guys left to setup unifi, clue was always their packaging.
Unifi’s founder and boss Robert Pera is ex-Apple. Apple ignored Pera’s idea of using ubiquitous (geddit?) standard WiFi chipsets for wireless ISP gear to deliver connectivity in rural areas and that’s how Ubiquiti was born.
@@andreacoppini Well today I learned! Thanks for this neat factoid!
Those four modules in a row will be the SDR's, one per antenna, or, if SDR functions are done within the Qualcomm main processor, then they could be amplifiers for each of the antennas. Might also explain the heavy metal shrouding around each one... and it would make sense for them to be very close to the qualcomm chip... It's shame the writing was so small on them, since these are arguably part of the secret sauce in Unifi RF kit...
SDR? Those should be PA's and LNA's if anything. The Qualcomm chip you're referring to would be the WiFi radio chip.
There’s not going to be any SDR going on in these things, this is commodity hardware with specifically engineered silicon.
@@edc1569 No SDR ehhh, good luck finding the crystals then... Of course there is a number of SDR's in all modern RF equipment.
@@dougle03Also, beam forming with multiple antennas to focus on rapidly moving equipment on a stage will probably need some clever SDR logic to constantly adjust signal phases for both direction and signal modulation .
Don't call evrything "SDR", it's quite much a all or nothing in modern technology. SDR is a way to do some processes but isn't a device in it's own.
And 4x combined LNA & PA seems very plausible.
Likely some serious beam-forming and DSP stuff going on in the big chip next to them.
These types of items should just be classed as a fisher-price activity centre for engineers ... oooh what does this do?... what's that.. what does this taste like?...... ah good memories 😁
there are some old channels devoted to making wifi antennas. some of the shapes and designs are crazy. how they work? nobody knows. they're not as popular anymore because it's very hard to make 5GHz antennas by hand and the cheap 6 antenna routers which get good range out of the box.
Damn! Thanks Big Clive for the look inside. That's some complex engineering for sure.
Sheesh! This is just for WiFi? The circuit board looks like an aerial view of Hong Kong or something.
Modern wifi standards are insane. We’re so far beyond 802.11b it’s hard to believe any of it can work let alone work as well as it does.
Pretty much every modern router (4+ antennas) looks like that. This one probably has a more powerful processor and RAM and so on compared to the humble TP-Links and Xiaomis I have. Also, it is all rather modular and they probably get to copy paste stuff from reference designs by Qualcomm etc.
You should look at an old Ruckus AP or one of the high end ones. That BeamFlex antenna system looks like a miniaturised New York skyline
@@ZaphodHarkonnen Well.. that the routers takes less than 1 kW to do it's thing is kinda amazing. The stuff going on inside them is wild indeed.
Try pulling in a 40 to 80 MHz block and do stuff with it using DSP/SDR techniques, and you would likely find it very demanding!
@@andreacoppini Pretty cool.
We've had a lot of problems with ubiquity. Seems to work great for small businesses with one or two APs, but anything bigger just becomes a nightmare
That's a shame you experience of larger deployments is a little tarnished. I have deployed a few dozen large sites based on Ubiquity solutions and the way the management of the devices is done is of huge beneft to streamlining deployment and ongoing management.
If you are managing the config of individual A/P for example, yeah, you can ave a nigtmare, but doing it the smart way via the Ubiquiti Management software is just a superb expereince.
From experience they hit a bad patch with firmwares a couple of years ago and are slowly recovering reliability from that.
Explain nightmare ?. I have some campus deployments with 80+ UniFi's and they all work superb.
Installed 40 in a church years back and had dropouts, roaming issues, etc. Installed 5 in another church, and same kind of thing. For whatever reason a computer would connect just fine, then hand off to an AP across campus and the signal went to crap. Yes we adjusted all of the threshold values, put them on different channels, and even locked some devices to specific APs. My coworker just convinced my boss to go with ubiquity cameras, 2 sites, 4 nvrs, 120 cameras and everything was going fine until about 6 months after installation. Cameras rebooting, some just go offline, ubiquity AP drops signal to a G4 doorbell.... it's just not made for enterprise. We probably have 1 maybe 2 issues with our Aruba switches and APs a year, if that.
@@CorollaGTSSRX Possibly a silly question but what does a church need 40 network access points for?
10:06 I opened one of the Nokia PON routers and I found those on top of wifi chips they were just glued with thin double-sided tape
They are ceramic heat sinks
Oh wow, I do this thing for a living and lemme tell you about it
The empty pad that you saw is actually directly underneath the CPU with lots of ground vias for heat conductivity from below.
The 4 little chip is the FEM (front end module) which combines both TX power amplifier and RX LNA, I haven't read the spec for this one yet but judging by the 2 different color, I'd say it's a 2x2 for 2.4GHz and 2x2 for 5GHz (some vendor will combine it so that there's only 2 antenna instead of 4)
The black thingy in the base is just an ethernet transformer for isolating it
Spec is 4x4 for 5GHz and 2x2 2.4GHz, but it's possible they operate either dual band in dual 2x2 configuration or single band 4x4. The main SoC (IPQ5018) has a 2x2 radio too, though, so I imagine one pair of those frontends is dual band. If I had to guess I'd say the bottom two.
Yeah Power over Ethernet (PoE) at 1GHz and up needs a cluster of 4 center tapped signal transformers, with the center taps on the cable side extracting (or injecting) the 48V DC running in each twisted pair along with the 100+ MHz AC signal . So each pair carries either plus or minus DC running the 2 wires in parallel and also running 2 pairs (4 wires) in parallel to get enough current capacity to feed 15+ W of phantom power through a signal cable .
I'm guessing the top circle is controlled with i2c (2 wires signal, 2 wires power).
Lots of magic probably went into shaping those antennas to work with wavelengths of 5 to 13 cm .
Cool to see inside one. Im a Ubiquiti Certified Installer and have been deploying their kit for the last 15yrs. All their stuff is really good quality and also pretty cheap compared to competitors in the market.
I'm guessing they have caught the Cisco disease and become useless to those not taking their brand specific training .
@@johndododoe1411 Thats right your guessing. Ubiquiti kit is dead simple to use, one of the reasons why so many people use them for professional grade wifi at home. The phone App means they can be setup by anyone with minimal IT skills and no server side / cloud management needed for simple 2 or 3 AP deployments.
@@dj_paultuk7052 But it cannot be updated with open firmware .
@@johndododoe1411 Quite a lot of it can, actually. That which currently cannot, well, donate some to a developer, they might make it happen.
Holy cow Batman, more 6G Death Beams !
Heat sink fins and RF, at this low power, do not play well together. RF 'windows' in the case is clever👍
Thanks Clive, very interesting.
, ;)
Never had a problem with any Ubiquiti installations. Once you get the knack for the quirky installation process it's a cinch. Would be hard for the average user though.
That first ic, next to the rj45 is probably the PoE controller that handles the initial detection and classification with the PSE injector. Everything else comes after that.
im a big fan of ubiquiti. it has a really detailed dashbord. provides a ton of easy to process information about what's happening on your network.
Nice to know how to open…might try to 3d a new asking to help it cool. Since Inly use indoors. These run hot!
Please do a teardown/fault analysis of their U6-Enterprise or U6-Pro access points, the ones that arc/spark when grounded. Hunt for "u6-pro sparks" and the forum post (with video) should be the first hit. Yep, top quality hardware design alright! 😂
The Qualcomm QCN9024 is the 5GHz Radio PHY chip. The chip under the grey block is the Qualcomm IPQ5018 SoC. It has CPU and a 2.4GHz Radio PHY in it. The 4 little chips next to the antenna connectors are the FEM (Front End Modules) from what I understand. Ethernet is also handled by the IPQ5018. Qualcomm is one of the best manufacturers when it comes to WiFi.
That one big chip could either be Flash or RAM. Maybe something different.
That's all I know about APs.
Sidenote: the U6-Mesh and the U6-PROFESSIONAL share the same hardware. Also counts for the u6-inwall.
I have 2 U6-PROFESSIONAL APs at home and 2 are at work. They work great except one of them at work seems to have kicked the bucket (still troubleshooting not sure yet)
So an update on the Access Point at work: it is fine and still working well. I don't know what the precise problem was either...
Way above my paygrade, but fascinating none the less. I'd like to be able to understand the rf antenna stuff but the ol' brain goes nope. Cheers Clive. ✌🇦🇺
I wonder what happened to Cambium networks? I used to work for them but haven't seen any of their stuff around for years.
That unit REALLY exudes "the essence of unrepairability"! (But luckily most Ubiquity kit is highly reliable). The only way you could design those antennas would be using a dedicated antenna simulator like CENOS or IE3D - and the heat sinking would also need a similar thermal cooling simulation package. I don't think I would have enjoyed being the production manager on that particular product. 😐
I work with ubiquity products everyday almost. Works great in our applications. Never used that product though.
I collect boards like this and pin them to my "technology wall" as engineering works of art.
Forget the RF voodoo.There's like the power of 100 IBM PCs on that little board.
reminds me a lot teardowns of early and pioneering electronic and electric products that are so overbuilt then years or decades later, can be made cheaper doing without the expensive parts.
Had a NanoStation which suffered the same fate, completly filled with rain water.
I drained it (water was black), rinsed the board in the sink and let it dry. Afterwards i re-soldered the leg of the Buck-Converter which was gone due to corossion and the damn thing worked again!
Yeah the design complexity doesn't surprise me Ubiquiti has the best designed consumer/office APs, i'm not always happy with their software
I stopped using their kit because of their cavalier approach to software updates that for a time borked hardware... Got tired of it...
Totally understand you! The hardware ist superb most of the time but the software has quite a lot of hickups
@@dougle03 similar - was installing unifi for a while then went through UDM upgrades that bricked the devices
ended up buying one to set up with the latest updates and transplanting into sites
coupled with suppy issues during the [andemic and after - moved to TPLink Omada, better support, warranty and availability
Ehhh nah not really. We're switching to cisco now coming from ubiquiti plagued with issues and questionable feature sets
@@MrBrax yeah I will say Ubiquiti's stuff is not as effortless as it used to be/or rather seem, and as WiFi standards have advanced more issues have cropped up; I do like the more granular configuration options provided by other vendors even though UniFi's radios themselves seem well considered/engineered; I'm quite happy with Unifi in a home environment or very small deployments, but I'm mostly a novice to it all
Actually corrosion is a lot less of an issue than most ppl think. I repair corroded stuff rather often & although heavy corrosion does usually require specialized chemicals & procedures, sometimes all it takes is a small burnisher, Qtips & brushes. (in this case it looked like 3 or 4 components might need to be replaced near the LAN port, but other than that it looks wholly fixable. The missing ribbon cable connection would be irritating but still replaceable. I think it's still fixible even after your tear down.
The pads you were removing come in 5 varieties, Non-reinforced, reinforced, Phase-Change & Solid. Both the non & reinforced are usually a very oily form of silicone with a nano powder that is thermally, but (not electricly) conductive metal inside. The reinforced also has a thin silica or fiberglass gauze inside to give it more rigidity. The solid is usually ceramic like & would usually also have putty on that other end, but to make it removable it looks to sit pretty flush against the heatsink & the heatsink to the case to not be an issue. The other solid varient is a thermal epoxy which is either 2-part, or a solid sheet that you expose to UV that wil melt enough to bond 2 surfaces together (similar to a UV 3D Printer would use) The last, Phase Change Material is like the gallium metal used as thermal paste for the main processor of the Playstation5, in that it is solid at one temp & only liquifies under heat, but unlike most materials the more heat you apply the tighter molecular cohesion htey have with itself. So it holds onto the surface & itself instead of melting everywhere.
As for the wireless antennas- the shape, total length, length between turns & the # of turns all matter with regard to the kind of signal you are trying to transmit or receive. The lane tracings are wide becaust it increases the total bandwidth it can transmit at.
There was corrosion around dense circuitry too. With SMD components a little corrosion is a lot.
Although that's true, as long as there isn't corrosion within the package itself (which you can usually tell by measuring it's values through either a tester or oscilliscope, I usually use a process that removes the corrosion, then give it a good cleaning, protect areas that could short & re-electroplate it. If the lane traces are gone I can usually use a 128th" drill bit (& CAD machining) to cut just below where the trace was (depending on if it's a multi-layer board or not) & fill it with graphite & e-electroplate it.
The bit that is incredibly interesting about those weird shaped antenna, including the ones that are on/in PCBs made out of trace material, is that those weird folded over F shapes actually form a capacitor/inductor with the trace/antenna material around it which, especially at those higher frequency where the amount and shape of solder on a joint matters, are vital the the proper and efficient operation of the antenna as a radiator/receiver.
Though I do agree, RF voodoo is weird. I am of the opinion to become an RF technician one must sacrifice a chicken over ones tool bags as the last step in training......
I have all ubiquity stuff in my house, and while I don't have that exact access point, the ones I do have get very warm. I had to replace one recently because it stopped performing well.
Thank you. Keep working, good luck.
Vince the crew chief tried to nibble into the end? He mush have an impressive set of gnashers to chew into that case. 😁
Case as heat sink is clever. Designing case as heat sink and antenna combined, now that would be pure genius. 😀
I'd be really tempted to clean it up and see if I could get it to power back up.
I've used Ubiquiti products extensively at customer locations in my IT business. Not just their WiFi items but cameras, networking and proximity control as well. Always well built and reasonably priced (especially since their competitors generally charge ongoing license fees). However it is well known that their support organization sucks. So if you have a problem, you are on your own.
I work for an ISP and misconfigured antennas near properties cause so much grief and customer call outs. We even have kit to narrow down rogue access points so those users can configure them correctly to stop interference to others
FREE WI-FI: Which sitcom was it, where a character was choosing from a fast food restaurant menu, and they chose the "Free Wi-Fi" ....... "I'll have the free whiffy!" 🤣
One of those is the antenna, the other is actually a bottle opener. They had some space left.
The round base with the round circuit board and the ethernet connector contains what looks like buck regulator circuitry to drop the 48v to 52v POE voltages to something more suitable like 5v or 3.3v.
Ceramic packaging used to be pretty standard on high-end industrial and military specification chips.
Neat. I work with these all the time and have never seen what's inside.
Even plastic can change the impedance of an antenna... so yes RF is black magic! 😂
As long as you keep it a few MM away from the antenna it has minimal impact.
@@edc1569 Enough of a difference people tune their Ed Fong differently when they put it in PVC pipe.
Depends on the type of plastic too.
You Sir are a master of everything electrical. I love all your content. Cheers from Aussie 🦘🦘.
That grey square looks a bit like the ceramic heat spreaders of old CPUs (think 486 era).
I read recently that chip numbers are easier to read/photo through a polarised filter. Not been able to try it yet, but thought to mention it here cos it sounds very plausible
I have some ubiquiti devices, an AP and a PoE switch, very are good in many ways, but software quality has been going down I think, and they have been doing the corporate thing of announcing/making bad changes and only backtracking after major pushback. And you can just do it locally, but they do really push you to use the cloud and app (terrible idea for regular home (smart) devices, much worse when it is the infrastructure of your network…). Probably will go with MikroTik or whatever it is called next time.
That first side around what I guess is the back of the main processor looks like a little city, very cool.
I'm thinking the weight of the heatsink is twofold, one to disipate heat but I think also to add weight as with many products people think something expensive should feel weighty, just my opinion on that last bit though.
That gray block is a ceramic heat sik. I even have some gray finned ceramic heat sinks here.
What a great find, you deserve a special thanks for bringing it to your channel, you could have just let it lay in the garbage.
With all that heat dispersal apparatus, I wonder how much power one of those use, of course they are restricted by regulations on the power they emit.
802.3af - max 15W delivered. In practice I imagine not more than 8-10W average.
I had something similar happened with the Wi-Fi access point one of many I had installed at a condo facility. A painter had removed an access point from the mounting arm and then re installed it upside down of course this allowed rain to enter and completely destroy it. destroyed it
Yeah the heat sink does its job. Even when idle, these things are VERY warm.
Surely things get very warm when the heatsink is not doing its job.
Hey! You For Got The Hand Drawn Schematic!
A while ago I designed a small radio telescope that uses old sky dishes. I tried designing a helical antenna to increase sensitivity and reduce noise, All I ended up with was a 120dB headache. In the end I found a double helix antenna off the shelf that was suitable and off the shelf LNA and down converter. Unfortunately I do not own the IP for that otherwise I would share it here.
Aww, I was most curious about the individual transmit/receive chips. I figure half of them are running at 5.8ghz and the other half at 2.4ghz, that's why you're seeing pairs of matching antenna shapes between each side. I
That is nuts dood!
Ubiquity is a good balance of performance for cost (high end prosumer/low end professional.) I'd bet a Cisco or Aruba outdoor device wouldn't have the ingress problem.