If you don't know much about me, I live on a farm with various buildings that all have the need for cameras and WiFi access points. Earlier this year I was toying with the idea of using an EdgePower 54v unit to power up a UniFi switch in an outdoor cabinet. In a previous blog post, I used an EdgePower 24v to power up an EdgeSwitch 10XP for upgrading my internet connection from a local WISP. However, this new cabinet I chose was small and it needed to support 802.3af/at.

To keep everything within the EdgeOS product family, I could have used the EdgeSwitch 8 150W, but that unit would have been to large, even though it would have supported the PoE standards I needed. Luckily, the Switch 8 Lite PoE was in stock at the time of the project and crucially, it has a barrel plug for the power input, and it can take the power supplied by the EdgePower 54.

The cabinet is from UK company IT-STOCKIST and is very easy to mount the wall, using the screw holes. It has plenty of room for a 7Ah battery, EdgePower and UniFi Switch. Ubiquiti says that only 12v lead acid batteries can be used and this particular unit came from RS Componets and it can run the gear connected for around three hours.

Off of this cabinet, I have two G4 Bullet cameras connected as well as a NanoStation 5AC Loco as the uplink to another building. The EdgePower is connected out to my UISP controller which will email when the mains power goes offline and then show how long it has left on battery backup.

UISP offers solid notifications and information about the power on the EdgePower, you can even specify the Ah battery, enable charging, power cycle the DC output and much more.

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