Using Ubiquiti Airmax Omni 5G (AMO-5G) antennas with currently available APs?

[vinylgrrl]

Hi everyone....doing a little research for our -very- rural networking needs and hit a roadblock on this.

We currently have Airmax Omni 5G 13dBi (AMO-5G13) and Omni 5G 10dBi (AMO-5G10) antennas (tech spec sheet linked here) connected to older Unifi 5G outdoor APs (from circa 2015, technically no longer supported but antennas and APs are working just fine). We're working on upgrading our entire network infrastructure (already have a new UCG Ultra and 2 UK-Ultra/Swiss Army knife APs installed), but Ubiquiti doesn't seem to have newer versions of these antennas, which we do need for our use case (large -very- rural land parcel without cell coverage in many areas, so the wifi is for wifi calling/safety while working out in remote areas).

So my question is, could we use our existing antennas with either UK-Ultra AP units or some other type of Unifi outdoor AP? It looks like the 2.4GHz broadcast can be switched off in the UK-Ultra settings to make it a 5GHz-only AP that could be connected to either of these 5GHz antennas....is my thinking way off here?

If anyone has done this successfully or has insight on this idea, I'd appreciate your advice! The antenna connections on the new APs appear to be the same as those on the old units. so I'm reasonably certain we can connect the antennas, but not sure if they'd work properly and provide the same wifi coverage we currently have.

 

[tgl]

Are those existing APs really UniFi, or are they from the UISP (Airmax) product line?

AFAIK, the UniFi line doesn't really intend to replace every use-case that UISP supports, which is why Ubiquiti is still selling UISP products. You might need to buy some newer UISP APs instead of converting over to UniFi. Maybe those antennas will work with a UK-Ultra, but I doubt Ubiquiti considers it a supported configuration.

If you want to go with the UK-Ultra, I'd use one of the antennas that Ubiquiti specifically sells for it, perhaps this one.

 

[Tech9]

UK-Ultra/Swiss Army knife APs

This is a compact indoor/outdoor AP with up to 20dBm (100mW) power. Compatible antenna options are listed in Ubiquiti's website. Will it work with your existing high-gain antennas and provide the coverage needed - something for you to try.

 

[vinylgrrl]

Are those existing APs really UniFi

They're these units (sorry, this was the easiest way I could think of to convey which generation of AP we already have). We bought almost all our Unifi AP5 units secondhand/open-box (the Airmax antennas were purchased new though)....-highly- doubtful that the APs are Airmax/UISP because we couldn't afford that line a decade ago. We also manage all these old AP5s with the old (javascript) Unifi controller software, not anything UISP branded. No issues in the 10+ years we've had the antennas connected to the AP5 units.

You might need to buy some newer UISP APs

Any suggestions here on 5GHz models? Do UISP APs play nice with the UCG Ultra controller? (guessing not, because of course that would be my luck)

one of the antennas that Ubiquiti specifically sells for it, perhaps this one.

We bought those little omni antennas along with the UK-Ultra APs we already purchased (which are in different locations than where we have the Airmax+AP5 mounted...they're also for very different use purposes). They work fine and have decent range, but not the range the Airmax Omni antenna produces.

This is a compact indoor/outdoor AP with up to 20dBm (100mW) power.

Are there other options that might be a better choice? We're not married to the UK-Ultras....as long as we can run it with the UCG-Ultra controller I'm not terribly picky about the model.

We really need the wide outdoor coverage in the current Airmax location for safety (this is pretty much non-negotiable for our use case)...the Airmax antenna has served us really well for basic wifi calling/emergency coverage across 95% of the terrain we need it to cover ever since we mounted it. We're not trying to stream youtube or anything crazy, this is literally so that if someone falls while working and breaks their leg they can call for help, since we don't have cell coverage.

ETA: I found the tech specs for our old AP outdoor5 units (here on page 8) with this excerpt: "Installation Options External antennas are included. You can also connect the UAP-Outdoor+ or UAP-Outdoor5 to a dual‑polarity antenna – an airMAX® Sector or Omni Antenna – to increase gain"

 

[tgl]

ETA: I found the tech specs for our old AP outdoor5 units (here on page 8) with this excerpt: "Installation Options External antennas are included. You can also connect the UAP-Outdoor+ or UAP-Outdoor5 to a dual‑polarity antenna – an airMAX® Sector or Omni Antenna – to increase gain"

Ah. So I'm betting that the main thing to pay attention to in those specs is "Maximum TX Power: 27 dBm". The Swiss Army Knife AP (UK-Ultra) looks pretty sad by comparison at max 20 dBm. So even assuming that the UK-Ultra works with your sector antennas, it will be 7dB lower power and hence shorter range.

If you want something from the UniFi family, probably your best hope is the U7 Outdoor or U7 Pro Outdoor. Those have the same external antenna connections as the UK-Ultra, so about an equal chance of working, and their max Tx power is 26 dBm which is close enough to what you have with the UAP-Outdoor5. If they don't work with your antennas, you'd instead have to buy the external omni antennas that are officially meant to be used with those AP models. I don't know how well those compare to what you have.

The other path you could take is to stick with the AMO antennas, which Ubiquiti still have for sale, and pick up some current-production UISP APs that are meant to work with them. (I'm afraid I don't know the UISP product line well enough to know which APs those are.) The main downside of this approach from your standpoint is that while the UCG will interoperate with UISP APs, it will not manage them: you will have to deal with old-school web configuration GUIs on the individual APs, or else look into the UISP Console offering which is another thing I know little about. So I can understand the attraction of the all-UniFi approach. You'll just have to see whether you can get the radio performance you need out of available UniFi models.

If you want better-informed opinions than this, I strongly urge you to go join the Ubiquiti community forums and ask there. (Be sure to post with relevant UISP tags, not the default UniFi tags, when asking UISP-specific questions.) Very likely there are people there who will know for sure if the U7 APs will work with those UISP antennas.

 

[vinylgrrl]

I'm betting that the main thing to pay attention to in those specs is "Maximum TX Power: 27 dBm"

That's what I was starting to guess after I found the note in the tech specs about adding an Airmax antenna. Thanks...this all is super helpful and gives me some things to think about!

I'll have a look at the U7 Outdoor/Pro Outdoor specs....that could be a possibility. And yeah I'll ask over on the Ubiquiti community....just figured I'd ask here first in case someone else had just as wacky of a setup as we do, haha.

 

[tgl]

While we're on the subject ... I can't believe that 6GHz-band support matters for what you want to do, but there might still be reasons to shell out for the U7 Pro Outdoor instead of the non-Pro model. See this current thread on the UI forum for some relevant discussion.