I am new to OpenWrt and now searching for a contemporary, small but powerful stand alone access point (no router).
Requirements:
small
PoE (power-over-ethernet)
supports 802.11 ac
ideally >= 3x3 MIMO antennas for better signal strength
Linux-friendly open source drivers
During my research I figured out that Ubiquiti devices seem to have a good support for OpenWrt. Hereby the nice new UniFi UAP-nanoHD is already available as a snapshot.
So my question is: Does it make sense to buy a UniFi UAP-nanoHD now and wait for its final support release in OpenWrt, or will this take more time?
NOTE for UAP-v2 : As for July 2018, Ubiquiti seems to have blocked custom firmware installation possibility by using signatures on all 3.7 and later brand firmwares. As long as there is no brand pre-3.7 firmware available (in order to downgrade) for UAP-v2 devices, installing OpenWrt/LEDE could be impossible
I am worried the UniFi UAP-nanoHD could suffer of the same situation - would you recommend some different access points instead?
What is it you're looking to get out of the AP? In particular what are you going to use in OpenWRT that you couldn't do in the original firmware?
I've spent a bit of time recently looking at APs and I'm questioning the need to put OpenWRT on them, especially if you're going for enterprise level suffix m stuff, like Ubiquiti or the TP Link EAP range. I'm not sure you really get enough additional functionality to offset what you lose. It makes, imo, far more sense to have OpenWRT on the router, but then leave APs as they are.
Which I guess is a long winded way of saying that if the UAP-nanoHD fits your requirements (with or without OpenWRT) then I'd recommend just getting it.
Bumping this -- hoping it's not bad behavior to do so -- since I have the same question, I'm looking for recommendations for a performant 802.3a[f/t] PoE AP with solid mainline openwrt support.
In answer to @krazeh's question, the purpose of preferring FOSS firmware should be well-understood by anyone in the community; indeed it's a VERY strange thing to ask in this kind of forum. Apart from being publicly audited and community supported, it is also user and community-customizable, and increases the longevity of the product -- devices with closed-source firmware are typically abandoned by the vendors within a few years, leaving you with a device vulnerable to new exploits and unable to support additional software features.
I got a couple of UniFi 6 Lite APs recently after giving up waiting for the UniFi 6 LR. Which of course is available in local shops now... Typical..
But anyway, I am really satisfied with the Lites. It's not a bad alternative to the LR. And the Lite is physically much smaller (identical to the nanoHD - using the same mounts and covers) if that's really important, as well as much cheaper than the LR of course. Installation was a breeze using the instructions from the commit message: https://git.openwrt.org/?p=openwrt/openwrt.git;a=commit;h=fb4d7a9680117a00721936c98ce41eeb2dea95c9
Note though that they only have a single ethernet port and no USB, unlike some of the earlier Unifi APs.
