With the warmer weather sitting outside in the Garden (Social Distancing applied) I noticed I was getting black spot’s where my WiFi strength wasn’t good enough. Unifi have recently launched a new 5 port out-door poe switch which was on sale at NETXL I managed to bag myself one with the plan to fit it in my garage to expand my poe ports and install an outdoor ap (UAP-FLEXHD).

The great thing about this tiny switch it takes power from your poe switch or injector and splits it across the 4 ports available, what wasn’t clear on Unifi website or datasheet is what type of poe it needed to work other than the latest 802.3bt/at poe++.

Seeing that the switch was at its cheapest in UK (£99) I snapped one up and tested with my current setup, My network runs Ubiquiti Edgemax POE-5 router (in switch mode) but nowhere could I find what type of poe it uses other than 47 volt.

The USW-Flex Switch will accept the following poe and will support up-to xx watts across the 4 port:

802.3af – 8 Watts

802.3at – 20 Watts

802.3bt – 46 Watts

And In my setup I was able to attach two G3-Flex camera no problem and when running used between 4-6 Watts adding the UAP-FLEXHD draws a maximum of 10 Watts so if you are planning to purchase one make sure your switch or injector is at least 802.3at.