Question Installing OpenWRT on Ubiquiti UAP-PRO to give these a new life?

[RangerDanger5e]

Greetings,

I've been asked by a non-profit organization to repurpose some Ubiquiti UAP-PRO access points as the organization cannot afford new WAPs. They are showing as EOL (end of life) in the Ubiquiti Controller software, and unfortunately the organization is not in a financial position to purchase new access points.

It appears that the UAP-PRO (we have the original UniFi UAP PRO units, not the UAP-AC-PRO or Gen2 revision) can take OpenWRT firmware however it's difficult to determine how exactly to do this. I've tried spinning up a TFTP server, executing the command in the CLI to update firmware, and the AP's just "sit" and do nothing until rebooted (and stay on Ubiquiti firmware).

I really wish our organization could afford the U6 Pro with a Dream Machine setup however that's a ways out financially. We just want to get these UAP-PRO units running in the interim and can't seem to find a direct answer as to how to run OpenWRT on these.

And yes, we are aware that this is unsupported hardware from Ubiquiti so any security/roaming configuration will have to be done manually and not thru a Ubiquiti interface.

Any help would be greatly and sincerely appreciated.

RangerDanger5e

 

[kanewolf]

Greetings,

I've been asked by a non-profit organization to repurpose some Ubiquiti UAP-PRO access points as the organization cannot afford new WAPs. They are showing as EOL (end of life) in the Ubiquiti Controller software, and unfortunately the organization is not in a financial position to purchase new access points.

It appears that the UAP-PRO (we have the original UniFi UAP PRO units, not the UAP-AC-PRO or Gen2 revision) can take OpenWRT firmware however it's difficult to determine how exactly to do this. I've tried spinning up a TFTP server, executing the command in the CLI to update firmware, and the AP's just "sit" and do nothing until rebooted (and stay on Ubiquiti firmware).

I really wish our organization could afford the U6 Pro with a Dream Machine setup however that's a ways out financially. We just want to get these UAP-PRO units running in the interim and can't seem to find a direct answer as to how to run OpenWRT on these.

And yes, we are aware that this is unsupported hardware from Ubiquiti so any security/roaming configuration will have to be done manually and not thru a Ubiquiti interface.

Any help would be greatly and sincerely appreciated.

RangerDanger5e

EOL for UniFI is only important as to which controller you can use. As long as you have only older APs, then it won't matter. When you have a mix of U6 and old APs then it becomes more difficult. Just stick with 6.5.55 -- https://community.ui.com/questions/...ntroller/e1027cd6-11ea-4ea3-a2ad-735bcd0db6d3 and you are good.

 

[RangerDanger5e]

Thank you @kanewolf!

We are planning on running the older APs (UAP-PROs) only, to cover the facilities we have now. Sometime in the future there may be a U6 upgrade in the auditorium however I'm thinking that can be remedied by running it with a separate controller and VLAN'd away from the existing UAP-PRO's.

That will probably exist as a separate Guest network until the organization can afford a full U6 upgrade, then we'll consider a matched set of Ubiquiti switching & routing hardware. For now we are getting by with what we have, which is a hodgepodge of gear.

Appreciate the quick response, and look forward to being a part of this forum.

RangerDanger5e