Hello. We're primarily a Ubiquiti network right now but hoping to move over to ePMP but one major pain point we have is that there needs to be an easier way to configure the CPE from a mobile phone. Today, we use a USB battery pack which goes to a Tycon POE injector and we plug a Ubiquiti Airgateway into it. This combo allows us to power the Ubiquiti radios and the airgateway allowing us to connect our Android phones via WiFi to the CPE and configure it with one hand. To make this work with ePMP, we just need to swap the power pins around and we can power it easily enough.
The question is, when will there be an Android AP that allows for one handed configuration in an app? We EasyUBNT right now which is privately developed by an awesome designer and he sells it for $8.99. It allows us to avoid using the web browser and pinching to zoom to setup the CPE. With the App, there's nice, big buttons and easy to read information without having to zoom in on a webpage or enter login info. Our biggest use of the app is during our site survey where we walk the entire property and roof to find the "sweet spot" for signal. We do not trust the lights or anything else besides the real signal level, SNR, and noise levels which we have to have easy access to during our surveys.
An app like that for ePMP would be AWESOME and that would likely seal the deal for us. I will reach out to the developer of that app as well and see if he may have plans to develop an app but if Cambium could comment, that would be great. Thank you
We set up a very similar arrangement - two POE injectors (one 29v passive, one 802.3af) on different ports of a 5-port wifi Mikrotik router, the router handing out DHCP on wifi and having local IPs and routes set up for all default and live subnets on our network on the same bridge. End result is that any phone/tablet/laptop can connect to wifi and be able to reach whatever equipment to which the techs have it connected.
The next step was/is an app for the tablet for configuring and diagnosing. I'd gotten started on this a couple months ago but it's been back-burnered, between the weather (we're in a high lightning area) and the techs preferring to use laptops/netbooks instead of the tablet we provided, and kitted out with (so far) 6 custom apps for them...
Anyway, I may be returning to this project as time permits, but I don't expect anything 'real' for a month or three at least.
I work here at Cambium and we've developed an alignment and installation app for iPhone and iPad that works with ePMP SMs. It lets you select an AP to align to, configure an authentication key, add the AP to the preferred APs list and displays the RSSI in a clear graph with audible installation tones through the iPhone and iPad speaker or headphones.
It's available now on the iPhone and iPad app stores here:
The battery works pretty well but remember to statically configure your iPhone or iPad to use an IP address in the same subnet as your ePMP SM - also, when connected to the Wi-Fi provided by the battery, the iOS Wi-Fi indicator isn't shown on the iPhone or iPad.
I'd like to expand what we have to Android, add other features and support more products. It looks like more device configuration options in the app would be useful to you so I'll bear that in mind - please let me know if you have any comments or suggestions.
I didn't know there was an iOS version out and that is good but we are strictly an Android shop. All of our technicial apps we use are almost only on Android so iOS does us no good unfortunately.
The sooner there is an Android app out, the better and I think most users will agree with that. Thanks
can we PLEASE get a android app? the UI is sooo slow to load on phones
is there at least a way we can SSH into the SM with our phones and see signal?
Thanks,
Tim,
We haven't tried this yet but I can't see why you couldn't use a SSH client for android and use it to connect to the ePMP devices and look at the signals - something like Juice SSH?
In the meantime, we will get started on the Android version.
Holy crap, dude, It's been about 72 hours since a Cambium rep in this thread said that "we will get started on the Android version", give it a few weeks at least. :)
That being said, thanks to all of you (haha) I've gotten very little sleep this week, so I'm hoping to have a simple status-and-alignment Android app ready early next week. (been working until 2-3am the past few nights)
Developing using the Cordova system from Apache, the app itself is written in Javascript/JQuery. (Cordova also means it can be fairly easily rebuilt as an app for iOS, Windows, Chrome, etc) I've worked out the authentication handshakes and what-not and am able to retrieve status, settings, eAlign, etc updates from the ePMP device, it's just a matter of working out what data to present and formatting it usefully.
Also, it is (for now) only certain to work with 2.4.3 firmware ePMP devices. I check the SoftV right up front, but don't currently do anything based upon that. (eventually it might be useful/necessary to proceed differently for different firmware revisions)
Not sure about the official position Cambium takes on this effort, some guidance from that direction would be welcome. (IE, do you care that I'm doing this? What if I want to charge for the app? What about using the Cambium logo image as the app's Icon, Splashscreen?)
Still working on polishing it, but my app is proceeding apace. (put about 30-40 hours into it the past week) Testing on two phones and two tablets at the moment.
I've gone with a three-pane setup, with Status, eAlign, and Config. Config is currently offering only the fields that our installers need to access, name/location/ip/gw/subnet/MIR. Button available to use phone/tablet's GPS and stuff the lat/lon into the SM. (I've been harrassing our guys to get lat/lon on every install)
Swipe left/right or tap tabs to change panels, eAlign updates every 1/4 second, Status every 5 secs. eAlign prevents screen shutting off, 'back' takes you back to login. Login defaults to 169.254.1.1 admin admin, you can edit it and optionally tell it to save your changes as the new default.
Attaching some screenshots of the beta, though it probably already looks differently.
Interested in adding ability to upload a binary config to the unit, an 'install default' feature, as well as adding a factory-default button. (I prep all the radios that come through here - before the installers get them - with newest firmware and a base default config with WPA2, NTP, etc preconfigured: I want the guys to be able to restore a radio to the familiar 'Joel-fresh' condition in the field)
OK, I have a stable app that will log in and present a Status page, an AP Eval page and an Align page. I want to hear from Cambium before I let it into the wild though.
The fourth page, 'Config', I've disabled. It's currently working, but customized for specifically and only the fields our guys need to alter on a typical install using my preconfigged units. (Maybe now that they can just tap a button I'll have a higher % installs with GPS coordinates...)
Don't know if the forum will permit, but I'm trying to attach the .apk for the app to this post. Turns out it won't allow it, though it doesn't actually give me an error it just returns me to post editing with no attachment listed. So I've posted it at http://epmpme.newkirk.us for now.
ePMPme-release.apk v1.0.471
It asks for GPS/location privileges but doesn't need/use them, sorry. The version I'm building for our techs includes a config section, and I use the android device GPS to autofill lat/long on the ePMP.
Any questions/concerns/suggestions just reach out to me. Here on the forums, or epmpme at newkirk.us. I expect to continue improving the app for some time, not sure at what point (if at all) I'll go through the effort of making it available through Google Play.
The app work ok with my phone (galaxy s4 mini). The RSSI is updated very fast and i love it. Anyway when link lost i got some error. See attached file.
Anyway, if it have the maximum RSSSI value which is good for us.
Yeah, I'm still not sure how I want to handle that situation - currently when the data retrieval fails it pops up a temporary error message. The messages timeout and vanish after a short time, but the every-quarter-second update cycle means that when the device becomes unreachable (or 'timeout' happens at 1second) the errors can stack up and flow off the top of the screen.
Works great for occasional 'heads up' messages, not so great for 4-times-per-second flooding...
In the lab, this worked great! However, on our deployed network, I can't connect. I use a VPN on my android phone to connect to our router and get on the management VLAN. From my andoid phone, I can use Chrome and access all of the APs and CPEs. When a launch the ePMPme app and enter the IP address and credentials for any AP or CPE, I get:
I am using https on all the APs and CPEs if that matters. I am also using a management VLAN on all of them but the VPN should solve that (and seems to since Chrome works).
