Yes and I had to find out on my first cambium networks…purchase… and it was almost $2500.
Frustrating and costing more in time and money but I will see it out as I have ordered a real AP
and will finish the job next week… nice to see so many responses to my original post…
Lot’s of settings…and other stuff…really don’t need all of it but I guess you never know.
Would I do it again? I wish I would of had the correct AP in the first place…
The correct AP is an actual AP, not an SM. Like ePMP3000/L etc.
It would be cool if you could use an SM as an AP, but that’s what Ubiquiti is for.
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I get what you’re saying but are Cambium better off losing the sale to Ubnt or are they better off taking a minuscule hit an including that feature out of the box ? None of my customers have opted for 3000’s fyi so they’ve lost those $$$ . Virtually all my customers take on 3-5 Year licensing support plans with Cambium gear that they buy so you could still double dip on that sweet almost guaranteed support money.
We know the equipment can actually do it, it’s just been feature locked/blocked.
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I hear you bro. That 3000 micropop is pretty well spec’d and not much more than a f300 from memory. I know its not your point but ive got a few of them in my wisp and they work fine.
I heard a rumor they were going to provide what you want but it was while ago and no change yet.
Are you doing cctv? If so id just got with ubnt anyway - i got a call from security company requesting passwords for a ubnt network i built 8 years ago - ive never been back and its still working. If it was CN id have been back 20 times lol, sorry cambium but its true.
From what I understand, it’ll ONLY be on the Force300csm, not on any of the others – and it’ll be yet another lame licensing scheme. Cambium’s ‘sales team’ is convinced of their ‘self fulfilling prophecies’ - They’ll take their most expensive SM, add on a licensing fee, get it to nearly the 3000M 3000L price - and then they’ll say “see, no one was really interested in AP features on the SMs”
Like everyone else, we’ve been forced to switch to other brands for the small WAN networks… such as UBNT. And guess what - they work just fine. As a matter of fact, now that we’re re-introducing them to our network, I find that their management software (FREE - NOT LICENSED) works fine too, and their GUI is SO much better. So thanks Cambium, for forcing me to go back and re-examine the competition. Keep removing features and then trying to sell them back to us for extra $$$ and see how that works out long term. OH - I’m sure in your self-convinced world, it’ll all be fine.
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Upon internal discussion, we are considering allowing Force300 SMs to act as PMP AP, allowing upto 12 SMs to connect. Will update very soon once it’s finalized and which firmware it will be done. Also, this will be available at no additional cost or licensing, etc. Just a firmware upgrade.
Thanks.
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Sure would like to know when… I have a install that is held up for this reason.
My fault for not researching this as I just figured I could use the Force300’s either way.
I have to eat the added cost of the 3000 as I’m not going to charge my customer extra.
This is my first purchase of Cambium equipment and it was several thousand dollars.
And I’m replacing UBNT Mesh Radios.
dss
That is excellent news Chinmay!
There you go djdrastic, cambium going to come through for you!
We should be buying cambium shares instead of products - theyre up 80% this year to date. I heard it was due to their decision to not allow f300s to act as APs 
Licensing is pretty annoying, but its also quite common. One high-end manufacturer wants my to buy an upgrade license for power to come out its secondary port, even though i have a license to connect a failover radio to that port. I guess it allows consumers to only pay for what they need, but it just feels disingenuous for some reason.
Cheerio
THANK YOU!
Now if we could get a F300 2.4Ghz then the portfolio will be almost back to what it was in the epmp1000 days!
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I may be misremembering due to the unpleasant experience but I do know that we could not get this system to work properly and had to replace everything with epmp F180’s to get the system working.
If the radios are truly transparent then why did they not pass traffic other than RTSP? and that is only if you could get the camera to VMS/NVR connection to establish. An IP camera that is very common in our setups (Hikvision and compatibles that are a direct drop in on a Hikvision NVR) works fine on the network switch but one bench hop away did not, could not even ping it. I highly doubt it is due to education or setup on my part, and the ONVIF IP camera was not accessible.
I am not sure what is changed to make the radios cnvision vs epmp but for the price per unit and the experienced headaches there is no marketable reason to push this product. Especially when a single F180 can support 15 IP cameras at 4MP 1920x1080 20fps with 15fps mjpeg second stream (10 cameras if you want 30fps).and this is on a 50/50 frame ratio which allows for VOIP call stations and localized wifi.
Most of this is moot now that there is talk of re-adding pmp-AP to the F300 line and IF the 2.4ghz variant comes out then there would be options other than jumping to the PMP450 price tag.
+1 on something for 2.4!!! Anythng!
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Absolutely fantastic idea for the sake of security. Bravo for the idea 
+2 on something 2.4 too!! 802.11AX has 2.4Ghz chipset, so it would be great (and SO needed) to have 2.4Ghz gear.
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Good day Chinmay, any update on this one? If so, which firmware should I download and install?
Did not expect such a positive response to this
Will say we take our frustrations out on the support or techs in the forums but usually birdbrained decisions like this are usually formulated by some bean counter or green MBA looking for a gold star on their head.So can’t really blame the support people from Cambium for stuff like this.
Hi, Give me until early next week, latest to get back. Thanks.
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DEV team is already working on this and we anticipate internal firmware by end of this month. Firmware is going to be based on 4.7 firmware release, which has new featureset as well. So I will need to check whether firmware is stable enough to be shared with customers or not. Whenever it gets to stable one, I will share it with whoever need it.
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