Power usage of some Ubiquiti hardware
26 May 2016I unscientifically measured the power usage of some of my Ubiquiti hardware.
Set up
I used a Belkin Conserve Insight Energy Use Monitor to measure the power usage of the following pieces of hardware:
- TOUGHSwitch™ TS8-Pro providing passive PoE support for:
- airMAX® BaseStation Rocket M5 (XM) powered with supplied PoE injector
- All devices are connected via CAT5e or CAT6, with a cable length of no more than 50ft
Methodology
I attempted to measure power usage in actual deployed scenarios.
For the Rocket M5, I simply attached the supplied PoE injector to the monitor, after the device was configured. This device is configured as a WAN link, and the recorded power usage is with some traffic over this link.
For all other devices, I powered the switch, waited for power usage to stabilize, then continued attaching devices in the order listed below, each time bringing up the production workload and waiting for power usage to stabilize. The device power usage may have spiked during boot; I recorded ONLY the stabilized power usage, waiting 5 minutes each time. The stabilized, Total Cumulative Power Usage I observed is shown below.
- Devices attached to TOUGHSwitch, powered via passive PoE
- IP obtained via DHCP leases
- Switch has 1 uplink to a gigabit switch connected for the measurement
- Cameras hooked up to NVR, recording on motion, etc., at 1080p 30fps
- Access points provisioned with actual clients connected, traffic flowing
- All devices were at room temperature, so included heaters (if applicable) were not running
Results
| Hardware | Passive PoE | Firmware | Reading on Power Meter | Device’s Computed Power Usage |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| TOUGHSwitch TS-8-Pro | ports below enabled | v1.3.2 | 7.6w | 7.6w |
| UniFi® Video Camera PRO | 48V | v3.2.0 | 11.5w | 3.8w |
| UniFi® AP AC LR | 24V | v3.7.4.4945 | 16.6w | 5.2w |
| UniFi® Video Camera PRO | 48V | v3.2.0 | 20.4w | 3.7w |
| UniFi® AP AC PRO | 48V | v3.7.4.4945 | 26.2w | 5.8w |
| UniFi® Video Camera G3 | 24V | v3.2.0 | 30.2w | 4.0w |
| airMAX® BaseStation Rocket M5 (XM) | 24V via supplied injector | v5.6.5 | 4.6w1 | 4.6w1 |
I have my NVR running on a Hyper-V-virtualized Debian VM, so I don’t have specific power measurements for that.
The Rocket M5 was powered separately, using the supplied injector.
For all other devices above, the device’s computed power usage likely includes some overhead for the TOUGHSwitch as well, but that’s the point: If you have this switch, this is roughly how much power an additional device will use.
The two UVC-Pro measurements (3.8w and 3.7w, respectively) is a small data point about accuracy: The power meter I’m using is (obviously) consumer-grade, so make sure you squint a bit as you look at these numbers. Nonetheless, this gives a good indication of approximate power usage of 3 security cameras (2xUVC-Pro + 1xUVC-G3) and two access points (1xUAP-AC-Pro + 1xUAP-AC-LR): roughly 30.2 watts. The Rocket M5 for a WAN link adds an additional 4.6w to the power bill, bringing the combined total to around 34.8w in the listed configuration.