 Tom here from Lauren systems. And one of the things I like to bring on this channel is my experience with long term projects with some of the different tools and products that we use. And specifically today we're talking about Unify and the question comes up of how fast are they, how good are they and things like that. And it's always debated in lots of people review a product, but I want to do a follow up review for something we installed in 2016. Actually, a lot of some things we installed a whole lot of Unify outdoor devices. And one of the challenges when you're doing a review is I don't know how long they're going to last. I can do the review when I first get a product, but what does that product look like a year from now, two years from now, six years later? That's actually a really solid question, but not an easy one to answer. Unless you're actually deploying these in the field and doing a follow up video six years later about how they worked, which is what I'm doing right here. So we're going to talk about a few of the Unify devices that we installed and which ones held up and which ones didn't at certain projects. Well, one specific project we're going to cover because we're there replacing them with some new systems because they're obsolete. Before we dive into these details, if you'd like to learn more about me and my company, head over to laurancesystems.com. If you'd like to hire a short project, such as consulting on Unify, there's a hires button right at the top. If you'd like to support this channel and other ways, there's affiliate links down below to get you deals and discounts on products and services we talk about on this channel. Now, we're going to start with this dashboard, but also some added context. First, these were installed in June of 2016. It is currently March of 2022. So about just about six years ago, these were installed. And yes, we do say right here, you have obsolete devices on your network. And I want to mention before we dive too deep into this, this is not the first time I've talked about these things. I have a video about Unify project follow up how reliable our 283 Unify access points. I'll leave this link down below. And I did this video in July of 2021. And yes, that client, we still engage with them. We still work with them and they are still using these units and still have a Unify setup. So once again, this video could be updated again to say, are they still using it in March of 2022? Yes, they are. This is still a happy client back over to here to this client. Now, this is particularly an outdoor stadium. I brought this one in for the video one, because I can talk about it. We can't always talk about clients. We do have, you know, no problems discussing this particular client and being public about it. And yes, these are outside, which is also another thing that matters. A lot of people say, well, how will they hold up? Cause if you're installing these and you have to rent a lift and rent equipment to come out and install these, well, you don't want to have to go back up there and get them down. You hope that they will stay working, functioning and they did. They have lasted for a number of years. Now a couple of them are off right now. We're actually active engaged with replacing them. The client's finally getting around to putting in some new devices in. But of course, with supply chain shortages, they're not as easy to get a hold of here in March of 2022, but it's working and it will work for what they need. Now this does not provide wifi for the entire audience. This is specifically for the people that manage the venue. So they can communicate so they can update game stats while the game is going on, use social media, send out and broadcast to be able to connect to these units here. So they have them in places like the inside the bills can build container, parking a lot entrance, you know, they got to check people in and things like that. So they have a lot of this going on and it's definitely needs to be replaced, hence the obsolete. But to me, I'm not too bothered by it being obsolete because that's better than, well, not working and that's a different problem. The reason this client is now still engaging with us six years later to replace these is because they still work. Even though they work, they need to be obsolete and we need to replace them. If they would fail in between or just all fail and not work or have a lot of inconsistent problems, they wouldn't want to hire us to do more work. This is kind of that proof, so to speak, and more than just reviewing something, what does it look like in the long term installed? Now we didn't just put these devices in. Some of them are actually bridged across the network because this site's kind of big and they added some things on and in 2018, we had to install some of these nano beams. Now these once again are sitting out there as a point to point to get it to different areas because, well, directional boring is great to get underground and run cables and all that, but it's not always the budget friendly way to do things. And our budget did not allow for them to run cables across the field. It was actually easier with the different outbuildings to broadcast from their main, what we call the broadcast booth there and send that signal out so it can be distributed amongst the other Wi-Fi units and these once again, whether in Michigan, whether in the Detroit area goes from really cold sub zero temperatures and actually there's been some extremely cold days we had our Arctic winners that occasionally come in and they worked. Then we had our scorching hot 90s, okay, 90s, maybe not hot depending on where you're from, relatively hot days and these are weather exposed. So do they work? Have they held up? We haven't had to even address anything with these units. My overall feeling with ubiquities access points with ubiquities switches and with ubiquity site to sites like these devices here, these nano beams, they generally last a very long time. We have an absolute minimum amount of failures on them. We've had no failures at this particular client. We only have one other client and we've deployed a lot of these where it does seem something happened to one of the nano beams that got a little bit of moisture in it after about six years and it quit. But it was also time to upgrade it. We're not 100% sure on exactly what happened and we took it apart because we were curious and they don't come apart easy and it still seemed like the seal wasn't broken, but it did look like there was a slightest amount of corrosion in there, but it was really hard to tell. But either way, I don't want to get too off topic on this. One of the things I just try to bring on this channel is my honest opinion of the devices from when I get them and when I can, the longer term use because I think this matters and it's a hard thing to quantify when you're going through forum posts and stuff like that. And I try to show these projects, try to show photos of them, demo them. And then you can call me out on it years later as some of this stuff I produced YouTube content around even back then. And you can ask me, are those devices still working? Or maybe I'll make a video on it and answer that question. And I'll be honest. If a company had to high rates of failure, why would I push them? This is not sponsored or endorsed or anything by Unify. I have no ubiquity relationship or anything with them. This is just my opinion and why we keep doing videos and why we keep doing installs with Unify because if the customer is happy and the price is reasonable on product and it fits their use case because someone's going to get their cap stock ready and tell me they hate ubiquity because it doesn't support certain features that I would say, you're right, it doesn't support the features, but this client didn't need those features. Therefore it was a fit and it fit their budget and fit the feature sets that they required to do their task. Therefore we installed them simple as that. It's not really any more complicated. Now the switches are the one thing that I have definitely seen occasional problems with. Most of the time I think with switches and it's not just a Unify problem. It's a if you don't have a UPS and there's sometimes dirty power or there's sometimes surges and things like that. We've seen some PoE switches have problems, but overall it's been really, really minor and it's not enough to shake my confidence in them. Now when you're comparing them to we'll throw the name out there like Cisco. I really think Cisco makes a super solid product. I won't lie. Most of the time you're pulling out Cisco for the same reason we're pulling out these unifies not because it doesn't work just because it's old is why you've got to get rid of it. And I really think just an overall and this goes to not just ubiquity but our overall ability as a well, let's just say as humanity to build electronics has gotten a lot better over the years to reliability has gone up. The quality of engineering has gone up. It's just because of more experience, you know, the tech industry as it matures just builds better products. I mean software still that fuzzy questionable. Some is good. Some is bad. But that's outside of the topic of this particular talk. So overall, I'm going to say the reliable. That's my opinion on it. You can feel free to have a more in-depth discussion of my forums or argue with me in the comments down below because there's going to be some opinions on this one. I'm sure about how they don't work. Let me know your opinions down below. If they're rational. If you have some thoughts that are contrary to mine and I'd love to have a discussion. Thanks and thank you for making it all the way to the end of this video. If you've enjoyed the content, please give us a thumbs up. If you would like to see more content from this channel, hit the subscribe button and the bell icon. If you'd like to hire a short project, head over to LawrenceSystems.com and click the hires button right at the top. To help this channel out in other ways, there's a join button here for YouTube and a Patreon page where your support is greatly appreciated. For deals, discounts and offers, check out our affiliate links in the description of all of our videos, including a link to our shirt store where we have a wide variety of shirts that we sell and designs come out well randomly. So check back frequently. And finally our forums. Forums.LauranceSystems.com is where you can have a more in-depth discussion about this video and other tech topics covered on this channel. Thanks again for watching and look forward to hearing from you. What could go wrong? I like that you're wearing the Unify shirt for this. Yes. This is the appropriate shirt to wear for this. We gotta know what's inside. We need to know what's inside. That opened up easier than expected. It is pretty well sealed. On this episode of What's Inside. Try not to pinch my fingers. That's, I mean, surprisingly simple.