MikroTik wAP ac door jamb bracket (#P16)

$ThingsIWantedToDoForALongTimeButDidntUntilIPaintedMyLivingRoom++;

When upgrading my laptop to the QCA9880 3x3ac card, I had the need for an 3x3ac access point. I went for the MikroTik wAP ac at the time, my first dedicated AP, as I always was a FritzBox AIO dude. In the card review I said I wasn’t planning on in-depth reviewing the AP, but I still need to scratch a little on the surface here, literally.

The AP is sitting next to the excellent FritzBox 7362SL and in fact is sharing the power supply with it. As the MikroTik is a PoE device, it doesn’t have a fixed input voltage; instead, it’s a 11-57 V wide input (“12W max”). The Fritz however requires 12V, I think the power supply is rated 1.4A. So I’m using a 12V/3A Mean Well GST36E12 with barrel jack Y splitter and the stock PoE injector to run both with one power brick instead of two, gaining one free power outlet at the plug board and better efficiency of the supply.

While the Fritz had its place on top of my work bench for more than a decade now, there was no obvious spot to mount the MikroTik. I figured it wasn’t a terrible idea to use a nearby hinge of a door jamb, and that was it for the past 1.5 years. It was sitting on the metal mounting bracket, which was in turn cable tied twice to the hinge. Works fine, but had a little much of the DIY touch.

When painting the living room last month, I had to remove the entire thing, giving me a chance to finally build a proper mount for it. Here’s what I came up with:

It’s not an entirely new thing, as the base plate is on thingiverse thanks to borahshadow. Maybe it’s due to the STL conversion or maybe it’s out of square from the beginning, but I had to fix/tweak a few things here and there. I also removed the large holes in favour of mechanical stability. And of course I added a 10mm barrel to mount it on the door hinge… :grin: Would have been no slower designing this from scratch, but a workable base with proven dimensions is always most welcome. Nagging about minor imperfections is always easier than coming up with something perfect on the first try, I know…

First and only incarnation – forgive me for the white balance, white stuff on white background never works well.

Comparison with the original metal bracket – top (no metal threaded insert for mine, instead a longer screw, M3x12 instead of factory M3x10)

Back:

Mounted on the wAP ac – I’m a little pissed the kitchen towel that I used to clean all the amassed fly poop dots before taking the photos actually stained… [blue, not brown, in case that question arises :lol: ]

The bracket sits inside the AP in such a way that it would hold in place without any screw, but you could separate bracket and AP accidentally when removing both from the wall. While the 10mm main barrel had to be drilled in order to make it fit (see friction fit below), the M3 screw hole turned out too loose (my fault!), so I melted it a little around the screw to fuse them together.

Pushing down, nicely aligns with the bottom of the hinge:

And swivelled into place. Done!

As usual, here’s the raw model files for your own version of it: RSDOC + STL. These have the unused holes removed completely and width has been increased ever so slightly to make it fit perfectly. Mine’s working for me, so I won’t bother printing that again.

Now also available on thingiverse: 4128057


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[…] that finally led to having an 8-port PoE switch at home, which is a nice addition – the MikroTik wAP ac finally runs on PoE as intended, the four ports (2x1G, 2x100M) of the Fritz Box router are no […]

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