You can NOW Self-Host UniFi

So, a couple months back, UniFi actually did something pretty cool, and that is releasing UniFi server OS, a way to actually get and manage UniFi devices without needing like a dream machine, a cloud gateway, or anything like that. And this was particularly interesting for me because before I actually ended up with some of that equipment, I was on a hunt just affordable UniFi equipment, mostly through like Facebook Market, I ended up with quite a few good deals. I got this little guy right here. This is the light 8 POE. I think I got that for like 40 bucks. I have a 16 port one upstairs that I'm actually currently using. I got this outdoor mounted one. All Facebook Market relatively cheap. For the life of me, I couldn't find a cheap cloud gateway on like Facebook Market. And it was right about that time that they released the self-hosting version of this, which is awesome. And today I'm actually going to be trying it out and I'm going bringing you guys along with me. And I'm going to be using this Raspberry Pi. This is a Pi 5 8 gig. I do have a Pi hat so I could power it just with PoE which is really nice. Right now I got Ubuntu on it. I'm not going to go through the whole setting all that up. I have a whole separate video if you're interested in doing all of that. But what we're going to do is we're going to throw the UniFi OS server directly on this Pi and actually adopting a few different devices that I have here. We got the eight light switch. We got this little outdoor guy. And just to make sure everything's working good, we have an access point all self-hosted. Now, there's some primary use cases for this. The main kind of thing in their marketing push why they actually released this is mostly for MSPs as you can actually control quite a few different sites with this. So, that is really nice if you're in that kind of world. And of course, there's people like me who or maybe you who might have UniFi equipment but don't have a real good way to manage it all. There are two main cons for doing it this way is I don't believe that they support the uni protect this way which sucks. That would be cool or their voice over IP, but I'm not 100% sure on that. I'll leave a note in the video. But before all that, a big shout out to OFlow. Oilflow is the ultimate productivity tool designed for busy professionals. Oilflow simplifies your life by combining time blocking and integrations all into one intuitive platform. So, no matter what tools you're using, whether that be Slack, Notion, Google Calendar, whatever, there's an integration for it. And for time blocking, you can easily drag and drop your tasks right into your calendar. It combines all those integrations into that one seamless environment. So, no matter what you need to access or do, you could do it all in one place. It does have a AI co-pilot which learns your habits and then will auto assign your tasks just to improve overall productivity. And the platform is incredibly flexible, incredibly customizable, including event color coding, morning rituals, and project organization, all powered by AI. There's a stats feature that provides detailed insights into your productivity, including how much time you've spent on specific tasks and projects. And it helps users identify areas of improvement and track progress over time, making an essential tool for growth oriented professionals. So, if you're interested in learning more, do check out my custom link down below. They also offer a one-on-one onboarding call if that is something you're interested in to help you get started. So again, big thank you to Oilflow for making this video possible. So now for the Pi, what we're going to do is plug this into our network, log in, and get Unifi OS all set up and ready to go. It's a pretty easy process. All right, so our Pi is online here. So let's go ahead and get connected. And we are first going to grab some prerequisites here. So if I go over head over to Linux, we need to grab uh podman and something called salurpet something. Let's grab them. Which it's interesting. It uses podman as a backend or that's a prerequisite. So let's go and grab all these packages. And while it does that, we are going to want to download it. So we can go to the download page here. And we're going to want to grab the release for Linux ARM 64. If you're doing this on some other mini PC, such as one of these guys here, which is running Intel, you would want to grab the x64. But let's rightclick this, copy the link for the download. And then head back over to our terminal. This is just about finishing up here. And there it goes. So with the link, we are simply going to wget this right there. Hit enter. It's going to download. And then the next step, we're going to want to make it executable. So it's just a chod x. So wait for this to finish up. Oh, two megabytes a second. Might take it a minute or five. Hey, look at that. It's almost done. All right. And we can see it right there. So we are going to run chod. And this is starting with nine. So we will make that extractable and run it. So pseudo this super long string. Hit enter. And now it says you're about to install UOS server edition. Whatever version happens to be the case. We are going to say yes. And then it should run through the process set up everything for us that we are going to need. You can see over here we do have some optional steps but all these require an account site manager and things like that. And after that it's just adopt your devices. So after it installs we should be good to go. Oh, you can see it's doing a bunch of stuff with Podman, which Podman is something I'm actually kind of diving into exploring. I'm going to do a video soon. Docker versus Podman. So, subscribe now. Looks like it's already running right here. So, we are going to grab this. Give that a copy and head on over to the address. All right. Hey, there it goes. I was jumped the gun a bit. Uh, let's visit this website. Visit website. And there we go. It's booting. So now technically it's we're all set up, ready to go. I am running UniFi OS on this Raspberry Pi, but I do want to adopt a device or two, maybe set up a little network, make sure everything is working correctly. And I already have this uh 8 port switch in my current UniFi network. So I'm probably going to adopt this outdoor little switch right here if I can get it open. There we go. All right, server setup. UOS server sounds good for now. Um, oh, do I have to? Oh, yay. I don't proceed without an account. Um, I don't want any of this now. So, let's continue anyway. Let's make a super strong complicated password and agree to their terms of service. Oh, okay. Not strong enough. There we go. And then click on finish. So, now it's setting up. zoom in a bit so you all can actually see it. Uh, we shouldn't really need anything else on this page. We do have some other helpful commands. So, it's using systemctl. So, that's how you stop and stop it. Start and stop it. Information, updating, migrating. I'll go ahead and link to this page down below. But, let's close this out for now. And the setup is complete. So, let's go to our dashboard and see what it looks like. It looks like UniFi. Nothing too exciting here. Well, if you're coming from something else, it's probably pretty exciting. But, uh, UniFi devices, we got nothing in there. So, let's plug in a device and see if it just pops up, shall we? Got a, uh, Ethernet cord here. We're going to plug her in. So, PoE in. Plug it into this switch and it should go ahead and fire up. I never actually tested this one. I hope it works. Again, I got it on Facebook Market. My uh riskto-reward ratio for getting this used may have not been there. Absolute catastrophe. Let's do the access point. Hey, this one works. I was really looking forward to that uh outdoor switch, too. So, so this is booting up here. I reset it. So, it shouldn't try to automatically connect to the other uh Dream machine I have. So, it's still booting up any minute now. Would be great. Hey, look at that. It's showing up right there. Click to adopt. I think the other one's in there for some reason, too. But this one is this device right here. Since it has the white LED. So, let's go ahead and adopt this device. It is now adopting. And it should be managed pretty soon by my Raspberry Pi. Getting ready. So, while that gets ready, let's actually dive into the settings here real quick. And we are on the subnet. So, it's all default. So, you can go ahead and change all that. Most of all settings, at least in networking, is going to be here and available. But if I go down here to Wi-Fi, we're going to create a new Wi-Fi network. This can be uh something like Uni Pi, for example. Give it a password. Going to real simple. Uh we'll do all auto just to add a Wi-Fi network. And then there we go. We have the Uni Pi Wi-Fi network. We could go check our uni devices. It's still getting ready. So, while it's still getting ready, you could play around a little bit more in networks if you want to. So, event like if I was actually going to set this up and use this, I would change my subnet to not be super generic like this one that we see here. We do have some options, but we need an actual gateway to be adopted before we can actually manage and play around with some of this stuff. But, I mean, it's working. My uh current modem is in bridge mode, which is what's giving this internet access. If I click on it, you can always preconfigure if you'd like to. Now, for devices, we can see it's up todate and we should have the actual network. So, if I go to other networks here, we can see right here Uni Pi. So, if I click on that, type in our password, this IP is going to die. So, if I hit join, you can see the console is offline, but I'm now on this network. And oh, it reconnected. Nice. I do have like mixed UniFi networks. So, it's a little weird when it comes to IP addresses and all that, but you could use this as your primary device controller. You can see that's my current one. And this is our new UOS right here. And I should have internet access, which you can see I do. Nice. If I go to our network topology, really not a lot going on here. We have our uh 7 Pro, the one device I have connected to it. If I go to client devices, you can see my current client. And yeah, it's really that easy. It's it's super nice that they allow this to be self-hostable. Now, it really one makes it easier to kind of adopt UniFi products, especially if you can find some cheap ones that um actually work. I mean, this didn't plug and play. Hopefully, there's something I can do here. But yeah, really cool stuff. I am really happy they're making some decent decisions that make it more accessible to people, especially people who want to self-host. I mean, this is probably something that's really easy to set up in like a virtual machine and Proxmox if you already have one of those set up. Overall, I really like what they're doing here. Again, I'll link to everything that I mentioned down below. And with all that, I do hope you have an absolutely beautiful day and goodbye.

Checkout Akiflow here: https://akiflow.pro/TechHut and get your life organized with their powerful calendar, task, and automation tools! Setting Up UniFi Network Server on Raspberry Pi 5 - Self-Hosted Network Management! I tested UniFi's new Server OS on a Raspberry Pi 5, and it works great! No more needing expensive Dream Machines or Cloud Gateways to manage your UniFi switches, access points, and other devices. 📖 RESOURCES https://help.ui.com/hc/en-us/articles/34210126298775-Self-Hosting-UniFi In this video, I walk through the complete setup process - from installing UniFi OS Server on Ubuntu to adopting devices and creating wireless networks. This is perfect if you've scored cheap UniFi gear on Facebook Marketplace but don't want to shell out for their proprietary hardware 🏆 FOLLOW TECHHUT X (Twitter): https://bit.ly/twitter-techhut MASTODON: https://bit.ly/mastodon-techhut BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/techhut.bsky.social INSTAGRAM: https://bit.ly/personal-insta 👏 SUPPORT TECHHUT (all links below this line will earn us commission) BUY A COFFEE: https://buymeacoffee.com/techhut YOUTUBE MEMBER: https://bit.ly/members-techhut —PAID/AFFILIATE LINKS BELOW— 🛎 RECOMMENDED SERVICES VPN I USE: https://airvpn.org/?referred_by=673908 📷 MY GEAR HARD DRIVES: https://serverpartdeals.com/techhut MinisForum Tablet: https://amzn.to/3SeMmds Beelink N200: https://amzn.to/3xZjeQs Raspberry Pi 5: https://amzn.to/4f3yUCN Q1 HE QMK Custom Keyboard: https://www.keychron.com/products/keychron-q1-he-qmk-wireless-custom-keyboar?ref=techhut ASUS ProArt Display: https://amzn.to/4i4cAKz 00:00 - UniFi Server OS 01:28 - Use Cases 02:00 - AwkiFlow (Sponsor) 03:22 - Installing UniFi on a Raspberry Pi 05:44 - General Setup and Wifi 07:30 - FB Marketplace Fail 07:57 - Adopting Access Point