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Comment by nicolas314 | Hacker News Reader

The Unifi controller is largely overkill when you just have one AP to manage. Booting up 200 megs of Java software on a desktop to just tweak a few bits quickly became old. Re-flashed my Unifi AC Lite with LEDE and configured it through Luci. I can happily forget about Unifi controller and maintaining a live Java stack on a desktop.

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I run mine on a Raspberry Pi 2 using Arch Linux which has a native package for UniFi [1]. Pretty cheap and hassle-free.

[1] https://www.archlinux.org/packages/community/any/unifi/

I might try this, i still have a few pies lying around. Do you need the power of a Pi 2 or do you think an earlier model might be enough. Small home network, 2 APs, no fancy stuff (so far...)

Did you loose any functionality when switching firmwares? Specifically - are you still able to have two different SSIDs with a VLAN for each?

I am running two APs on 2.4GHz and one on 5GHz without issues. See here for a complete write up: https://nicolas314.wordpress.com/2016/05/30/openwrt-on-ubiqu...

Is there a particular reason you were running the controller regularly with just one AP?

I used the controller once to setup my AP and haven't touched it since.

You can also use their mobile app for just one AP. You scan the little qr code and setup goes from there.

WiFi networks need to be configured every now and then, e.g. to set up a guest WiFi, change the password, change the channel to a less crowded space, or activate MAC-filtering to kick my neighbours out. With LEDE I can do all of that with a straight ssh. No way I will maintain Java alive on my Mac just for this. The tipping point for me was a bug in the Ubiquiti firmware, I systematically had to boot the AP twice to get it working. LEDE is perfectly stable.

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