That cunning plan of mine to cover the whole house with a single access point at the top of the stairs has been working well.

Coverage outside the house, though, was not so hot. This being England, not California, that hasn’t really started to bother me until very recently.

I’ve put a lot of work into the garden this year, and it’s even looking like there will be a few evenings on which I can sit out and enjoy it.

But of course you can’t really enjoy your garden unless it has enough bandwidth to watch rubbish on YouTube.

So, back to eBay, and I got myself a Unifi UK-ULTRA access point. Yes, it’s only WiFi 5, but it was going cheap and with still no sign of actual fibre to the house, it’ll do for now.

The physical install was straightforward, now that I own such things as a long drill bit and cable fishing rods:

Outdoor WiFi access point

I had to quarry deep into my boxes of junk to find a rather elderly Power Over Ethernet injector, which I suspect is restricting the whole thing to 100mbps uplink, but the digital side of the install was a joy. Unifi’s control panel just listed the device as waiting for adoption, and apart from naming it, the set-up was one click. That included applying firmware updates, picking its channel and broadcasting all the SSIDs I have set up.

Result? Speed tests in the furthest corner of the garden are now almost as good as inside the house.

We have yet to see how well it holds up against the Great British weather, but it’s appropriately IP rated for outdoor use and I’ve sealed up the cable hole behind it, so fingers crossed.

And if that doesn’t jinx the summer, nothing will!