Getting network to the garage is a story with many chapters. I started out with Wi-Fi mesh, then CAT6 — and now, finally, fiber!

Two years ago we dug and laid three conduits from the house to the garage, and from the garage to the shed. Primarily to get more power to the garage — and any power to the shed.

I used the opportunity to put in an additional conduit for fiber, and lots of conduits from the main switch board down into the basement.

After my Wi-Fi mapping adventure — I found a few spots with low Wi-Fi signal. Both kids’ rooms on the 2nd floor only had mediocre signal, at -67 and -68 dBm 2.4 GHz, and the side garden had -71 dBm — which is terrible!

I also discovered that Mona’s side of the bed had much worse Wi-Fi signal than my side. This was because I had a clear line of sight to the UAP-AC-IW in the den, but the signal to Mona’s side had to go through a wall and her wardrobe…

Simply not acceptable, something had to be done!

I dug a 10 meter trench to get wired network to my detached garage. Then installed a rack cabinet and PoE switch. Here is the build log 👇

While looking in the manual for our garage door opener; trying to figure out how to adjust it. I noticed it had a couple of interesting I/O terminals. 24VDC LED strobe — I love LED strobes!