Just in case you were wondering what they looked like outside of their plastic shells, here they are:

Nanostation 2, Nanostation 2 Loco, Pico2 and Bullet2

For those of you wondering what the new Loco5 looks like inside,   I took a couple minutes out of the day to snap a few pictures.   No Loco2s yet, so no side by side comparison.   Definitely a lot tighter than the NS5, about 2/3 of the size, but with no external connector.

Bottom line is, you lose some power, some gain, and some flexibility, but it’s smaller and cheaper. Good deal for anyone doing a close clean line of sight bridge, otherwise stick with the Nanostation 5.

I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone following the saga, but we’ve been extremely conservative in forecasting the arrival of the new Ubiquiti products based on this years delivery of Nanostations. Optimistic folks have been predicting that these will ship in mid December, and we’ve stuck to our story that they will not ship until December 31st at the earliest.

Today, a small handful of Bullet2 and Bullet5s showed up at Metrix. My guess is that this is Ubiquiti’s attempt at a confidence builder, and a sneak preview of what’s coming. Unfortunately, my confidence is still low that we’ll be getting these backorders out before the end of the year. I also learned today that these do not come with POE injectors or power supplies. I had noticed the omission on the specs, so I’m not all that surprised. It is disappointing though. Since we do not have a part number for ubnt poe, I’ll be adding some generic injectors and power supply units to the store in the next few days.  They’re not standard 802.3af, and can take at maximum 23V, so do not use 48V POE with these.

As of right now, expect Bullets, Locos and Picos to ship at the end of the calendar year. I have heard that Routerstations have been pushed until ’sometime in January’. I have no solid estimate on the SR71s.

Because you all love the take-aparts, here’s some shots of the Bullets side by side. The funny wrench is a lens spanner. Don’t use vice-grips. They’re the wrong tool for every job.

For those of you who have been wondering about OpenWRT and your NS2, Tim Carstens has a nice writeup (with step by step instructions) on how to get OpenWRT on the Nanostation 2 in six commands.

Need to get Kismet running? Take a look.

No, we don’t have them yet.  But here’s some tasty pictures from Ubiquiti of the front and back and a link to the routerstation wiki page.   I have a few projects already in mind for mine.  What are you going to do with yours?

The Ubiquiti Nanostation 2 (NS2) has been a fast mover since it was introduced. We order a bunch, they all go out the door, we order more. Rinse, repeat. For us as a store, it’s a great product. We don’t have to do any custom work on them, and though the margins are thin, they don’t sit in our inventory long. For you, the customer, it’s a powerful piece of hardware at a rock bottom price.

By the specs alone, it’s a very impressive device. The Nano Station 2 is a small, waterproof CPE with a 400mw 802.11b/g radio and a dual polarity 10dbi antenna. It does POE (with included adapter), mounts to a pole, and has an external SMA (regular, not reverse polarity) connector. Added bonus, LEDs for RSSI while you set it up. It runs AirOS, which is Ubiquiti’s linux variant, and it’s only a matter of time before they’re running OpenWRT (check the support page for updates on firmware). As far as price goes, nothing out there beats it. It even comes with an offer for a free shirt!

Today I decided it was time to open one up and see what it was made of. The nanostation is very smooth, and it took me a minute or two to figure out how to get it open. Of course, rule #1 of taking apart stuff is to find out what the stickers are hiding. Underneath this little guy’s mac address are two small screws. Unscrew, and the board just slides right out. You really can’t get any easier than that. I was pretty happy I didn’t have to squeeze, twist or bust a fingernail trying to crack open the case.

The board is a bit longer (a little over 8 inches) than I had imagined, especially after seeing the pictures of the upcoming picostation, but it makes sense that it’d be the length of the device (just over 10 inches). The antenna is actually mounted right to the back (front?).

One nice surprise for the hardware hackers is the serial port, which is already pinned out. No need for solder! If you want to JTAG, the pads are exposed and ready, but I imagine the serial will fit most people’s needs.

Here’s the front (back?) of the board.

Here’s the back (front?) with the antenna.