Continuing from Part 1. This round is the access-control layer itself and where it all lands.

Door hardware — a “Push to Exit” REX button set into the wall by each secured door, and standard mechanical deadbolts kept in place as a fallback (UniFi Access controls the electric strike, the physical lock is still there if the network layer goes down).

Head-end lives in a ceiling utility space, not a server room — a small wall-mounted rack cabinet holds the switch and a UDM-class controller, an AP is Ethernet-fed off the same drop, and a NAS sits alongside for local video/log retention. Ran conduit for the low-voltage runs rather than open cable, which cost more time up front and saved a lot of hassle troubleshooting later.

Lessons so far: plan your reader mounting height and REX placement before drywall goes back up, not after — one of ours needed a second cut. UDM-class gear in a ceiling space needs real thought about heat; ours has passive venting and we’re watching temps over the first month.

New commercial fit-out. When this wall is finished it carries a UDM Pro, eight doors of UniFi Access, and a 2U UniFi UPS so none of it drops on a blink.

Today it carries plywood.

What’s in the frame

• Backboard up first. Everything else in this build hangs off it, so it goes on before anything else does, and it goes on straight.
• Wall-mount cabinet hung and levelled, door open — the future home of the UDM Pro, the access hubs and the UPS.
• Structured-media can to the right: drops pulled and bundled, nothing terminated yet.
• Conduit and strut below, joists and insulation above. Those two decide where the board can actually live, and they get surveyed before a single hole gets drilled.

Why the board goes up before the gear

The UPS is the heaviest thing that will ever hang on this wall, and it sits at the bottom of the cabinet where the leverage is worst. Plywood spreads that load across framing instead of asking a handful of anchors to hold a rack full of gear in drywall. It also means every later change — another hub, a punch-down block, a power strip, the thing nobody planned for — is a screw into wood instead of a hunt for a stud.

The second reason is duller and it’s the real one: a bundle of unterminated drops is a mess you pay for twice if you build around it. Board, cabinet, then terminate.

Coming in Part 2

• terminate and label the drops, patch panel into the cabinet
• UDM Pro and switch in, UPS at the bottom
• access hubs, then readers, strikes and REX out at the doors
• and the shot everyone actually scrolls for: the finished bundle

I’ll post each stage as it happens, including the parts that don’t go to plan.

One for the room: heavy UPS in a shallow wall-mount cabinet — do you bottom-mount it and live with the door swing, or shelf it separately off the board? Curious how people who do this every week handle it.

First post on Only-LANs. If you’ve got a build in progress — rack, closet, wall, half-finished mess — this is the place for it.