Hiding In Plain Sight

September 6, 2019 |   |  3 Comments  |  Church IT, Hardware, IT, Wireless

One of my favorite things to do when I’m at a Disney park is to play the wireless nerd’s version of Hidden Mickeys: Trying to spot the myriad creative ways in which Disney’s Imagineers have blended their excellent wireless network into the carefully contrived scenery. It truly is magical how they can make wireless everywhere while keeping it nearly invisible.

So naturally, when I’m wearing the wireless engineer hat and have a challenge where I get to flex some of that creativity, I’m all over it.

A few years back, I helped a church in Wichita overhaul their aging and underpowered WiFi by designing and installing a new Ruckus system. Last year, they embarked on a new project to add a chapel to their campus. Naturally they wanted to extend the wireless LAN to this new building.

But… It’s a chapel aimed at doing weddings and other sorts of events, so it was paramount that the wireless equipment not be visible, to maintain clean architectural lines with a minimum amount of obvious tech equipment. Some concessions had to be made for audiovisual, but visible access points were a (network) bridge too far.

After pondering the problem as well as observing drawings and renderings, I happened upon the architectural lighting elements in the plan that were mounted on each of the columns. I dug into the design of these and discovered that they were a pair of LED fixtures concealed inside some finish carpentry with a textured plastic surface. And most importantly, there was an empty space in the middle between the two light fixtures that measured about 20cm square by 40cm high, and centered approximately 8 feet off the floor. Not only was that low enough to keep the APs close to the clients, there was plenty of room to put in one of the Ruckus H510 Wall APs designed for the hospitality market (which I also currently have in my house running Unleashed, although they will soon make way for some of the Aruba AP303H units or their new Instant On AP11D counterpart). I’m a big fan of these in-wall units for many reasons.

I asked the electricians to give me a box and conduit to four of these columns, as well as a pair of data cables. I only planned to use two access points initially, but since running cable would be prohibitively difficult after the buildout, I wanted to keep my options open should capacity needs increase in the future.

After many months of construction (Summer of 2019 was an utterly awful weather summer if you were in the construction business), I finally got the green light to install these. I took a bit of personal time on my way down to another job in Oklahoma for my employer, and executed the plan. I’m pretty happy with the results.

The lighting fixture: two pieces of dark wood on either side floating 1″ off the wall with a textured face and tunable color temp LED fixtures facing up and down
The lighting fixture with the plastic face slid up (there’s a stop at the bottom). An electrical box was placed behind it and a 2″ hole drilled for cable access. The overall construction of this fixture is beautifully simple: a few pieces of solid oak and some stain. The overall look in this space is one of stone, wood, and glass, with 90° and 45° angles being dominant.
The Ruckus H510 bracket screwed directly to the finish carpentry. The mount could also have screwed to the electrical box but that was an unnecessary level of effort.
The Ruckus H510 access point mounted on the bracket.
The fixture with the AP mounted inside. The wood and textured face provide minimal attenuation, and in this environment, I’m using the attenuation constructively. The recess in white is where a large TV (in lieu of projection) will be mounted on a swing arm and can fold into the wall when not in use.
Side view – the gap was just enough to get a screwdriver in to secure the AP to the bracket using the provided T10 screws. I was concerned that this wouldn’t be possible.
Lighting fixture side view. Is this with or without the AP installed? If you can’t tell, that means I was successful.
The AP was mounted on the second column from the back of the room, near the sound booth. The corresponding column on the other side is wired for an AP if capacity requires one.
The AP was mounted on the third column from the front of the room, near the front of the stage. The corresponding column on the other side is also wired for an AP if additional client capacity requirements dictate it.