We went through a stack of Peplink test devices today, upgrading them to the latest firmware. Along the way we discovered that the HD2 and the Balance 30 LTE units both powered up using only the ethernet cable from a PoE enabled switch plugged into the WAN 1 port - no wall power required.
There being no hint at such a PoE feature in the documentation I was curious whether this is an incidental feature of (some of) the cellular devices, untested and therefore undocumented. Or am I missing something?
In either case - delighted to see PoE work on these devices and would think it a feature worth mentioning if generally available.
Cheers.
[Updated: Clarified that the PoE input was to the WAN 1 port]
28W would bust the PoE 25.5W budget :-). I expect it is the WiFi capability that causes the potential deficit - the other HD2s are well within (and officially offering) PoE. I could see it being tempting to deploy the HD2 using PoE, and then being a tad careful about how it is being used.
Btw., how does a power shortage manifest - simply a shutdown (possibly followed by a reboot)? Or would it be a continuous power cycling as it repeatedly tries to restart. The latter presumably destroying the device after a bit.
At 15W the Balance 30 LTE is well within thePoE budget norm, though.
@zegor_mjol, I believe it should be the MAX HD2 (HW5) that you were testing, where it has an “undocumented” feature to allow you power it via the PoE Input (on WAN 1 only).
The 28W (max.) power consumption stated in the product website has taken into consideration some USB modems that might draw more power (than usual). Otherwise, an 802.3at (PoE+) input power is adequate to power the MAX HD to operate normally.
@zegor_mjol, just to clarify that the power consumption value (28W, max.) indicated on the website is excluding the PoE output. If you want the MAX HD2 to provide PoE output, the ACW-622 is needed.
I wanted to mention an alternative way to power peplinks over POE.
Specificly the Max line up or other devices that use the 12v 2amp barrel style powerplug.
In my automated deployment project: https://forum.peplink.com/t/automated-deployment-for-batch-of-100-br1-minis/6121e3d36b1bec0690002d8a/8
I designed a custom 3d printed dock and used these adapters ANVISION 2-Pack Gigabit PoE Splitter, 48V to 12V 2A from AMZ.
This allowed me to simplify the cable management and also with my scripts reset power to the br1 mini’s using command to control the POE power on the peplink 24 port switch.
I’ve also used these POE Splitters in many hard to reach places or where it’s better to elevate the pepwave cellular so you can “remotely” control the power. If you don’t have a poe switch you can also easily use them with a poe injector as well.
Tycon also make some really useful POE splitters that can take in standard POE and present it on a phoenix terminal block with a range of voltage options - we’ve used their splitters to power TSTs from a POE source many times with good results.
https://www.poetexas.com/ - Another one to keep a bookmark for too if you need “unusual” POE splitters, they have some really neat stuff for powering tablets specifically but I’ve again used their ones that split out to USB power to drive a TST
