Customer focus: Southern Storage

The Issue
As a warehouse and storage facility, it’s necessary for the team to be able to use their barcode scanning guns to identify the location and correct picking of items, constantly throughout the work day.

They found that their existing Wi-Fi system was not providing coverage in all the aisles and racks at many points in their warehouse, meaning staff had to return to a central area or corridor to check they had picked the right item, wasting time and creating potential mistakes.

With the delivery of new barcode scanners it was also necessary to ensure that the network would work to the best possible speeds.

What We Did
Having reviewed the existing installation, we found that access points broadcasting the Wi-Fi channels were incorrectly placed, often sending the main strength of the signal upwards into the roof as opposed to down to the working areas, and nowhere near the corridors.

The network was a mix of various home quality Wi-Fi extenders and domestic access points, with overlapping channels on a variety of frequencies that caused interference and packet loss constantly.

We replaced the existing access points with outside quality (warehouses are cold!) Ubiquiti Uni-Fi AP’s, and arranged the channels to ensure no interference and better utilisation of the free frequencies available.

These were installed correctly to ensure full coverage in all areas of the warehouse, and the power set correctly to ensure the barcode scanners successfully move between the AP’s seamlessly.

Take a look at what they do at Southern Storage https://southern-storage.co.uk/

More Ubiquiti Wi-Fi Installations

Here at Geekabit, we have fallen in love. A love that has lasted at least a good year, and one that gets deeper with every experience.

We’ve fallen in love with Ubiquiti Networks, and their ever-evolving selection of Wi-Fi related goodies, which we use for our client installations and temporary event Wi-Fi work on a weekly basis. And it’s a true love.

For manufacturing, warehousing, education and large residential home projects, we’ve managed to cut down our installation and configuration times, leading to less client down-time and an overall happier experience for our installation team and end user experience.

A few weeks ago, sat in an outside bar/club on the banks of the River Rhine in Berlin, one of our team looked up to the roof, and amongst the twinkling lights, was the familiar blue hue of our new love. We’ve seen them in France, in the most unlikely places across Africa, and even North Yorkshire.

As our business has expanded, working predominantly from London and Cardiff, we’ve seen a huge surge in demand for Ubiquiti devices, and can see this only continuing. There’s a trend throughout almost every market to look for better quality and better prices, people have begun to recognise that good doesn’t always mean expensive.

And as we all know, love, like Wi-Fi needs a good experience. It shouldn’t have to be an expensive one.

xx

Awards Season for Geekabit

The Geekabit team have been hard at work throughout the start of Autumn as the awards and event season kicks off in full swing, bringing connectivity to the those being crowned captains of their industries and clubs.

We’ve been working in a huge number of venues in London, Birmingham and around Southern England helping our clients who specialise in charity auctions, powered by iPads and other devices, to install and deliver solid networks over the course of each event.

Working in different venues on a regular basis means we have to conduct full site surveys to ensure the guaranteed connectivity of the network, and introduces us to nightly challenges installing temporary networks.

On top of our work in festival fields and outside on the roofs of many public buildings, working within city centre hotel locations brings many challenges – not least the competing installed networks as well as interference from a large number of external sources.

If you’re looking for a temporary internet connection or Wi-Fi network in London, Cardiff, South Wales or Hampshire, why not speak to our team of experts who will be delighted to create a unique solution for your needs.IMG_4388

Our Week in Wi-Fi in London, Cardiff & Hampshire

Wi-Fi might be ubiquitous but where you pop the Access Point and it’s general direction is quite important.

In the past week we’ve been to a number of interesting installations.

Firstly, we were called out to a domestic install in Hampshire (unusual for us, but in our quest to sort out rubbish Wi-Fi, we headed the cries for help). There we found a point to point link rather hopefully being used as a stand in for a proper external access point. It was even helpfully setup in Bridge Mode.

That was soon sorted by installing a nice Ubiquiti UniFi External AP, which had quite a terrific coverage and throughput around 360 degrees in the property, and certainly solved the issue of coverage in a nearby residential property.

The homeowners even stated “we’re never going out again now we have Netflix working”. Points scored in our quest against bad Wi-Fi.

We also visited another commercial manufacturing premises in London who couldn’t figure out why their pretty, shiny new access points produced no extra coverage over their older, dustier and legacy solution.

Having had a quick look, we realised their brilliant new Access Points were firmly pointed in the air, providing Wi-Fi for all the birds, bees and passing low flying aeroplanes. Admittedly, the channel usage was perfect, the antenna gain ideal, but the AP’s were the wrong way round.

There’s a key difference between having the right equipment and the ability to install it, and we will be delighted to help anyone who needs some advice.

Our teams in Cardiff, London and Hampshire will are always waiting to hear from you.