Building a Network Rack

Recently I've been working on building out a more reliable network for my cart. Anyone who's used Capture Pilot knows that it's temperamental at best and the ports are blocked by corporate IT at worst.

I used some spare Ubiquiti equipment I had after upgrading my home network and build a little "rack" that fits inside a Pelican 1300 case. The frame is made of NanoBeam, a 5mm T-slot extrusion beam, which is perfectly suited for the task.

Assembling the frame was tedious, all of the parts are comically tiny and easy to accidentally knock out of place before locked down. After the shelves were installed the whole thing is quite strong.

The final part was powering the USG and switch. Each has its own power supply, but I didn't want to need to run two cables. Reviewing the requirements for the USG I found I could actually run it with PoE via a splitter. To further simplify I ran a patch cable to a keystone socket so all everything connects like normal rack-mounted networking equipment.

I'm happy with how the project turned out and I've already put it into service on set.