Fun applications of PoE in homelab?

unsaid0415 OP , 6 months ago

My short unexciting story of replacing 2 power bricks with PoE:

I recently bought a D-Link DGS-1210-10P rev. B1 switch from ~2014 for $50. It has an 76W PoE power budget and supports up to PoE 802.3at (~25W).

(On the switch, OpenWrt is supported from rev. F1 - don’t be stupid like me with the rev. B1)

I had some PoE-compliant devices in my homelab that I was powering with ordinary power bricks, but now that I got my switch, that had to change.

In total I was able to remove two power bricks:

• My MikroTik RB5009 UG+S has a 802.3af PoE-in on eth1, so I removed its power brick and powered it with PoE instead
• My UniFi AP 6 Lite supports 802.3af PoE-in, so I removed the unifi poe injector that I had and powered it directly from the switch

My homelab is rather small, so the only two remaining devices which I could swap are:

• RPI 4 with 2 SSDs - there are official PoE HATs, but you can also buy a shady PoE to USB-C + Ethernet splitter too - aliexpress.com/item/1005005764965215.html
• ISP router changed into bridge mode, so it works as a modem only - you can also use a PoE splitter to power it, like this guy (bing cached version of reddit post). My ISP’s one uses a 12V 2.5A power brick, while the splitters 802.3at splitters are just 12V 2A, so I’ll probably won’t do it