The Mounting Problem

Most enterprise networking gear assumes a wall, a ceiling tile, or a rack to mount to. A conference venue does not provide any of those in the places where wireless coverage is actually needed. What is available is a pile of photography light stands. They are cheap, tall, and portable. If an access point can be attached to the top of a tripod, coverage can be placed anywhere on the floor.

The catch is that vendor mounting brackets do not fit poles. Past deployments used zip ties and gaffers tape. These work, but are slow to put up, slow to tear down, awkward to aim, and unkind to gear we don’t own.

The goals for a better mount:

• Tool-free or single-thumb-screw assembly and teardown
• Forgiving on pole diameter, since a light stand tapers from base to tip and we use a mix of stands
• No modification to the device, using the existing vendor mounting interface
• Cheap and replaceable, printable in PLA

The Design

Each mount is a thumb-screw clamp that wraps the tripod pole on one side and adapts to the device’s existing mounting interface on the other. The thumb screw provides enough grip range that the same mount fits a band of pole diameters. This matters because the stands taper, with the base section thicker than the top.

Two diameter variants are provided per device family to cover the usable height range of the stands. In practice the thumb screw is forgiving enough that an exact match is not required.

All parts are PLA. They are used for one weekend a year and then stored in a bin, so longevity is not a concern.

Beyond the printed parts, a small bill of materials is required:

• Thumb screws for the pole clamp
• Heat-set inserts to receive the thumb screws in the printed part
• M4 screws for attaching the mount to the back of the Aruba 5xx/6xx APs

The Mounts

Aruba 2xx / 3xx Series

Aruba 5xx / 6xx Series

Ubiquiti Flex Switch

Ubiquiti Lite Switch

In the Field

The mounts have been through real BSidesSF deployments. They go up fast, come down fast, and can be re-aimed by loosening one thumb screw. Some of the same tripods do double duty as mounting points for security cameras, so it is not unusual to see an AP and a camera sharing a stand.

Source Files

The full CAD source is available on Onshape and can be copied, remixed, or exported to STL for printing.

• Tripod Mounts on Onshape

The clamp pattern is straightforward to adapt to other hardware. If you design a variant for a device not covered here, I would be interested to see it.