Some of you have asked about the tiny USB-C to PoE+ power injector I carry around in my everyday backpack. I have tested more than half dozen of injectors. PoE Texas GAT-50V30W-V2 is compact, lightweight, and it is always there whenever and wherever you need to power an access point on the go. It can be powered by a USB-C battery pack or an AC charger with USB-C output.
Use cases
I use this setup to convert Wi-Fi 6E and Wi-Fi 7 access points between cloud-managed and controller-managed modes.
Also, it allows me to power an AP while travelling and connect it to a Catalyst 9800 controller running on my MacBook. How? Stay tuned for another blog post.
Demonstrations at events, AP staging with no switch or network infrastructure available, and site surveying, are other things I do.
All you need is
- PoE Texas GAT-50V30W-V2 power injector
- USB-C battery pack which supports 12V on its output USB-C port. I am using Anker 533 PowerCore 30W here.
- Short 20-30 cm USB-C Power Delivery trigger cable which requests 12V from the battery pack and adapts it to DC barrel jack
- Short patch cable
- The apple is optional 😉
Powered by a battery pack or AC power
The beauty of this solution is that all you need to power the injector is 12V USB-C power source which can be a small USB-C battery pack.
Or you can just use your USB-C charger (again it needs to support 12V DC on its output) and power it that way. No AC power cables needed in your back.
Tested access points
I use it with Cisco access points C9105, CW9172H, CW9172I, CW9174I, CW9176I, CW9179F. No surprises, it just works.
Does it support multigigabit Ethernet?
Officially, it doesn’t. But with a short patch Ethernet cable, which is 99% of my use cases, it does.
Connected to a C9200CX compact switch using a 2-metre CAT6 patch cable, CW9174I access point happily auto-negotiates 5 Gbps full duplex and works just fine.
Battery life
Powered by Anker 533, I get about 1-2 hours of battery life. It depends on how much the AP draws. Obviously, the higher the capacity of your battery pack the longer it lasts. For everyday occasional use, I prefer a compact battery pack that gives me 1 hour of uptime over a heavy battery.
Looking for USB-C battery powered 802.3bt/UPOE/PoE++ injector?
If you are looking for the most powerful USB-C powered injector which supports UPOE/802.3bt/PoE++, check my other blog post here. It is larger though.
Regulatory note: Keep in mind that Low Power Indoor (LPI) access points shall not be battery powered. Refer to EN 303 687 and FCC KDB 987594.
