Setting PoE mode to 'off' does not take effect for Instant USB adapter

[pcuser42]

I'm trying to turn off PoE to a Ubiquiti Instant PoE to USB adapter I use for charging wall-mounted tablets, however it seems that no matter what PoE mode I put in, power remains on to the adapter.

• Set PoE mode to auto - power is applied to the adapter as expected
• Set PoE mode to off - UniFi shows PoE is disabled, but the tablet remains charging
• Disable PoE in the UniFi interface - tablet stops charging as expected
• Set PoE mode to off via this library again - UniFi still shows PoE is disabled, but the tablet starts charging again!

A UniFi PoE camera and a non-Ubiquiti PoE device both showed the correct behaviour.

It's possible that this is a bug with UniFi itself, hopefully there's at least a workaround.

UniFi Network version is 7.2.92

[malle-pietje]

Hmm, that sounds quite strange. Can you share your code please?

[pcuser42]

I was able to reproduce this using the example code in the repository (credentials and MAC removed):

<?php
/**
 * PHP API usage example to turn the PoE of the selected switch ports to "off" or "auto"
 *
 * contributed by: @Kaltt
 * description:    A use case for this script is to turn off the PoE of the port where a camera is connected in order to turn off the camera
 *
 * usage:          If the file is called via a web URL, it should be called like: update_switch_poe-mode.php?poe_mode=off
 *                 If the file is called via the command line, it should be called like: php update_switch_poe-mode.php off
 *                 The values can be "off" or "auto"
 */

/**
 * using the composer autoloader
 */
require_once '../vendor/autoload.php';

/**
 * include the config file (place your credentials etc. there if not already present)
 * see the config.template.php file for an example
 */
$controlleruser = 'username';
$controllerpassword = 'password;
$controllerurl = 'https://192.168.1.1';
$controllerversion = '7.2.92';

/**
 * the site to use to log in to the controller
 */
$site_id = 'default';

/**
 * the MAC address of the AC-IW device to re-configure
 */
$device_mac = '<device mac>';

/**
 * $lanports is an array that defines which ports should be changed
 */
$lanports = [18];

/**
 * This is the function that reads out the current port configuration and changes the value for the poe_mode for the ports defined in $lanports
 */
function update_ports($running_config, $ports, $poe_mode){
    /**
     * Update already non-default ports
     */
    $running_config_count = count($running_config);
    for($i = 0; $i < $running_config_count; $i++){
        if(in_array($running_config[$i]->port_idx, $ports)){
            $running_config[$i]->poe_mode = $poe_mode;
            unset($ports[array_search($running_config[$i]->port_idx, $ports)]);
        }
    }

    $add_conf = [];
    foreach($ports as $port){
        $add_conf[] = [
            'port_idx' => $port,
            'poe_mode' => $poe_mode
        ];
    }

    return array_merge($running_config, $add_conf);
}

$unifi_connection = new UniFi_API\Client($controlleruser, $controllerpassword, $controllerurl, $site_id, $controllerversion, false);
$set_debug_mode   = $unifi_connection->set_debug(false);
$loginresults     = $unifi_connection->login();
$data             = $unifi_connection->list_devices($device_mac);
$device_id        = $data[0]->device_id;
$current_conf     = $data[0]->port_overrides;

/**
 * This reads in the values provided via URL or in the command line, if nothing is set than it will poe_mode will be set to "auto"
 */
if (isset($_GET['poe_mode'])) {
    $poe_mode = $_GET['poe_mode'];
} elseif (isset($argv[1])) {
    $poe_mode = $argv[1];
} else {
    $poe_mode = 'auto';
}

$new_ports_config = [
    'port_overrides' => update_ports($current_conf, $lanports, $poe_mode)
];

$update_device = $unifi_connection->set_device_settings_base($device_id, $new_ports_config);

if (!$update_device) {
    $error = $unifi_connection->get_last_results_raw();
    echo json_encode($error, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);
}

echo json_encode($update_device, JSON_PRETTY_PRINT);

[malle-pietje]

Hmm, it appears that the controller no longer allows you to enable PoE mode without using a port profile. At least that is what I'm seeing here when testing against controller version 7.1.67. This example was submitted by the community, I'll add a note to the comments in the file that it no longer works with the recent versions.

If someone is willing to submit a new working examples, I'll test and include it with the next release.

[pcuser42]

I did a bit more digging, and on comparing what I was sending to UniFi vs what the sample script sent, I found an errant array entry, which would have confused UniFi.

I believe the reason I could originally reproduce on the sample script was because after sending this broken config, the state needed to be "reset" by changing the PoE mode in UniFi network, as I wasn't able to set the PoE mode on my second device after fixing for the first until this was done.

My script is working perfectly now!

[malle-pietje]

@pcuser42 thanks for confirming!