So Many Product Ideas

Feature Requests
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Honestly, after seeing how “small business” the website & social media channels look, I was not expecting to see so much forum activity. That’s awesome! I am not an IT guru, nor the most robust hobbiest, but I am a techie more than most people I know. I have considered starting my own company in this space, but I don’t have the resources, money, connections, industry contacts, or proper background. Please forgive me if any recommendations have already been mentioned, implemented, or sound silly. Now, I will get on to my recommendations.

This space is super competitive, so you guys have to BE very different.

  1. Full blown WiFi 7
  2. More antennas than competitors
  3. Everything UniFi & Omada have + more. If you need ideas, skim the forums & comment sections to find users pain points, there are a lot.
  4. Direct Zero Trust (ZTNA/SDP/etc) implementations via Cloudflare, Tailscale, Twingate, ZeroTier, your own offering, etc - pretty sure this would be a first anywhere near this price point
  5. Bump all APs to have a multi-gig 1/2.5/5/10Gb PoE++ input. I think this would also be a first.
  6. In Wall AP like UniFi but with far more robust switch built in (their’s shares a single 1Gb or 2.5Gb total distribution among 4 ports & the WiFi). If you utilize my last recommendation, this would be easy to implement.
  7. EVERY AP should have a 2nd multi-gig PoE port to connect to whatever, or at the very least daisy chain APs together so a mesh system can have a wired backhaul with far greater throughput
  8. EVERY AP should have a USB-C power input in case it needs additional power not provided from daisy chaining a mesh system of PoE APs or if someone doesn’t have a PoE switch or injector.
  9. Roll out another AP like the new UniFi Express (controller+AP+mesh+dual ports+screen). This makes it insanely attractive to everyone & would make household & tiny business adoption into your ecosystem incredible easy & affordable.
  10. Add a small screen with stats/info onto every AP like the UniFi Express
  11. Add a secondary WAN input into every “gateway / controller”
  12. Add a sim card insert & antenna port into every “gateway / controller” so it can use cell networks. If that is too cost prohibitive to integrate, make it a separate product like the UniFi LTE Backup options. If you make it a separate product, add a 3rd WAN input to your gateways so you can have 2 hardline inputs + a cell input OR add a passthrough on the cell backup device that will pass the 2nd hardline WAN through to the 2nd WAN input on the gateway if it is still active.
  13. Roll out a travel router / gateway like the UniFi Mobile Router.
  14. Don’t lock down any of these cellular features to a specific carrier like UniFi locks US users into AT&T only
  15. Make switches that have 40, 100, 200, 400Gb, etc ports. UniFi maxes out at 25Gb for their “Enterprise” line. Tons of small businesses need more than 25Gb for access to their NAS systems that may have dual or quad 40 or 100Gb NICs on them.
  16. Every gateway in 2023 should have multi-gig WAN ports capable of matching what National ISPs are offering to households today (1, 2.5, 3, 5, 10Gig)
  17. Every higher end professional / “enterprise” switch should have dual replaceable power supplies
  18. Where the power supply connects, add an optional locking mechanism
  19. Use Noctua fans or Frore Systems AirJets to be the quietest server systems on the market
  20. Add service diagrams to your website for every device so you can actively promote the Right To Repair
  21. If you make a product like the UDM Pro, add a 2nd 3.5" slot so the NVR can have a RAID configuration
  22. Make a product like the UniFi Power Distribution Professional, but don’t limit all the ports the WAN passes through to 1Gb
  23. Add a management RJ45 port to every gateway, add a hdmi or display port to every gateway for direct display connection, add at least 4 usb connections to every gateway for a mouse, keyboard, optional thumb drives, etc.
  24. Add docker capability to the controller gui (might need additional ram and/or ssd and/or beefier cpu) or other form of native app or widget usage
  25. Multi-colored configurable LED on front of APs
  26. Years before I was even into this type stuff, UniFi apparently used to have an AP with integrated 2 way intercom capabilities. It was accessed from the GUI dashboard. Amazing idea & you guys should bring that back to life. Great for schools, offices, even homes, etc.
  27. Also… while UniFi’s hardware & software are pretty good, for a non professional like myself, their software is still not nearly as user friendly as it should be. Adoption rates would be far higher for normal households to snag a cheap all in one device from them (like the new UniFi Express, or UDM, or DreamWall) if the setup was more self explanatory. It would only take a few days for professionals to go through & add informational bubbles next to every option that will explain it in laymen’s terms. Every YouTube tutorial I watch is immediately obsolete when they rollout an update that changes the entire GUI layout & moves everything to new places.

Ok. Its 11:30pm. I’m tired. I’ve been brainstorming these for a few hours now as I type them out. I am sure I have thought of a gazillion more in the past few years while acting as our makeshift IT guy at our photo/video studio, but this is all I can think of off the top of my head right now & my girlfriend is wanting to watch Friends haha. I realize I mentioned UniFi A LOT, but that is what I have the most experience with & that is where I have experienced all of my hardware/software frustrations the last couple of years & daydreamed of ideas to better their products (well… and Synology too). Oh! Also, if you guys get into the camera/nvr space, make sure you rollout some easy to configure 3rd party alarm monitoring service provider integrations. The only reason we still stick with our crappy local alarm company hardware (from alarm.com) is because finding 3rd party monitoring service integrations & duct-taping it together is beyond my scope & time to figure out right now. I just quickly searched my million bookmarks & companies to look into might be konnected.io, alarmgrid monitoring, ispyconnect, alarmo (via home assistant or homebridge), etc. Ok. Now I’m done.

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Thanks for the feedback @RichardAllen08 :open_hands:
We have lots of ideas and things on the roadmap… Over the next year you’ll see a lot of new things from Alta :slight_smile:

We’ll review your notes internally and discuss properly.

Thanks!
Matt

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That’s an amazing & quick response. Companies that listen to their end users can gain rapid traction. That is how Sony got to the front of the camera pack so fast the last 5ish years.

I remembered 2 more ideas last night:

  1. Adding Matter/Thread/Zigbee/Z-Wave support to your APs so they can double as IoT hubs. Again, that would be an industry first I think & would simplify & increase smart device adoption rates.
  2. Add Alexa, Google Assistant, & Siri support to APs with speakers/mics. If you want, you could even roll it into a separate speaker centric product line that competes with Sonos & increases the overall mesh network. A MASSIVE pain point of Sonos is the setup & connection process. It is not seamless & intuitive with a UniFi system & you can have constant connection issues if you don’t do it perfectly. I scoured forums seeing tons of people’s issues over the years & still couldn’t figure it out & had to call Sonos & they remote viewed our server settings while I tweaked them with one of their experts. There aren’t really any well known true Sonos competitors, so this would be a big opportunity for someone to come in & build out a full ecosystem & thrive.

I think a lot of my recommendations can be boiled down to a few key concepts that, when combined together, make a super innovative & successful company:

  • Latest & greatest technology in your devices at affordable pricing
  • Being hyperaware of the competition’s shortcomings & capitalizing on them
  • Never intentionally handicapping a product just so you can eventually roll out another product line or save it for the next generation - tech companies do this all the time & it infuriates savvy customers
  • Hardware companies are a dime a dozen. To be unique, the software side has to be super user friendly (think: Apple, UniFi, Synology), but also super capable (look at how Apple & UniFi have continued listening to their power users & rolled out more & more capabilities through the years to catch up with the competition)
  • Creating an ecosystem of devices that can supplant multiple devices in one. The IoT landscape is so messy & tying everything together is so difficult (the whole reason Matter exists), so if you can create a software dashboard that people love (like UniFi but even easier), people will buy into your ecosystem at higher adoption rates & lock-in. So many companies are scared of cannibalizing another product line of theirs, so they refrain from combining multiple devices into one. If you just do it from the start, you create a super innovative product that people rave about.
  • Keeping everything as open / open source as possible. TrueNAS, Framework, & many others are amazing examples of this. Synology, Apple, & UniFi are perfect examples of the opposite, where they crush it, make tons of money, people love many aspects of their products, but at the same time it’s a love hate relationship where people hate a lot of their locked down, walled garden, policies & we are starting to see governments impose restrictions on these restrictive policies & requiring them to start opening things back up.

Best of wishes to you guys! Hope you can disrupt the space, help create a better world technologically, & have a ton of success along the way! Will definitely be keeping an eye out for your future products :slight_smile:

Edit: Almost forgot to add the ability to buy direct from you on your website and add a link to amazon. Right now, I think there is only the option to see “where to buy” & it doesn’t give the option for any big online retailers, only local distributers. Was able to find you on Amazon. FYI: BestBuy shows nothing when searching “Alta Labs” and B&HPhotoVideo shows a UniFi AP when searching “Alta Labs”. Didn’t check any other big sites.

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Lot’s of ideas yes but we don’t want this being like UI where they launch product after product and perfect none. Not that all UI stuff is that way but UI likes to sell concept stuff that either never made it out of EA or never lasted when it did. So can’t overdo it all at once.

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I agree entirely with Techout. I think it’s better to perfect and support a small number of quality products to build a reputation based on reliability and quality.

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