Deploying Meraki Wi-Fi in a Warehouse for scanning guns

WayneC
Comes here often

Deploying Meraki Wi-Fi in a Warehouse for scanning guns

Hi Everyone,

 

I'm struggling a bit to determine the best approach to deploy a new deployment of WAPs to a warehhouse full of costco style racking.  The dimensions of the warehouse are 255' x 54' with rafters at 24' and top ceiling at 30'.   I'm trying to complete a heatmap and its looking like 33 WAPs.   Currently there will only be 1 wireless gun being leveraged so this solution seems a bit expensive and extreme.

4 REPLIES 4
KarstenI
Kind of a big deal
Kind of a big deal

"Expensive and extreme" is relative if there is a business need for wireless on this one gun ... And probably more will be added later, right?

I would look for a company specialised in Warehouse Wifi. There is too much that can go wrong there. And don't focus on specific APs to use. With RF-Guns, you will never need one of the High-End APs with many spatial streams, but you will likely need one with external antennas.

Jwiley78
Building a reputation

With one gun and that size of an area I would look into cellular options.

MerakiDave
Meraki Employee
Meraki Employee

@WayneC If it's mission critical or there's a good business case to deploy a potentially expensive wifi solution for a single scanning gun, and they are willing to make the investment, I'd say this is screaming for a site survey, as warehouses can be tricky.  😁  I would also imagine the wifi would be leveraged for more use cases in the future than the single scanning gun, either more scanning guns, or perhaps iPads, mobile phones, etc.  Or you might also want to deploy wifi-capable cameras or environmental sensors that could also leverage the solution? 

 

There are many ways to approach a warehouse design and a lot of "it depends" type answers to many of the questions.  It sounds like all you need is coverage, not concerned with performance or density, but even still, depending on the RF environment and the layout of the shelving (and what's in or on them) you could end up with a couple of different design approaches, thus I'd suggest at minimum get a floorplan to do a predictive site survey.  But be careful there too, nothing simulates a fully stocked warehouse like a fully stocked warehouse.  

 

Sounds like you may have already done that, and came up with 33 APs?  Which might be excessive, that's <500 square feet per AP, but depending on the layout and RF environment, might be appropriate.  What model AP, are those 33 APs with internal omni antennas, wall mounted (hopefully not up on the high ceilings which wouldn't be good)?  Many designs end up with wall-mounted APs and sector antennas aimed down every-other row for example.  But lots of variations, every deployment will be different.  

Thanks MerakiDave,  The idea is to start with 1 gun and eventually add to the warehouse.  Currently the warehouse is empty with no shelves however the Wi Fi needs to go up before the shelves go up as they need to immediately place stock on the shelfing locations with the gun inventory.  I would love to do a site survey but this would not return the correct output.  Both walls are lined with shelfing as well and the only other alternative to mounting them in the isles is on the racking as per your suggestion of vertically mounting the access points but this would pose a risk of the WAP being damaged by the forklifts etc..Plant Schematic.JPG

Get notified when there are additional replies to this discussion.
Welcome to the Meraki Community!
To start contributing, simply sign in with your Cisco account. If you don't yet have a Cisco account, you can sign up.
Labels