Adopt Unifi Device to a hosted Unifi Controller

Firstly, we would need to know the IP address of the Unifi device when it is connected to the network. This can be found in the DHCP Lease of your router or you can use an IP scanner software on your computer to scan the IP address of the devices in your network.

You will need to know the MAC address of the device and it is labelled on the Ubiquiti device that you have

The IP scanner will need to be on the same network as the Ubiquiti device.

When we get the IP address, we SSH to the device. We can use the Windows command prompt or any SSH client that you have. By default, the login to a brand new Ubiquiti device is ubnt/ubnt

Username: ubnt

Password: ubnt

We will SSH to the IP address of the device, in this example it's 172.20.21.148

We login as ubnt

ssh ubnt@172.20.21.148 

Type yes to accept the RSA key then Enter

Use the password ubnt

To add your Unifi devices to our controller, please type the command below.

set-inform http://unifi.thetechgeeks.com.au:8080/inform

After the set-inform command, the device will be ready to adopt. If you click adopt and still getting error, 

please redo the set-inform as sometimes it needs to be done twice.

To login to the Unifi Controller Dashboard, please go to the URL below and login with your Username and Password.

https://unifi.thetechgeeks.com.au:8443/manage/account/login

To check new device to be adopted, you can go to devices and it will show devices with Status "Click to Adopt" and verify that you have the correct device and MAC address then adopt your device.

After the set-inform command, the device will be ready to adopt. If you click adopt and still getting error, 

please redo the set-inform as sometimes it needs to be done twice.

If the device can't be seen in the list, it could be still registered to it's original controller. We would need to login to the original controller where the device is registered and click Remove or Forget. After doing this the device will reboot and ready for adoption in the new controller as a brand new device with default settings.

Once the device is adopted, it will use the settings on your control panel including the SSH settings, this can be found below.

Settings > System > Advanced > Device Authentication

You can factory reset the device and it will be like a brand new device with default username and password ubnt/ubnt. All the configuration will also be wiped on the device.