Planning Guides
Written workflows for choosing the right starting point, understanding why each calculator matters, documenting assumptions, and turning rough planning inputs into report-ready design notes.
Use guides when you need the workflow, not just the calculation.
Calculator pages answer a specific question. Planning guides explain the sequence around that question: what to confirm first, what can break the result, which follow-up checks matter, and what should be captured before the work becomes a client-ready report.
Featured calculator guide: PoE Budget
Start here when planning cameras, wireless access points, VoIP phones, intercoms, or access-control devices powered from a switch. The guide explains how device count, wattage, future growth, and headroom fit together before the calculator is used.
Category planning guides
Use these as the written version of each ScopedLabs planning workflow. They connect the tools in the category, explain the order of checks, and call out assumptions that should not be skipped.
Access Control
Plan fail-safe and fail-secure behavior, reader selection, lock power, panel capacity, and access level structure.
Open guideCompute
Walk through CPU, RAM, storage IOPS, throughput, VM density, GPU, power, thermal, RAID, and backup-window planning.
Open guideInfrastructure
Estimate room footprint, rack space, equipment spacing, rack weight, floor loading, UPS room needs, and generator runtime.
Open guideNetwork & Throughput
Plan PoE budget, bandwidth demand, uplink oversubscription, latency, MTU, VPN overhead, packet loss, jitter, and failure behavior.
Open guidePerformance
Review response targets, latency, throughput, queues, concurrency, CPU, disk, network, cache, bottlenecks, and headroom.
Open guidePhysical Security
Plan camera lighting, mounting, field of view, coverage, spacing, blind spots, pixel density, lenses, and capture range.
Open guidePower & Runtime
Estimate device load, VA, watts, amps, load growth, UPS runtime, battery sizing, reserve, and supporting runtime checks.
Open guideThermal
Estimate heat load, PSU losses, BTU conversion, rack density, airflow, fan CFM, aisle behavior, ambient rise, and cooling capacity.
Open guideVideo & Storage
Plan video bitrate, usable storage, retention, RAID impact, survivability, codec effects, compression, archive cost, and failure exposure.
Open guideWireless
Plan coverage radius, channel overlap, RF noise margin, client density, AP capacity, link budget, backhaul, PtP links, and roaming.
Open guideScopedLabs guides and tools are planning aids. They do not replace manufacturer documentation, project-specific engineering, professional review, code review, site survey, or final deployment validation.