Way - OT but . . advice re. extending USB cables

[Richard Savage]

In the likely hope that there is someone who knows how to (if it's possible) extend the usable length of USB cable:

I have a USB 2.0 camera that I want to use with an entry phone arrangement. The distance between front door and PC is some 15 m. Can I run the camera, presumably from a powered hub, this far from the PC and if so how?

A wireless hub close to the camera and equivalent at the PC is not really an option because the cable to the camera must run down the outside of the house.

TIA

Richard

[Hywel]

If you can't get a wireless attachment you'll need several powered repeater cables. B&Q has them for about £20 each for a 2.5m cable, but even then you may not make the 15m requirement. You could try a powered hub halfway I suppose.

Your best bet is to go for a wireless web camera:

[Lee]

This isn't a serious suggestion, due to the price(!), but there do exist

40m USB cables. They use a USB/fibre optic adapter at each end. Apparently fully transparent to USB and compatible with webcams etc. The snag being that a 40m USB 1.1 cable is $300 :(

It would be cheaper just to buy an IP camera and run it in Cat 5 ;)

Lee

[Lee]

There is also this option, although it's only USB 1.1 :

uses a pair of USB->cat5 adapters.

Lee

[nightjar]

I have daisy-chained 4 x 3m USB cables, using powered hubs. It works for a printer, but not for the scanner I tried on it.

Colin Bignell

[logized]

Standard USB cables are limited to 5m, so you would need 2 USB hubs to extend to 15m. This page has some more info -

[Simon]

Maplin do sell 5 metre active USB 2 extension cables (ie. with built-in repeaters that take their power from the cable). They cost around £20 each. You're supposed to be able to daisy-chain up to 5 of them - I have seen a daisy-chain of 4 working with a USB 1.1 camera.

This is a fairly ugly solution though, and waterproofing the connections between the cables might be tricky. An Axis 205 network camera is a better alternative, if you have a power socket near the entry phone, but they do cost about £150.

Simon

[Roly]

A standard USB cable is only reckoned to work when it's no more than 5 metres long. Extending the cable is likely to stop it working properly.

You can get active USB cables with a built-in buffer amplifier, allowing multiple lengths to be joined in 5 metre increments. The cheapest I know of are from CPC at around £15 for 5Metre. You can plug three of them in series and that will allow the sort of reach that you are talking about.

However, when you add up the cost of those cables and the value of the web cam, you might do better to simply get a cheap, bog-standard security camera which will run on a huge length of cable. You're also more likely to find a waterproof security camera than a waterproof web cam.

[Lurch]

On Thu, 17 Jun 2004 19:52:34 +0100, Richard Savage strung together this:

ISTR someone asking about this on uk.c.h-n a while ago. The end soolution was an IP camera, but I did find a solution somewhere, and I've now forgotten what it was! Another solution, and also cheaper than active repeater cables is a cheap CCTV camera, wired or wireless, and a picture\motion capture\TV tuner card for the PC.

[Richard Savage]

In the likely hope that there is someone who knows how to (if it's possible) extend the usable length of USB cable:

I have a USB 2.0 camera that I want to use with an entry phone arrangement. The distance between front door and PC is some 15 m. Can I run the camera, presumably from a powered hub, this far from the PC and if so how?

A wireless hub close to the camera and equivalent at the PC is not really an option because the cable to the camera must run down the outside of the house.

TIA

Richard

[Lurch]

On Fri, 18 Jun 2004 08:10:49 +0100, Richard Savage strung together this:

Something wrong with the 8 replies yesterday?

[stejonda_privacy]

In message , Lurch writes

he needs a few more to get the cable long enough

[Ian Stirling]

around 10-15 quid or so.

[Richard Savage]

[Dave Liquorice]

F'all I could read. Usenet is a text based medium not a website so use plain text not HTML or some other daft coding.

USB is for (large) desktop use, long runs are a no no. I could probably offer more advice if I could have read the orginal post.

[Richard Savage]

What? I wrote considerably more than 'f'all'

[Dave Liquorice]

But not in plain text. Your message was blank with an attachment presumably containing something that should be on a web page with fancy fonts and flashing colours.

[Richard Savage]

Hi Dave

Intriguing. No one else (apparently) was unable to read it. There were no attachments or flashy effects and it was sent in the same form as my reply, which you could see, to your posting. Curiouser and curiouser!

Richard

[stejonda_privacy]

In message , Richard Savage writes

Intriguing.  No one else (apparently) was unable to read it.  There were no attachments or flashy effects and it was sent in the same form as my reply, which you could see, to your posting.  Curiouser and curiouser!

strangely, your post of 19/6/4 20:32:51 contains no html tags - do you have no control over your software???

[Richard Savage]

I suspect that there may have been a problem with Nildram. ALL my posts to this and any other NG are in the same format and this thread is the only one that has caused any disturbance (v my thread about unsafe gas connections posted after this thread). It took several attempts to reply to this thread with Nildram giving me various incomprehensible (to me at least) error messages.

Sorry to all that have suffered as a result of this thread!

Richard