Instead of running cat 5 in a daisy chain, can you tee??

[Denise Brunner]

In setting up my controllers it would be a lot easier to be able to tee the cat 5 rather than making a daisy chain from one to another. Instead of going up to the roof and then back down, and running cat 5 back and forth across the yard it would be easier if I could tee at two points. Does anyone know if this can be done???? Or am I buying a ton of cat 5 cable???



Thanks all !




Attached files

[Max-Paul]

Denise,

I will answer your question in a minute. But first I want to ask you a question to help you understand my answer. Are you familiar with home stereos and their speakers? Most systems are built for 8 ohm speakers, although I have seen systems for both 4 and 16 ohm systems. But today lets stay with an 8 ohm speakers. Now what would happen if you put two speakers on the left and right terminals? The ohmage or Impedance will drop down to 4 ohms. This will cause distortion of the audio.

Same will happen to the signal on the RS-485 wires. If you where to do some research of the RS-485 specifications. It says that this was meant to be a daisy chain topology. Though LOR does sell a repeater or splitter that has one cable in and two cables out. This will keep the impedance around the 110 ohm range.

[Denise Brunner]

Thanks, I'll check the LOR site

[-klb-]

+1 on the splitter/repeater that they sell, but it is pricy.

One other note is that if you have the USB-485B adapter, it has two ports on it, so it can be in the middle of your chain. You could have on side running to your yard, and the other side to your roof.. This way, you still have one daisy chain, it just happens to have the USB-485B in the middle. I believe the MP3 director has enough jacks to do the same thing if you are using that instead.

[ainsworth]

I have no idea what the down sides would be, but there are enough "jacks" if you run a phone cable to your split boxes.