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Anyone use Cat5e cable >10' with ELL?


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Posted

If I use a Cat5e patch cable longer than the 10' cable provided, does that cause any problems? Curious to know if anyone else uses a longer cable.

Posted (edited)

Not that I'm aware of. I'm using Cat5, 5E and Cat6 cables. The longest is 25 feet and no problems. BTW, per LOR, cables longer than 25 feet are not recommended due to the voltage drops over longer runs.

Edited by dgrant
Posted

I send a signal from my house to another house that is over 1000' feet away, and he has over 50 ft of cat6

  • 7 months later...
Posted

So I am new to LOR and have just admired them for years. I just bought a few controllers this year and keep seeing "ELL" but can not seem to figure out what this means.

 

Sorry for the newbie question but can you tell me what that means?

 

Thanks

Chris

Posted

I too use many Ells, they are the cats meow for sure.  I have them mounted on the tree above the controller, about 15' or so.

Posted (edited)

RS-485 (the protocol LOR uses on the cat-5 cables), RS 485 in a balanced run is good to 8000 feet, HOWEVER, LOR does NOT include balancing resistors (NOR should they) getting into the "High end" of the technical aspect of RS-485, is for PRO's ONLY, for most people (and applications) the balancing resistors are NOT needed (under 1000 feet generally), (That is Total length, of ALL cables combined, NOT per cable (all footages mentioned in my post, in this thread)). I'm speaking ACTUAL cables, NOT ELL's (Easy Light Linkers)

 

Greg Manning

Edited by a31ford
Posted (edited)

I believe the spec for the ELL calls for up to 25 feet between the ELL, and the controller powering it.  The issue is voltage drop in the cat on the pair used for power.

 

ETA:  I use 25 foot cables on both ELL's I use for the button that starts the show each year.  So far, zero issues.

Edited by -klb-
Posted

In 12 I had a GFCI trip on my controller that had 20 feet of cat5 to the ELL on my roof.  This ELL send a signal to another street that is about 1000 feet away.  I had another controller that was daisy chained to this one with about 50 feet of cat 5. 70+ feet of Cat 5 was still able to power my show.  

 

With that being said my ELL is on a poll 4 feet above my roof.  

Posted

I dont mean to hijack this thread but I have a question about these. To do the first LOR controller, do I need 2 ELLs? One to transmit and one to receive? The singles are to add another receiver, am I correct in my thinking?

Posted

No it's a transceiver.  Where it transmits and receives data. 

Posted

I could be wrong but I believe you need two for the first setup and then one for every controller after that

Posted

That's what I was thinking. On page 9 of the manual it shows this:

 

 

 

 

Posted

This is how my setup is I have one on my roof, and one person on each street has a ELL on their roof, and the rest of the controllers are daisy chained with cat5.  

Posted (edited)

OK, Maybe I’m not asking the right question or not explaining properly.

 

You said there is one on your roof and each of the neighbors has one. Yours controls the signal from your PC and sequence, and then sends that signal out to each of the other houses, correct?

 

I need to connect from my PC, which controls the signal and sequence, across my driveway and run 4), 16 channel controllers and an 8 channel controller for my Mega Tree.

 

If I understand LOR’s schematic in the manual properly,
 

I need 1 ELL at the PC to send the signal out to the second ELL. Then run a Cat6 from the second ELL to Unit 1 and daisy chain from Unit 1 to Units 2, 3, 4 and 5, which will have 5), Cat 6 cables no longer than 2 feet between ELL # 2 and each of the  5 controllers. (see attached)
 

Is this the way I need to set it up?

 

I am not running any other controllers except the 5 on the mega tree. Everything else in the front yard will be on E1.31 and will be Pixels or RGB Nodes

 

 



 

Edited by Ron Boyd
Posted

That is correct.  And you don't need to put it on your roof.  Just try to get it off the ground and line of sight. 

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