Splitting the LOR Data Signal

[richardh]

I have a question. There are a few places in my yard where I would like to split the LOR signal and go to two different places.

Is it possible to have a signal coming in on one of the RJ45 connectors and then have it come out the other RJ45 AND the RJ11 connector at the same time?

-Richard

[LightORamaDan]

richardh wrote:

I have a question. There are a few places in my yard where I would like to split the LOR signal and go to two different places.

Is it possible to have a signal coming in on one of the RJ45 connectors and then have it come out the other RJ45 AND the RJ11 connector at the same time?

-Richard

It will most likely lead to weird reflections in the network and cause things to just start to mess up. Also if you come "Out" of a RJ11 (with regular phone cable) then you have to go "In" to the next controller using a RJ45 connector.

Heck.. If it works it works if not then you don't do it.

[Steven]

There are two options if you want it to be very reliable:

One is to run two cables from the USB485 toward your display. Have the two cables go in different directions when you need to.

Another option is to use a pair of ELL's to form a second wired network.

[richardh]

Steven wrote:

There are two options if you want it to be very reliable:

One is to run two cables from the USB485 toward your display. Have the two cables go in different directions when you need to.

Acutally that is what I am doing now. My comptuer is located in the garage right now and I wanted to bring it inside to my computer room (I hate having to go out to the garage to tweak things with it). I have a lot of cat5 in my house that is home runned to the basement and I was going to patch it over from my computer room to the LOR boxes in the garage.

Since the USB485 will be located in my computer room, I thought it would be nice to "split" the signal once it hits the garage since that is what I am doing now.

As I was typing this though I just thought of something. I am going to make a special cable the combines both of the signals coming out of the 485 (since it does not use all the wires) to a single CAT5 cable and then I will split it back out when it hits the garage.

[cmoore60]

Richard,

Have you thought about using an ethernet connection to your garage and using remote desktop to make your tweaks on your show computer?

Chuck

[richardh]

cmoore60 wrote:

Richard,

Have you thought about using an ethernet connection to your garage and using remote desktop to make your tweaks on your show computer?

Chuck

It is an older computer running windows 2000 and I tried putting VNC on it and it does not work to well. Sometimes it comes up and it really slow and sometime it does not even work.

It will be better to have in my house anyway because then I can also have the transmitter in here so I can hook up a MIC incase I wante to play DJ.

[FireMedic4Christ]

richardh wrote:

Steven wrote:

There are two options if you want it to be very reliable:

One is to run two cables from the USB485 toward your display. Have the two cables go in different directions when you need to.

Acutally that is what I am doing now. My comptuer is located in the garage right now and I wanted to bring it inside to my computer room (I hate having to go out to the garage to tweak things with it). I have a lot of cat5 in my house that is home runned to the basement and I was going to patch it over from my computer room to the LOR boxes in the garage.

Since the USB485 will be located in my computer room, I thought it would be nice to "split" the signal once it hits the garage since that is what I am doing now.

As I was typing this though I just thought of something. I am going to make a special cable the combines both of the signals coming out of the 485 (since it does not use all the wires) to a single CAT5 cable and then I will split it back out when it hits the garage.

Can you elaborate on the wiring of the single Cat5 split out? Could this split cable be used anywhere (ie coming out of one controller and on to two others) or would it have to be at the USB485? Maybe this will help with my problem.

Thanks and your 2007 show is amazing!

[Steven]

If you look at the pins on a RJ-45, they are numbered from 1 to 8. These pins are connected to the pairs of a CAT5 cable in a non-intutive way. I don't have my reference handy, but from memory: Pair #1 is connected to pins 5 and 4; Pair #2 is connected to pins 3 and 6; Pair #3 is connected to pins 1 and 2; and Pair #4 is connected to pins 7 and 8. This ordering lets you plug in a 2-wire phone cable to just pair #1, or a 4-wire phone cable to pairs #1 and #2.

LOR uses pairs #1 and #2. Pairs #3 and #4 are unused. In the newer LOR controllers, like the CTB16PC, pairs #3 and #4 are passed from one RJ-45 to the other. So yes, a cable that used those pairs would work if passed through a CTB16PC.

The older controllers, like the CTB-08, don't pass those pairs through.

Richard is probably going to use pairs #3 and #4 as the #1, #2 pairs in the other direction.

[michael.farney]

richardh wrote:

I have a question. There are a few places in my yard where I would like to split the LOR signal and go to two different places.

Is it possible to have a signal coming in on one of the RJ45 connectors and then have it come out the other RJ45 AND the RJ11 connector at the same time?

-Richard

I did this with great success in 2007. I used all 3 jacks in places where it made sense based on my layout. I never gave it a second thought since the "extra" jack is provided on the controller.

I had 11 controllers and 3 Y's using the extra LOR port. Sounds like milage may very. Perhaps I was lucky.


Edit: Here's my post in a similar thread. The fact that I only bought 25 and 50 foot phone cables for the display probably saved me, although I had no idea it was likely helping kill reflected signals.

I ran 3 Y's in 2007 using the 3rd data port on the LOR cards. It did work flawlessly, and I used mostly phone cord. I had NO CAT5 after any splits. Also, all my phone cables were either 25 feet or 50 feet, even when connecting controllers 2 feet apart. The fact that every controller had a minimum of 25 ft cabling between every run probably killed any reflection. It does work, but your milage may vary.

http://lightorama.mywowbb.com/forum76/16534.html