crewdog89 Posted November 23, 2016 Share Posted November 23, 2016 I have 5 each 16ch controllers, all linked together on my network. The J7 connector (Cat 5) on my #1 and #4 controllers are not working. One of them is brand new, and the other is about 4 years old now. Is there any other way to get one of them to connect other than using the Cat 5 connector? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted November 23, 2016 Share Posted November 23, 2016 Obviously too late to send in a controller for repair before Christmas show season! You have a couple choices. If you can make one of the controllers as the last one in the cable string, you only need one connector, so that takes care of one of your bad connectors. However since you have two controllers with a problem, that still leaves you with one issue. If your controller has a phone cable jack in addition to the RJ-45 connectors, you can use a phone cable instead of the RJ-45 connector. Obviously you would need to change the connector on the end of the cable. This is easier if you have the ability to install the connectors yourself (I do). The other option is to get a splitter that has generally one RJ-45 connector on one side and two RJ-45 connectors on the other that are all connected together. Take your cable in from the next upstream controller to one jack, and the cable to the next downstream controller on another jack on the splitter, and a SHORT cable from the third jack on the splitter to the one working connector on your controller. Note that some of these splitters have a short cable as the third port (usually with a very short cable), and sometimes they have three female RJ-45 jacks. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
crewdog89 Posted November 23, 2016 Author Share Posted November 23, 2016 Jim, Thank you for your reply. I tried the phone cord as you suggested and started to smell something hot. It was causing the board to heat up on both of the controllers. I let it cool off and they are still discoverable if connected via cat 5. I'll try to find a Y connector today. If I understand you correctly, I should be looking for Y connector with 3 female ends correct? Also, curious why you stressed "short" so much. Each of these controllers are at least 30 feet apart from one another... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
k6ccc Posted November 23, 2016 Share Posted November 23, 2016 Technically the RS-485 spec down not allow splitting the circuit. Keeping the extra leg short minimizes that violation of the spec. To make sure we're on the page, if for example controller #4 only has one working connector, and just to keep this simple, your five controllers are all in numerical order. You would place the splitter near controller #4 and plug the very short cable into the working connector on controller #4. Then plug the longer cables from controllers #3 & #5 (what would normally plug into two working ports of a controller) into the two remaining ports of the splitter. Sent from my Droid Turbo via Tapatalk, so blame any typos or spelling errors on Android Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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