Looking for combined / hybrid cable

[musht]

1.7amps @ 12v. Plus I'm not sure how tight the voltage requirement is, I wouldn't want them flaking out if the delivered voltage drops over a longer run.

 

 

 

20 whole watts! your overthinking it, be fine down CAT5 with passive PoE adapters, have analogue CCTV here with the IR floods is pulling bit more than 20W at over 50M it isn`t an issue.

 

802.3 BT is probably limit of Cat5 at 100W out the switch, that uses all the pairs, building lighting is a thing if want to fully overcomplicate something, .

 

It`s PoE++ that gets to 60W , PoE+ (802.3 AT) 30w, AF 15W

 

https://www.black-box.de/en-de/page/23894/Resources/Technical-Resources/Black-Box-Explains/lan/PoE-in-Networking

 

Passive PoE baluns for analogue CCTV put an tiny impedance matching trafo in the box.

 

Passive PoE ethernet injectors dinnae have any balun trafo, just wired to spare pairs in the cable.

[Richard P-W]

For a 50m run, the volt drop at 12v needs to be considered if the cameras are sensitive to supply voltage.

 

At your quoted 1.7A, you'd loose around 3v using 1mm conductors. You'd need something in the region of 6mm to avoid significant loss!

 

You could of course use 1mm conductors and wind up the supply voltage to compensate, but that would then mean pairing up the PSUs with cable lengths... I'd look at PoE solutions as it's a proven standard.

[TomHoward]

For the original spec cable, might be worth a look at FS cables, they have a coax with 2x 1.5mm and 2x0.22mm and other varieties, in Security cables but it might be worth a dig round the website, there’s dissimilar sized twisted pair + power as well.

Pricing we find tends to be okay as long as it’s something they’ve got stock of to cut from - not all the products on the website seem to be stocked and some seem to be manufactured to order.

[gyro_gearloose]

Do you have to use RS485 for PTZ control? Modern digital CCTV cameras very often use UTC signals, or Up The Coax, as a way of controlling camera functions. Control signals are sent back to the camera along existing coax video cable. This eliminates the need for separate additional control cabling to be installed.

[musht]

Do you have to use RS485 for PTZ control? Modern digital CCTV cameras very often use UTC signals, or Up The Coax, as a way of controlling camera functions. Control signals are sent back to the camera along existing coax video cable. This eliminates the need for separate additional control cabling to be installed.

 

Still end up with back in the day shotgun cable, got to get power there as well. Pelco/PelcoD seems to be PTZ control standard see referred to a lot.

 

DC:DC converters are everywhere,including couple in the camera housing probably, problems have with CCTV have been connector related , never power transmission related.

 

Baluns similar, many types around including patch panels with the power split out, to this and up and down voltage if it is an issue:

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/VIMVIP-HD-CVI-Passive-Connector-Transmitter/dp/B06XCGZ3H5

 

There may be a certain amount of checking your morals at the door with some CCTV suppliers

 

https://www.npr.org/2019/10/08/768150426/u-s-blacklists-chinese-tech-firms-over-treatment-of-uighurs

[gyro_gearloose]

Still end up with back in the day shotgun cable, got to get power there as well. Pelco/PelcoD seems to be PTZ control standard see referred to a lot.

 

True, but since the OP doesn’t seem to have any cabling yet, installed or otherwise, I thought it would make life easier if they used premade CCTV cables. This would be a much simpler solution than adding baluns and DC:DC converters between the cameras and the cable.

[Stuart91]

True, but since the OP doesn’t seem to have any cabling yet, installed or otherwise, I thought it would make life easier if they used premade CCTV cables. This would be a much simpler solution than adding baluns and DC:DC converters between the cameras and the cable.

 

Yep, that's the nail on the head.

 

There's no cable been bought for this project yet. I do have various stocks of coax etc. which is what I've been using for my initial experiments with the kit.

 

The rig is going to have two purposes: demonstrating the PTZ cameras to potential install customers, and eventually on-stage use for IMAG or live-streaming.

 

 

When we install cameras, it's not a problem to have separate cables for power and signal/control. But for both these applications I'm needing something neat and quick to deploy, that won't have committee members clutching at their pearls. That's why the original notion of being able to get everything down a single CAT5/6 was so attractive. I could potentially still do that by supplying at 48v or higher, but that'll require a step-down transformer and some kind of breakout box at the camera. I'm also a little concerned about having non-standard RJ45 connectors kicking around on stage, waiting for someone to plug them into the wrong thing.

 

If I can get a single-jacket cable with thicker cores for power, then I could potentially use something like a 6 pin XLR. It might even be possible to shoehorn a shotgun-style cable into the connector, although I doubt that'd lay as nicely on stage. I'd rather have a single connector than a breakout just to keep things neat and fast.

 

It looks like something suitable does exist but only in China and restricted to massive wholesale quantities. I figure there's got to be someone that carries them in smaller quantities in the UK, just can't see them...

[pscandrett]

Browsing around the subject I found this marketing article:

 

https://www.efixx.co.uk/Articles/new-cable-simplifies-ev-charger-installation

 

talking about data and power for electric vehicles.

 

The article says 'EV ultra' is made in Doncaster (at http://www.doncastercables.com/cables/17/77/EV-Ultra/Power-and-data-connectivity-combined-in-one-cable/ ) so you might have some luck sourcing it, or something similar, in the UK at sensible lengths...?

 

Edit: 4 quid/metre from toolstation (code 56272). Pricey, but it might be a start.

Edit2: Sorry, that's a single twisted pair version, but they do a cat5 version too. I'll stop editing now!

Edited August 17, 2020 by pscandrett

[Stuart91]

Thanks Peter - that's certainly an interesting option.

 

I think the mains cores are a bit too heavy (4mm2, so could take ~32amp!) but I'll get in touch and see if they do anything more modest.

[J Pearce]

This lot seem to sell a TVI - CAT5e balun that takes 24Vac at the supply and regulates to 12Vdc at the camera end. Has BNC, power jack, and a twisted pair for RS485.

 

1.7A is a fair current to be drawing over 50m of cable at 12V. I suspect to get reliability you'll need to do some power regulation at the camera end and send at least 24V, ideally 48V, or provide power locally to the camera.

 

You could run a twin CAT5 and use something like this active POE Splitter and a POE switch to provide the power. You may even be able to hack this splitter if it is using only 2 pairs for POE (it should be using just blue and brown pairs) and then use the two remaining pairs for TVI and RS485. Doable in a small project box, which presumably you'd need for your custom cable anyway?

[musht]

"easier if they used premade CCTV cables. This would be a much simpler solution"

 

Options are shotgun cable, it dosen`t coil or lay flat, even in install it needs odd shaped holes drilled. It`s not cheap and can be of variable quality, CCA :-(

 

David mentioned scroller cable, try coiling it a few times, hit same issue with anything that is made with thick and thin cores, it has severe memory and turns into a slinky. Multi strand copper that dosen`t with decent flexible jacketing is going to cost and will still turn into a slinky.

 

CAT5, 6 waste of time unless you have 24K/300FPS CCTV ;-) , is cheap and easy to install, easy to use a solid strand box as one time use on site. Use STP if need a stiffer ground.

 

"some kind of breakout box at the camera"

 

Have to break out power from a combined cable anyway.

20W buck convertor is slightly smaller than a box of matches, if required for the power draw.

 

IP cams solve all the issues apart from lag :-(

[J Pearce]

IP cams solve all the issues apart from lag :-(

 

NDI is pretty close to what SDI with fibre convertors and a capture device achieves. You'll need 1G switches and cabling, with a 10G backplane and link to your video server (unless you're only using 2 maybe 3 cameras), but NDI is looking to be dante for video, with good market support.

[timsabre]

NDI cameras are so expensive though. Panasonic do some lovely ptz cameras with poe and ndi so the whole thing just needs 1 cat5 cable. But they cost £1000 more than the non-ndi equivalent.

[canoemoose]

The Panasonic NDI cameras aren't actually that good, in the world of NDI - they're only NDI|HX, which is H.264 compressed and higher latency compared to full fat NDI, which is higher bandwidth but lower latency.

 

If one already has PTZ cameras then the BirdDog Flex converters pass the embedded NDI PTZ control back to the cameras, effectivly turning a non-NDI PTZ head into a full-fat NDI head for $399.

 

BirdDog also make full NDI PTZ cameras (well, Bolin are the OEM, and BirdDog add the NDI magic) for less thatn the equivalent Panasonic.

Not trying to sell them, just a satisfied user!

[Stuart91]

My one experience of NDI hasn't been particularly positive. It was being used to send Powerpoint from a laptop to another that was doing the webcast. The audio, however, was coming directly via a headphone jack, and was arriving almost half a second earlier!

 

I can see the advantages of NDI for actual CCTV applications and things like feeds to other rooms. I suspect for IMAG I'd need the top of the range stuff, which our install customers are unlikely to want to splash out on.

 

The Baluns that Jon has suggested look like they could work well, I've seen plenty that break out power and video, but these are the first I've come across that carry the control signal as well. The step-up for the voltage might well do the trick too.