Thread: How far can you go?

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Ok I have a question.
How far can you place your 3 axis skulls from the computer running them?

Are you running them via USB? Or some other way?

I am under the impression that a USB cable can only go 5 – 6 feet.

What is your setup?

Thx

PMT

I was a good 20 feet at least, but I used CAT-5E for the signal wires and a separate 18 G speaker wire for the power supply. One skull only.

Don

I'm sure there is a limit at some point, but you can pretty much have the board right next to the computer and run a length of CAT-5 as far as you need to.

So how do you use the cat 5 wire? Any pics ? how about a drawing?

Thx PMT

personally have ran over 250 foot of CAT5 from the PC's control board , to props . I have the CAT 5 from the serial port . I have heard that USB is supposed to be further , but , do not have any personal experience with using the USB port myself .
more than likely , the distance the serial out to a CAT 5 , will be more than needed .

Boogie,

How do you use the cat5 to connect the prop to the PC board?

~30 feet - RS232 (Serial port)
~15 feet - USB
> 1000ft - DMX (RS422/485)

You might be able to stretch more out of these, but these are the specs. I'd put servo signals in the RS232 category, since the physical level is similar.

If you're going for a long run, I'd reccommend either DMX or a USB extender. Both of these are differential, which allows longer signal runs without degradation.

- Hook

Thx Hooked.

I would like to see the hook up's.

PMT

PMT,

I don't have all those connections myself. It sounded like you were looking for some info on how long is safe. I've only been responsible for animation wiring for the past 2 years. And, in that case, the controlling computer is on the second story, whereas the skulls are in the front (grave)yard. Because that run was going to be so long (~150', maybe?), I decided DMX would be the only way to go.

In this case, there's a USB-to-DMX converter (short USB cable), then the other end of the converter connects to a length of CAT6e (I think. Whichever is the shielded variety). At the skull-end of things, the CAT6e connects up to some DMX-servo control and lighting boards. The final servo run to the skulls is maybe 10'.

Hope this helps,
- Hook

Another option is to use an Ethernet-to-USB box, which streaches the USB max distance of 5 meters to Ethernet's max distance of 100 meters.

See Lantronix's UBOX 2100 (2-port) or 4100 (4-port), which also support USB isochronous modes for video and audio.