watertight cat5 cable?

Control Boards, Controllers, Tethers, Ect.
rossrov
Posts: 383
Joined: Feb 28th, 2013, 5:01 pm
Location: Australia

Re: watertight cat5 cable?

Post by rossrov »

Yeah, I want to investigate the burial cable too. Industrial cables with a better jacket than common Cat5 are available but not as cheap of course. For now it's 20 metres of stranded Cat5, the sort of thing you'd use for indoor ethernet patch leads, purchased from Jaycar (Australia)
zpyder
Posts: 9
Joined: Sep 26th, 2013, 8:32 am

Re: watertight cat5 cable?

Post by zpyder »

I'm using some cheap Cat6 and noticed that the outer jacket is pretty flimsy and thin looking. Fairly sure that at some point I'll end up needing to replace it due to floods etc. When I do I think I'll make a poin t of trying to find something that has a thicker outer jacket, if possible.
Mgbss
Posts: 61
Joined: Jul 15th, 2011, 9:53 am

Re: watertight cat5 cable?

Post by Mgbss »

I found and tried a good cable with stranded wire, shield and water proof, It weights twice as much as regular cheap cat 5, I laced it in with 2 pieces of 3/8 poly rope and it still sinks, with the 2 tests I have run with my ROV a sinking Tether is a pain. I will be replacing it with a cheap lighter cable.

If you were running out of a boat in mid water I think the sinking Tether would be ok at best, but if you are running along the bottom the Tether hangs up on everything :cry:
deadlytredley
Posts: 3
Joined: Jan 4th, 2014, 6:56 pm

Re: watertight cat5 cable?

Post by deadlytredley »

Hi, we use some pretty tough cable to monitor water levels in water-bore holes with submersible pumps. It connects a "Slope indicator"to a radio transmitter and allows us to see how far above the pump the water level is and if we are succeeding in our task to De-water a particular area. Im no sparky, but i reckon the internal wires (5 i think) look about the same gauge as cat5 cable, but the outer insulation is super flexible, and extremely tough as well, ans surprisingly light-weight. Google ""slope indicator" and see what it comes up with. When Im back at work i will research our cable a bit closer. Cheers, Deadly!
Sterno
Posts: 9
Joined: Nov 1st, 2011, 7:48 pm

Re: watertight cat5 cable?

Post by Sterno »

While researching for my towed side-scan sonar project I found a cheap source for stranded, individually shielded CAT6 cable at Black Box Network Services. $238 seems pretty good, most other places I checked wanted at least $800 and up for 1000'.

I plan to thread this through 3/8" hollow braid rope along with a 250 lb rated steel cable as a backup strength member and see how the buoyancy looks. Hopefully it will be negative for the sonar and I will skip the steel for the ROV hoping for neutral buoyancy. I will test and report back.

I will be using the X3 control and sending video and RS-485 over the cable. I had designed something similar using 2 Arduinos but their board is way better and simpler than what I'd come up with.
kenl
Posts: 153
Joined: Oct 19th, 2013, 8:50 am
Location: South Western Australia

Re: watertight cat5 cable?

Post by kenl »

This is where I'm at with my build at the moment. The tether :roll:

I'm waiting on some fiber optic converters, after I get them I will order the cables to suit, it's hard to get detailed information when buying cheap, and you (I) have no idea what to ask. So that option is a way down the road, I'd say 3 months with the now very slow shipping from China.

So, I had a security cable, 4 core stranded about 25m long, to start with and it worked fine. I had fed it through a 8mm water ski rope and also added some net floats about every 4 m.

I then wanted to extend my range (after my max488 chips arrived) Cat 5 or 6 in stranded was not available off the shelf where I live so I got some 6 core stranded telephone (lay flat) wire. The RS422 works ok but the video feed is not there at all, I have since got a cat5e stranded and twisted cable 100m long and it's all good. The twisted pairs are a must!!!!

I did fiddle with some solid core cat 5 that I had laying around the shed but it breaks off at the connections constantly, I really would not bother with it at all. The stranded stuff is what is used to make patch cables between PCs and the like, and is meant to be rolled up and un rolled and handled. The solid conductor stuff is for a fixed installation only.
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