Homebuilt Rov Forum

Hey gang,
I have taken the camera off of my old ROV, and as a result because of the way the ROV was constructed I had to cut the camera wire and when I did I noticed that there is only four wires. Just a thought has anyone taken the wires from they're camera and attached it to CAT 5e wires and tested to see if it works?

Yeah I've cut few camera cables and lengthen them before. Sometime you have to worry if the wires are shielded but most of the time it's not to much a problem.

-Steve

So, you guys are talking about video cameras, right? Isn't it normal to use coaxial cable for this? Does it work well with a 4-conductor cable? How do you wire it to the video out on the camera? And what do you do with it at the other end? Obviously, I know absolutely nothing about this.

Thanks

The camera that I have and have been using for three years now actually uses RCA jacks to directly connect to a VCR. But what I am planning on doing is taking the cable that came with the camera and splicing it into cat 5e cable or serial cable so that I can reduce the number of openings in my rov.

Well let me explain a little further... one the camera that I am using has four wires right two for power one for video and one for sound which I can't use due to the fact that it is in a container. So even though it has four wires I truly only need three so with the fact I will be using four wires and not hooking up the sound because of feed back issues I will be taking the cat 5e cable splicing the old wires with them. Basically I am taking both ends of the original cable and just putting a cat 5e cable in the middle I am doing this for two reasons one to try to extend the camera, and two just to see if can be done.

http://www.cablestogo.com
Look at Video Balun. May be helpful.

I might have to take a closer look at that.

In my tests you can extending the A/V cables out to around 100' without losing any picture quality (depending on the camera) and with Balun's and cat5 cable you can get out to a 1000'+

I've toyed around with a few different balun's. Some require more wires of the cat5 though the longer distance you want to go though so if you plan on sharing the cat5 cable with other comms keep this in mind.

-Steve

I will have to also keep that in mind. Meaning about using baluns. I think that I am only truly shooting for 200 to 300 feet, but gauging from the materials that I have been using in the design stage and the design it self I believe that the ROV would be rated for something much deeper than that. High density polyethylene plastic, polycarbonate tubes for housings kept sealed with two or three o-rings on each aluminum cap and then the caps and tubes sandwiched between the polyethylene plastic.

I`m planning to use a cat 5 cable between surface and the ROV with a maximum length of 30 meter.

Attached is a diagram. I will use diodes, when i send down a positive signal one relay will open. When I send down a negative signal the other will open.

I`m planning to use one of the free cable (a total of 8) of the Cat 5 cable to transfer the video signal to surface. The only problem I wass thinking about, will the video signal be affected when i`m sending down power to operate the relays on the same Cat 5 cable ?