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[chinaboy]

Hi Guys,

I know this is an old thread but can some help me out. I have converted my wireless Cams to wired using Cat5 cable thanks to instructions from this thread. One of my cams I was able to leave the Power supply intact since I had a outlet at that location. But my 2 other cams I need to put the power supply at another distant location.

My question is how do I wire the power supply to cat5 cable to power the cams? The power supply has a red, white and insulation wire, which is probably ground.  I am connecting all the cams to one RCA cable for audio and video.

Should I connect all the yellow wires from each cam together, all whites from each cam, blue and black from all cams together? And how do I connect the RCA cable to everything after doing the above? I tried but currently the only cam that worked for me is the one that I left with the original power supply intact. I will be using vanguard to view the cameras, not sure if that makes a difference.

Thanks for your help.

[Noam]

The power supply is what controls which camera is on at any given time. Each camera needs its own power supply, which an individual address.
You can certainly extend the power supply wires, but I really don't recommend trying to combine the wiring from the power supplies together. The power supply tuns the camera on and off according to the appropriate X10 commands, so you'll run into trouble if more than one camera is trying to feed video over the same line at the same time.

You would need a pair of wires (possibly two pairs, depending on the amount of current the camera requires) for each camera. I don't see a way to put all that, along with the video, in a single CAT5 cable.

Depending on the model of cameras you have, it looks like the power supply had one "ground" wire, and two "positive" wires. One was switched on and off with the X10 signal (turning the transmitter on and off), and the other was always on (keeping the camera optics powered up, to reduce "Warm-up" time. I think some of the cameras didn't have that second line, and turned the entire camera on and off with only a switched power line.

[chinaboy]

Thanks for the fast response. I will have an individual power supply for each cam, but wanted to know how to connect the red, white, and ground wire from the power supply to each camera. My intentions where to use separate power supply for each camera, but connect the video and audio wires together. Just don't know what wire should go where. Any help on this would be greatly appreciated.

[Noam]

I'm guessing the bare wire is the ground. You'll have to test what the other two do when you send commands to the power supply.
My guess is that one of them is always on, the other is switched on and off.
I think you're going to connect the switched one to the power input for the camera, and not use the "always on" one. Since the RF transmitter isn't being used (and that's what used to switch on and off), you'll be switching the camera power on and off (when it was always on before).
You will probably notice a lag after switching from one camera to another (as the optics have to "warm up" after you power them on).

Sorry I can't be of more help. I got rid of my X10 cameras a few months ago - I hadn't been using them for years at that point.

[chinaboy]

Thanks for you help....I will post a new thread to see if anyone else can shed some light on this. But your explaination does make sense.

Thanks