Wiring help for Wireless Cameras converted to Wired

[chinaboy]

Hi Guys,

I have converted my wireless Cams to wired using Cat5 cable thanks to instructions from this forum. 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. Each Cam will have its own power supply.

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, so I am assumming that I need it wired so that only one cam is on at one time.

If anyone has done this, do you mind sharing wiring instructions?

Thanks for your help.   

[ITguy]

Since you're using Cat5, you have more "pairs" in the cable than you need for just video, audio, and ground.  You can use one of those unused pairs for power.  I did just that in order to create a "remote rf" version, where the rf transmitter is about 50 feet from the actual camera.  Unfortunately, I didn't think to take any pictures, and the camera is high up under a house eve, so I can't go look.  If you can find that original post on how to do the conversion, I think there's a little diagram somewhere that identifies which wire is the camera power.

BTW, the power can be "injected" anywhere along the length of cat5!  So wherever your cable passes by an available outlet, just carefully open the cable at that point to access your "power pair".  Like someone mentioned in your other post thread, putting more than one camera on a single power supply is probably NOT a good idea.

Hope that helps.

ITguy 

[Brian H]

Splicing all the video and audio signals together may also cause problems.

[chinaboy]

So I shouldn't join all video and audio wires together. Does this mean I have to put an RCA connector on each cam? If so, then I will have to get some kinda hub to plug all into and then output to my receiver?

[Brian H]

It would be best to have each video separate and use a video switcher or multiplexer to get the signals into a monitor. As the wiring between all of them could cause video degradation. Though I believe some here have tied a few together. One user tried 16 and that definitely didn't work well.

http://kbase.x10.com/wiki/Connecting_Multiple_Wired_Cameras

[chinaboy]

Thank you so much for the information. I got them working, but just discovered that 2 of my power supplies are either dead or not compatiable with my cams. I orginally had Pan and Tilt bases and the power supply didn't work with the cams when I connected them. Do you think it would best to get replacement power supplies or should I get appliance modules to power the cams?

[chinaboy]

Please disregard this post. I figured out that the power supplies I was using were actually for the pan & tilt bases and they dont work with my cams.

[Noam]

Please disregard this post. I figured out that the power supplies I was using were actually for the pan & tilt bases and they dont work with my cams.

The cams I had (I had bought the Nitewatch wireless ones, along with Pan/Tilt bases) came with different power supplies than the pan/tilt bases.
If I recall correctly (it has been several years, and I sold off the cameras a while back), the camera power supplies I got only had two contacts on the plug, power and ground. The ones for the Ninja had the third contact - which fed constant power to the Ninja base's receiver to power the pan/tilt functions.

There were warning labels on the plugs and jacks that said to make sure you are using the correct power supply for that device.

[chinaboy]

Yep, After swaping power supplies, I realized that I 2 different ones and the label clearly stated not to use the pan&tilt power with my cameras. I guess it pays to ready the fine print. 

[Noam]

So, were able to get your converted cameras working together over a single CAT5 cable?

[chinaboy]

I wasn't trying to connect them using a single CAT5 cable. I have a cat5 cable for each Cam, but at the my server room, I was going to join all the video cables together and all the audio cables together. But I was under the impression from previous post that that would be a good idea. Or perhaps I didn't explain myself correctly. Each cam would still have its own power supply.

[Noam]

I wasn't trying to connect them using a single CAT5 cable. I have a cat5 cable for each Cam, but at the my server room, I was going to join all the video cables together and all the audio cables together. But I was under the impression from previous post that that would be a good idea. Or perhaps I didn't explain myself correctly. Each cam would still have its own power supply.

Yeah, I guess I did misunderstand that part.
Combining the video signals together should work, as long as only one camera is powered up at a time. However, the additional long cable runs might cause problems for you with signal loss, ghosting, etc. The only way to know for sure would be to try it. I recommend adding one camera at a time, to see how it goes.

[chinaboy]

Great information. Thanks....I saw somewhere that you can use RJ11. I am still searching for the wiring instructions for this. Trying to find order to insert the wires into the RJ11 connector. Do you know where I can find anything on this?

Hi bohica and welcome to the forum.

I changed mine to wired to eliminate the noise (visual as well as audible) with the wireless cameras. Too much interference from things like cordless phones (mine & most likely my neighbours), household obstacles, distance, direction, etc.

Result: clean video and only the sounds picked up by the cameras.

I used 4-wire phone cable since I had a lot of it already available. 6-wire with running separate grounds would be ideal.

I did use RJ11 connectors, but I made a junction box that these plugged into. This box joins the cameras signals together and distributes it with RCA cables to a Cable Modulator which in turn distributes the signals to all house TVs & computers via the existing cable system on an unused channel.

[Noam]

Great information. Thanks....I saw somewhere that you can use RJ11. I am still searching for the wiring instructions for this. Trying to find order to insert the wires into the RJ11 connector. Do you know where I can find anything on this?

The order shouldn't matter, as long as you are SURE that you know which wire is which at the other end.
Most RJ11 phone cables switch the pin positions from one end to the other, while most CAT5 cable keep pin position the same. In other words, most of the time (there are always exceptions) the "Orange" wire (for example) will always connect through from one end to the other, no matter what couplers, patch cables, etc you go through (as long as they are all wired correctly). With RJ45, the "Red" will usually switch places with the "green" at every junction point, so it can be really tricky to make sure you don't mix up the wires by the time you get to the other end.
RJ45 couplers will usually reverse the pins again, so it takes a little extra work and concentration make sure that you have the wiring correct when you get to the other end.

In other words, it should matter which color wire of the RJ11 cable is used for which function, but making sure that your connections are straight-through from one end to the other DOES matter.