Making a crossover cable

I have a heap of cat5e cable left over from when I wired up the house network so I figured maybe it would be easier to make my own crossover cable to talk to LOR with DMX. Is it just a matter of buying the connectors putting the wires in the appropriate places and crimping the connector on. Is there anything I need to look for in a rj45 connector that will make connecting easier or are they all the same. Any tricks. I need to buy connectors and crimpers but figure the cheapo crimpers will do the job as I will probably only ever make a few cables.

 

There's an ACL wiki page on the wiring required for DMX / LOR adapter cables.

 

Using an inline joiner like http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=YN8034 can easily be made into a lor/dmx crossover. These style of joiner just pop open and all you need to do is snip and rejoin the 4 relevant wires.

Coincidentally I'd planned on adding these connectors to my site (at a lot cheaper price) tonight as heaps of members use them for emergency cat5 joins or if swapping out dmx boards.

 

Thanks Alan. I also saw on Davids website the other day that he sells the same thing already set up for crossover. Here's my logic. Let me know if it's flawed.

I need a 10m cable to go between my controllers. I currently have no spare cat5e cables so need to buy/make 1. I figured I could buy some cheap rj45 connectors and crimpers off ebay/elsewhere and make a cable for about the same price that I could buy one for (since I already have the cable). I also have the added benefit that it gets rid of some more stuff (that I already have had sitting there for ages) out of my shed.

Won't do it if it is harder to do than I imagine. Just wanted to make sure that all rj45 connectors are made the same and that there wasn't any tricks in choosing/buying them that I wasn't aware of.

 

Just make sure the RJ45 plugs you get are suitable for the cable (solid core vs stranded).

 

Thanks David and thanks for the link to the wiki.

 

One more thing. The jaycar link you posted Alan says that it is rj45 but not suitable for cat 5e. Should it have been this one instead http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView.asp?ID=YN8034 . I'm not planning on using it but thought I'd ask just to be sure anyway.

 

Well that puzzles me. I'd seen my own mistake and fixed the link. If you mouseover the link I pasted you will see the name and the link are 2 different ones.

 

I'd recommend that rather than making an crossover cable.


My problem with non-standard RJ45 patch cables (and computer network crossover CAT5 cables for that matter) is when mixed with passive POE (power over ethernet) you can easily get power on to the wrong pins if you're not using a straight-through cable.


Trivial yes to mix up, but an easy mistake when in a hurry or tired.

 

Got myself a rj45 joiner at the local electrical shop today. I have pulled it apart. After looking at http://auschristmaslighting.com/wiki/DMX_Adapter_Leads it appears that maybe only 3 of the 8 pins are required to make it work (1 direction). Is the easiest way to turn the straight through connector into a crossover connector just pull out all the wires except the ones on 1, 2 and 7 on the upstream side and then slide the wires into the appropriate slots on the downstream end (4, 5 and 6 respectively). Or are the wires on pin 3 and 8 that go straight through without crossing over required.

I just thought it might save cutting and rejoining which seems like it might be hard in such close proximity to each other.

Thanks.

 

Sounds like a good plan.

 

Was watching a youtube video on how to put the rj45 connectors on cat5e cable last night. The bloke made the comment that cat5e cables need to b 0.5m long minimum and maximum of 100m. I can understand a maximum but what is the logic behind 0.5m minimum. Does there need to be a minimum amount of resistance for it to work or something else.

Reason I asked was I was going to make a very short crossover cable and then connect it to a long straight cable to make a long crossover cable. The short crossover length meant that the joiner would be inside the control box (out of weather) without excess cable pooling up in there. Can obviously make it 0.5m if I have to but just means there's excess cable in the box getting in the way.

 

You're playing with RS485/DMX and there is no distance requirement other than a max total distance of 1.2km and a maximum number of boards connected of 32. The video is much more likely referring to ethernet and I can't say if there is a minimum distance but the max is definitely 100m.

 

If I can go that far I had better start making some plans for taking over the whole street then.

Thanks Alan. They were referring to ethernet but I didn't realise the signals were different.