Using cat5 cable for power

[jeffl]

Careful on the eBay cat5 cables unless you know the seller and quality. I had one last year that was not twisted at all. Lucky for me a rabbit chewed it in half or who knows if my signal would have been good.

 

[battle79]

Will be fine @ 30V.

Assuming you have the 100ma per string you could easily use 6 cores for 2x3 RGB and the remaining 2 cores as a combined return.

Safer option would be to use a bundle of 3 cables and have 12 cores for RGB and 12 cores for common returns.
Thats what i've done for my icicles (split into 8 sections with 2 colors per section), just dropping off enough cores at the start of each section.

Planing to put multiple ray wu 4 core connectors at the conduit breaks so it is dead simple to put it up next year.

Regards,
Rowan

 

[BradsXmasLights]

I am actually making these for permanent installation. Our new house starts getting built next week. In the front yard I will be running 90mm drainage PVC throughout the front yard underground to breakout points. This will connect directly into the garage where all controllers will be housed. Longest cable run will 20m.

I Will have heads and tails for this, so I can place caps over the PVC pipe and leave multicores in there.

I was looking at the security core wire, but I would need 6 lengths each of the 6 core to make 1 multicore for the ray wu board. Seeing as I am most likely to have around 15 of these controllers this year, that would be minimum of 1000 meters. As opposed to only needing about about 800 meters or so of the other cable.

However, I do want to set this up right - would solid core installed permantly be ok? Or should I go just go with the security cable ?

I really like your 90mm pipe idea - I know I'd be doing exactly that if I was to ever build.

However for a permanent underground installation I would be using "underground rated" gel/grease filled cable. Normal indoor communications cable won't last underground otherwise. (even if it's in conduit)

I'd probably run the permanent CAT5 in a seperate conduit too, then leave a draw-wire in the 90mm pipes for pulling cable looms through at Christmas Time as required.

 

[David_AVD]

In the front yard I will be running 90mm drainage PVC throughout the front yard underground to breakout points.

I'd *love* to have a bunch of underground cable accesses. One can only dream...