5.28.03
Power Over Ethernet
I decided to start another little project. Ever since I've had my Netgear AP, its been moved all around my house. First I wanted to watch the flashing lights, so I decided to put it in one corner that had an available data port. Next, I moved it into my bedroom and placed it behind my LCD monitor. That still provided a great signal, but table started to get too crowded and the lights were annoying in the dark. Later I moved it next to the entertainment center, and that's when I realized that I'm sick of seeing it at all.
I did some testing a while back with it placed in my front coat closet and liked the idea of being in there. My signal was still very good (even in my basement at the other end of the house) and it wasn't drawing attention anymore. Problem was getting power to it. I really didn't want to run an outlet to a closet, so the idea kinda faded until I found this tutorial over at NYC Wireless on making your own POE connection.
What makes this so sweet is instead of running two lines, one for data and one for power, you can run the power and data over the same Catagory5 data cable. Since the data portion only uses 4 out of the 8 wires in Cat5 cabling, you can use the other 4 wires to carry your DC power for the AP.
I'm looking to work on this over the weekend, maybe even document it as another tutorial available for the curious.
3:53 pm in networking | 1 person viewing0 ramblings so far