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Firewire cable - max effective length
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Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Virginia
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Hello everyone,
I would like to hook up my iSight to my 12" 1GHz PB to "monitor" a certain room of my house. The iSight will be mounted in the said room, however my PB will be located in a different room.
Thus, here is my question. What is the maximam effective lengthe of firewire cable that one can use before a noticable loss in quality. I have searched around and found 10 meter cable, however I need about 30 meters. Does anyone know of a 6 pin firewire cable of this length?
If not do you know where I could find a "connector" of some sort to link multiple 10 meter cables?
Also, after all of this hassle of running the cable and expense, would I be better off to just get a wirelless cam that I can run off my current network? If so, can you recommend any such devices...I know linksys and netgear make them, however I have never hesrd of their effectiveness.
Thanks.
Kris
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Junior Member
Join Date: Feb 2004
Location: Virginia
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Professional Poster
Join Date: Jan 2000
Location: Columbus, OH
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If you had another Mac capable of running iChat AV, it would be easier (but not necessarily cheaper) to get another iSight and network the two, using Rendezvous and another iChat account (free from AIM).
That's all I've got.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Nov 2003
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Jan 2003
Location: ~/
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Originally posted by ApertureFoto:
What is the maximam effective lengthe of firewire cable that one can use before a noticable loss in quality. I have searched around and found 10 meter cable, however I need about 30 meters. Does anyone know of a 6 pin firewire cable of this length?
If not do you know where I could find a "connector" of some sort to link multiple 10 meter cables?
I think 10 meters is it. You can connect several cables together via FireWire repeaters. After 10 meters or so, the signal and voltage will degrade (or so I've been told) to the point that the device at the other end will not function. Repeaters will allow you to extend the FireWire cables length.
Here's a link to a FireWire repeater good for 110 meters. $59.
Not sure where to find a cable 30 m long, however. You may need to use a couple of hubs and three 10 m cables.
This company, firewirestuff.com, also sells a FireWire to fiber optic converter. $800, but it'll run 400 meters.
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Sep 2000
Location: Los Angeles
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You're MUCH better off with a network cam. You can get Firewire repeaters, but they (and the long FW cables) are pretty expensive. Plus, FW is only spec'ed to 15', so you may have difficulties with very long cables. I use a 30'er regularly, but hesitate to buy anything longer. I've heard that they may have problems carrying power at long lengths.
I do exactly what you are trying to do with (basically) one of these. I say basically, cuz I actually have the DCS-1000W, which is the wireless version of that. However, I have recently removed its antennas and set it to connect wired only and plugged it into to an Airport Express. This effectively turns my camera into a DCS-1000 (I bought it before the AXPs were available). This is a much better arrangement. Now I don't have to worry about getting the camera to enter the wireless network with a password; in fact, I can completely disregard all the wireless settings, which were always the tricky part about this thing. And since the APX is connected via WDS to my Airport Extreme base, the APX also extends my wireless network to this area of the house (which had only a weak signal before). This setup is also just better for what you want to do than an iSight would ever be. I can view the cam locally on my LAN without being plugged into anything (like an iSight). I, or anyone else I give the password to can view it from anywhere in the world by simply putting a single web page up on my user space with Earthlink. Check it out. I've added a temporary user for this weekend only. The username is temp and the password is temp.
A friend of mine recently bought a newer version of this cam from D-Link, but the image quality is MUCH worse, so be careful. Check the specs and try not to get anything with a lower pixel count that the DCS-1000. At the time I bought mine, I was told that the DCS-2100 was incompatible with Macs.
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Last edited by aaanorton; Sep 11, 2004 at 01:07 PM.
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