Power + DSL signal in same 700ft cable length

That sounds more like a CYA advisory. Five feet in the sun and rain can be just as damaging over time as a longer run.

Right. This needs to last 2 or 3 years.

In all of my research, I probably spent only 5 minutes looking at fiber. I figured it was way too expensive... especially for a relatively short-term solution.

We get the occasional deer & elk in the area. The wire I have right now (2TPR 22AWG Solid Telephone Drop Wire) only cost me $40 on eBay, so no big loss if damaged (and probably splice-able depending on the degree of damage). Although, it's not sounding like I'm going to be able to use it, based on replies here.

Lol. Yeah, thought about that too. Summertime, that 700ft hike is no problem. It's only 20-30 feet in elevation. But in winter, I might be trekking through 5ft of snow. That was another reason I was hoping to be able to run power in the same wire. I could just unplug my 48volt (or whatever) power supply right there at the 120 VAC, and not need to hike out to the peak.

Good to know.

D'oh!

Thank you for this. I've seen similar info on SeattleWireless regarding WRT54G (version 4 and below run linux), and WRT54GL ("L" for linux). A very popular access point.

Okay, I'm gonna' take a step back here, and try to understand the pros & cons of using the wire that I've already bought. It's 2TPR 22AWG Solid Telephone Drop Wire. What if I were to do this?

1. At the pedestal, attach the telco equipment to the first wire pair to carry the DSL signal.
2. At the 120VAC plug near the pedestal, attach a 48V DC(?) power supply to the second pair.
3. At the peak, terminate the first pair with an RJ-11, and attach to modem.
4. At the peak, terminate the second pair with... A. something that splits the hot and neutral wires so that power can be used by 2 devices (DSL modem and Access Point), connected to... B. something that regulates the power to 5 volts or 12 volts or whatever each device needs, connected to... C. barrel connectors of the the size and polarity used by the two devices, connected to... D. the two devices.
5. Ground all equipment with ground rod
6. Encase everything in waterproof containers, considering ventilation requirements.
7. Consider lightning arrestors, etc...

Would something like this work? Also, is my understanding correct that DSL uses a single wire pair (2 conductors)?

See additi> getwilde wrote:

So, are you saying that there should not be a problem running DC power parallel to the phone signal, on a second pair of conductors? When you say "down and up again", are you referring to surges, or something else?

If I don't try to send power and signal down the same copper pair, do I bypass some of the "intermixed multiple media and power sources" complexities that you mention?

I guess my proposed setup above is loosely the same concept as PoE, except this is PoTDW... Power over Telephone Drop Wire. (I just made that up. :) In this case, digital signal on one pair (instead of 2 like Ethernet), and power on a second, unused pair.

Okay, I'm gonna' take a step back here, and try to understand the pros & cons of using the wire that I've already bought. It's 2TPR 22AWG Solid Telephone Drop Wire. What if I were to do this?

1. At the pedestal, attach the telco equipment to the first wire pair to carry the DSL signal.
2. At the 120VAC plug near the pedestal, attach a 48V DC(?) power supply to the second pair.
3. At the peak, terminate the first pair with an RJ-11, and attach to modem.
4. At the peak, terminate the second pair with... A. something that splits the hot and neutral wires so that power can be used by 2 devices (DSL modem and Access Point), connected to... B. something that regulates the power to 5 volts or 12 volts or whatever each device needs, connected to... C. barrel connectors of the the size and polarity used by the two devices, connected to... D. the two devices.
5. Ground all equipment with ground rod
6. Encase everything in waterproof containers, considering ventilation requirements.
7. Consider lightning arrestors, etc...

Would something like this work? Also, is my understanding correct that DSL uses a single wire pair (2 conductors)?

See additi> getwilde wrote:

So, are you saying that there should not be a problem running DC power parallel to the phone signal, on a second pair of conductors? When you say "down and up again", are you referring to surges, or something else?

If I don't try to send power and signal down the same copper pair, do I bypass some of the "intermixed multiple media and power sources" complexities that you mention?

I guess my proposed setup above is loosely the same concept as PoE, except this is PoTDW... Power over Telephone Drop Wire. (I just made that up. :) In this case, digital signal on one pair (instead of 2 like Ethernet), and power on a second, unused pair.

22AWG has a LOT of resistance when used to carry DC power. I did the math a while back and wasn't going to be able to drive a Netgear consumer AP over 100' using 2 pairs bonded together.

Which is why I think the above is reasonable if you move the modem and router back to the pod and just drive an AP on the hill.

But either way I think you're going to need new wire. Do the math. Goggle should find the ohms per foot of AWG22 wire. Then see what the current draw of the various devices is. For just an AP and extender at the peak see how much voltage drop you get. For the 48 volt setup figure out the wattage needed to drive the DC2DC converters and see if you can get it up your wire. I doubt it.

I think you're stuck on using the old wire and it's costing you in all the other areas.

Also if you get some kind of $100 each Ethernet extender for less than CAT5 wire you can likely splice it a few times to deal with the moose. :)

22AWG has just as much resistance when used to carry signals as to carry DC.

19 ohms per 1000 ft. Thus 26.6 ohms for the 1400-foot round trip. If your 48-volt equipment uses 24 watts (WAG) that's 0.5A. So you need to put in 61.3V at the bottom end to get 48.0V at the top end. Probably well within the specs of the DC:DC converter to tolerate that voltage under open-circuit conditions.

But yes, this seems like the challenge of building an electronic device on a chassis that already has one hole punched in it. You keep on trying to adapt to some preconceived condition.

carl

Sorry, I just realized that this info isn't particularly helpful. The wire I'd like to try to use is 22 gauge, 2 pair, twisted wire, solid copper. General Cable Part Number: 2090008 (Warning: PDF link)

In terms of DC current 22AWG solid is about all that matters.

Wow, in the time you have taken to discuss this, you could have borrowed a box of 24 gauge wire and tried this yourself.

DSL doesn't care what's on the adjacent pairs, because it rides a different frequency than voice lines and you are not listening to audio in the voice frequency anyway. Run 18V AC in the same sheath if you feel better.

You might have to, because you're going to need about 1.1 AMPS at 12V DC to power a DSL modem and router.

Carl Navarro

Lol, you're probably right. I can't tell if you're being wry, or if you just really want this thread to end. :)

Thank you. That's very helpful. I was reading about voltage regulators today. I can tell I'm getting in over my head on all of this. I'm going to need to hit the books, or find a local expert to help me out.

That's a given...no issues with that.

Not going to work. With a 2 amp load, 700 feet of 22 gauge wire will have 96.9% voltage drop...thats only 1.5 volts at the far end.

Lets look at other combinations using 700 ft of cable and a 2 amp load:

10 ga with 12 volts gives you 9 volts at far end. Good for a 5 volt linear regulated power supply, but how you going to up it to 12 volts? 14 ga with 24 volts gives you 16 volts at far end. That would work. Use low cost 24 volt transformer (Radio Shack used to carry them) at the 120 VAC pedestal end - no need to rectify it, just run 24 VAC up the hill. Use a 12 volt and 5 volt linear regulator. 14 ga with 120 volts gives you 112 volts at far end. That would work without building additional power supplies. A quick to Home Depot or Lowes for the 3-conductor cable and ground-fault-interrupter.

Terminate the cable on a biscuit block and then a short modular phoen cord into the power outlet/surge protector/telephone surge protector outlet strip you'll want to use. That way if an animal trips on the cable, it'll break away at the modular plug.

See above.

Radio Shack carries all that, if they don't...snip off the connector from the decices' walwart power unit, but that's if you're goign to build your own regulated power supplies

Six feet deep.

Waterproof? To what depth??? Seriously... you need it weatherproof. Two Walmart plastic bins - one inside the other. Paint the outside one and replace every one or two years - they only last a few months in the Texas sun and the U.V light deteriorates the plastic to the point it almost cracks by itself.

Side mount your antennas below the tip of the tower. If you pour a pad of concrete, don't run your ground wire in the concrete. I've seen a pad blown apart after a lighting hit on the tower.

It does...just like a telephone line.

There is no problem runing DC power along side the signal pair, but the issue will be the voltage drop on the power pair. See above.

"PoTDW" is used for low current telco devices. Not a 2 amp load.

Try this link

You can get a few ideas from this. Basically, you can't go with a remote charger to a 12v battery unless you're willing to run 12 Ga wire :-)

However, you're still dealing with the premise of needing only 12 volts at 1.1A so maybe there's an alternative. I think the problem is that you can't just stick 12 volts into the router and WAP without the power supplies, so you might just need to run one of those 75W automotive 12v to 110V AC adapter things and you're back to needing bigger wires.

Anyway, check out the BLOG, the Inverters, the DC-DC converters and such. This ought to keep you busy for a few hours :-)

Carl

[Disclaimer - I am still on my first cup of coffee]

Connect your computer/network to a switch, i.e. a smart hub that routes IP packets, and then connect the switch to a hub. The switch will keep all the random IP activity between the computers in a sandbox and the hub's activity light will only flash with periodic "keep alive" flashes , but when a computer makes an IP request outside of the sandbox - the hub's activity light will flash much more.

Write a few lines of code for a microcontroller to differentiate the flashes.

Connect the microcontroller to an FRS radio's page alert button. The Midland FRS radios will send a "ringing" burst when you click the PTT switch twice real fast.

The far end FRS radio will have loud audio at the speaker. Connect the speaker to a VOX circuit that powers up your access point and DSL modem as necessary for internet access and then goes back to sleep after a bit.

Use a smaller solar power array as you won't need 24/7 power.

[Load more_coffee_request] [Start non-maskable interrupt query] [Query que for pending requests] [Coffee_low - yes/no?] [If yes - start kitchen trip sub routine] [Resume NG reply job] [HALT - put exclaim "I need to stop posting before coffee"] [Resume - pet_dogs routine]

Why not just run 120V AC on the second pair? The cable can handle it since ringing voltage is in the same ballpark and you'll only need 150mA or so, which minimizes the voltage drop and power loss. Of course, you'll need an appropriately sized fuse or circuit breaker, and probably a GFCI as well.

-Larry Jones

I've changed my mind, Hobbes. People are scum. -- Calvin

Geez. Maybe I deserve this for trusting an online calculator. This one is widely recommended on many PoE sites:

it, it looks like I'll be fine: Input=12V, Current=2A, 22AWG, 1 pair, 100ft = 3.2 Volts power drop Which means at 700ft, I get roughly 22.4 Volts power drop. Which I believed meant that 48 volt power supply would give me plenty of juice.

I've gone and manually calculated this using the formulas at the bottom of this page,

Again, it looks like I'll be fine.... I get nearly the same results.

When I manually plug in your numbers, you're arriving at approx 2 times the voltage drop. Which makes me wonder where the discrepancy is. Are you calculating total distance of hot and neutral (or 1400 feet)? These two sites don't seem to take that into consideration. Or am I completely off (again)?

This is great advice. I'll definitely do this.

D'oh. I meant weatherproof. Thanks for the suggestion... you probably just saved me some water damage. :)

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Completely off the wall and forgive me if I haven't read all the messages well enough to see if these suggestions have been covered. But, if it were me:

-----1) I would abandon the idea of laying the cable on the ground. Even if it required using a jack knife to cut a 2" slit to push my cables into for the entire length, I'd do it.

-----2) Fiber is not as expensive as you might think. The most expensive part of fiber is the electronics and the terminations. Someone already linked to these transceivers

and you can get pre-terminated fiber here (but I'm not suggesting this is your best source or option).

-----3) Now comes the issue of power. Here's where I speculate. D-Link (and others), sell POE adapters for about $40.00. I like the D-Link Adapters

because there is a switch on the Terminal unit, allowing you to choose 5vdc or 12vdc. This is more versatile. THEY ARE INTENDED FOR 328' MAXIMUM. So, you'll have to do some testing or make modifications here.

Here's how they work: The Base Unit plugs into 120VAC. It puts out

48VDC and runs that power out the cable pairs that aren't used for data. On the opposite end the cable plugs into a Terminal Unit and out of the terminal unit you choose 5vdc or 12vdc through a pigtail and get Ethernet as well. At 700 feet, I wouldn't rely on the Ethernet connection.

However, it may be a power solution. The question is, how much amperage is left at the end? If not enough, with careful calculations, you may be able to replace the Base unit with a power adapter of sufficient size to provide sufficient voltage by time you hit the Terminal Unit and USE THE POE KITS SOLELY AS A METHOD OF PROVIDING CORRECTLY LEVELED CURRENT.

4) In summary, I'd go this way: Run fiber (for the data) and your copper (for power) as separate issues. Obtain power at the head end for your first transceiver. Obtain power at the head end for your modem and router. Obtain power at the head end for TWO POE ADAPTER KITS Use one POE adapter kit to run power up to the second transceiver at the tower. Use the second POE adapter kit to run power up to the access point at the tower.

Of course, your transiever and access point will have to be properly rated for the output of the POE adapter(s) you choose.

Just a thought.

Dorral Goforth

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PoE has pretty much been ruled out for his 700 ft. run. Way too much voltage drop with the estimated one amp load at fat end.