Ir over cat5e

[Farny]

Hi - I have a cat5e network in my house, and a central room with all hi-fi and video equipment. I want to control my hi-fi ( arcam Dvd / tuner) from my lounge. Is it possible to control using the hi-fi remotes to control the appliances from the lounge, through some type of wired connection, from a receiver in the lounge, across the cat5e network, into the central room and connected into my hi-fi appliances. Thx for any advice ! Farny

 

[stevech]

one idea comes to mind.
cat5 has 4 pairs of wire. Usually, two pairs are unused.
Readily available are plug adapters that split-out the unused two pairs. Perhaps you could use these pairs to carry IR signals. There are many products that convert IR to digital electrical signals for copper wire. And vice-versa. These operate on the IR itself, e.g., if the IR sender uses a 38KHz carrier, then 38KHz goes on to the copper wire.

The plug on this would be wired to the cat5 spare wire.
http://www.iautomate.com/products/Infrared-Emitter-with-Flashback-LED.html


Another way is devices that put IR on the TV coax and route that around the home. I've found that some TV's don't tolerate this signal and the result is burst of interference in the picture, even for digital cable.
I've used things like these (though the ones I had were less expensive)
http://www.iautomate.com/products/Open-House-Infrared-Receiver.html

lastly, there are wireless IR extenders - The two that I tried are worthless. Too much noise and interference in open-air RF.

 

[Farny]

Stevech

Thanks for the advice - I agree that the wireless extenders are a waste of time , I will look into the ir repeaters following the i automate.com site - cheers Farnyq