Successful alternate use of POE splitter

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tigerwillow1

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Jul 18, 2016
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My biggest gripe about the POE splitters is having to use the camera's DC power port because the splitters don't pass the power through to their network output. Just to see if it would work, I tried splitting the network wire to both the camera and poe switch, and not using the splitter's network output. At the end of a 250' cat6 cable, and with 3 different splitters, it works just as reliably as when wired the "correct" way. I'm not recommending this, just offering it as an alternative. There could very well be some situations where it doesn't work correctly. To avoid any misunderstanding of what I'm saying, here's a picture of the breadboarded setup.
splitter.jpg
 
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tigerwillow1 said:
My biggest gripe about the POE splitters is having to use the camera's DC power port because the splitters don't pass the power through to their network output. Just to see if it would work, I tried splitting the network wire to both the camera and poe switch, and not using the splitter's network output. At the end of a 250' cat6 cable, and with 3 different splitters, it works just as reliably as when wired the "correct" way. I'm not recommending this, just offering it as an alternative. There could very well be some situations where it doesn't work correctly. To avoid any misunderstanding of what I'm saying, here's a picture of the breadboarded setup.
View attachment 30939
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What POE "splitters" are you using that don't pass power through?
 
tigerwillow1 said:
I tried splitting the network wire to both the camera and poe switch,
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To be clear about the ethernet splitter:
It splits the 8 conductor cat cable, sending 4 conductors into two conventional 8 conductor cat cables? This type of splitter is traditionally used to "double up" on a single cat cable to connect two ethernet devices to a single cat cable run.

Another question:
To avoid providing power to the cam using the cam's DC input jack, it seems you're making a more complicated setup. Compared to the "cons" of using the cam's DC input, the "cons" of your workaround (complexity, extra widgets, sealing, etc) seem larger.
Q: Why not just use the DC input of the cam?
Note: You can buy a 1 to 3 DC power splitter. ie: 12V in, 3 DC lines out.
 
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Garyf- I have 2 "no name" POE splitters, one from Amazon and one from ebay, and a TP-Link TL-POE10R. None of these pass the power through to their network output connection. I believe what's behind this is that camera use is not the target market, and probably just a tiny part of sales. They were developed for use with devices like IP phones and switches that don't support POE, and require an external power input. The POE splitter replaces the power brick the device was originally meant to use. If you know of a POE splitter that passes power to the the data output, I want to know about it!

Fastb-In this case I'm using the "other" type of ethernet splitter, that splits off all 8 wires. Too bad the same name is used for two very different devices. I disagree about the added complexity as I think it's about the same either way. One advantage: As I switched out the POE splitters for testing I realized that doing this didn't interrupt the camera connection. If you're stuffing everything into a j-box behind the camera and never touching it again, anything that works is fine. I've got my cameras somewhat concealed in trees with no j-box, and will use a separate enclosure for the splitters and the connections, and consider it an advantage to have to run only a single wire to the camera.

I had two of those no-name 3-led IR lights fail so far. Each one had a failed led and I was able to swap parts to get one going again. Not buying any more of those! I have a couple of Tendelux "no hot spot" lights ordered to try them out.
 
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tigerwillow1 said:
Garyf- I have 2 "no name" POE splitters, one from Amazon and one from ebay, and a TP-Link TL-POE10R. None of these pass the power through to their network output connection. I believe what's behind this is that camera use is not the target market, and probably just a tiny part of sales. They were developed for use with devices like IP phones and switches that don't support POE, and require an external power input. The POE splitter replaces the power brick the device was originally meant to use. If you know of a POE splitter that passes power to the the data output, I want to know about it!

Fastb-In this case I'm using the "other" type of ethernet splitter, that splits off all 8 wires. Too bad the same name is used for two very different devices. I disagree about the added complexity as I think it's about the same either way. One advantage: As I switched out the POE splitters for testing I realized that doing this didn't interrupt the camera connection. If you're stuffing everything into a j-box behind the camera and never touching it again, anything that works is fine. I've got my cameras somewhat concealed in trees with no j-box, and will use a separate enclosure for the splitters and the connections, and consider it an advantage to have to run only a single wire to the camera.

I had two of those no-name 3-led IR lights fail so far. Each one had a failed led and I was able to swap parts to get one going again. Not buying any more of those! I have a couple of Tendelux "no hot spot" lights ordered to try them out.
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If you are not getting power out of the TL-POE10R either it is defective or you're not getting power to it.

I think you are confusing an Ethetnet cable splitter with a Power Over Ethernet splitter. They are not the same and are not used the same. Neither do they have the same name.
 
I will rewrite using Gary's terminology. The TL-POE10R POE Splitter has 3 connections: (1) RJ-45 labeled "power+data in", (2) RJ45 labeled "lan out", and barrel connector labeled "dc out". Power is supplied to the POE splitter via the "power+data in" connector. The "lan out" connector is not POE, i.e. there is no DC power provided. I do not know of any POE splitter that provides power at the "lan out" connection.

The "correct" way to use the POE splitter is to connect the splitter's "lan+data in" to a poe switch, "lan out" to the camera's ethernet connection, and "dc out" to the camera's 12 volt power input. An external IR light is parallel connected with the "dc out" connection to the camera.

What I did as an experiment was to connect the POE switch output to a 1-to-2 ethernet cable splitter that provides all 8 wires to both of its rj45 outputs. I plugged the camera into one of the outputs, and the POE splitter's "lan+data in" to the other. (Two devices hooked in parallel to the single POE switch port.) The POE splitter's "dc out" powers the external IR light. The POE splitter's "lan out" is not connected, and the camera's 12 volt power input is not connected.

The confusion with the ethernet cable splitter's name is two different types are called by the same name: (1) One type that supplies all 8 data lines at the input to two or more outputs (the type I use in this thread), and (2) The other type that uses the brown and blue pairs of an ethernet wire to carry 100 mb data between a second switch port and a second ethernet device. The second port's orange and green pairs are re-routed to the blue and brown pairs at the switch end of a cable, and "un-routed" at the far end of the cable.
 
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I'm actually surprised you found an ethernet adapter that gives a 1:1 on both ports. That would never be used in an Ethernet setting.


What you have actually done is introduce a tap on the ethernet tx and rx pairs which will introduce noise.

To properly do what you want you should use a normal 1:2 splitter to separate the the power, then split the power to feed each camera. But that requires extra equipment.

Personally, I would just run another cable that carries power to the LEDs.
 
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GaryFunk said:
I'm actually surprised you found an ethernet adapter that gives a 1:1 on both ports. That would never be used in an Ethernet setting.
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Just search for "ethernet splitter" on amazon and ebay to find at least a thousand listings for them :)

No argument on mangling the signal quality. I worked as an engineer in a network hardware group for a few years. If now was then, I'd probably be all worried about what I'm doing and be taking measurements. As a consumer all I care about is if it's working reliably and not a safety risk. The switch stats page for the port shows no errors or retransmissions, good enough for me at this point.
 
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