2000 feet cable for camera

[freak]

I need to place a camera (b&w or color) about 2000 feet (direct burial) from my zm machine. There is no power available at the camera location. What type of cable/camera system can span this distance?

[cordel]

You might have to run two lines, one for power and one for video. There are a couple options.
Use active baluns and run video over CAT5.
Use coax with amplifier.
Use fiber (eeww, spendy)

Look here for some ideas.

Regards,
Corey

[jameswilson]

I concur with Corey, cat 5 cable and active rx's. Nvt is what we use

[Flash_]

What's the range of those?

PoE with CAT5 has a limit of 100m / ~330ft (same as normal CAT5) so IP may not a great solution as you'd need to provide hub/routers at least five times during that run - unless... a PoE powered hub exists and can be used to power another hub and device further on (daisy chaining)?

However, I don't know if such devices exist or how well they react to being buried, but it may be a path worth exploring.

Alternatively; Car battery, inverter, solar charger and wireless IP camera. Wild guess - a decent car battery should power a cam for a week or so without charging, and low wattage inverters are incredibly cheap now - in fact, check the camera's voltage, you may even be able to bypass the inverter if the camera is 12v.

2000ft line-of-sight may be possible with most wireless cams, if not a directional receiver should compensate, or a repeater where you can get a signal and avoid the need for a lot of cabling.

[jameswilson]

well the active tx and rx will do 6 km but you can go further if needed, but after that its mainly fibre. But its composite not ip

[freak]

So if I use active baluns and cat 5 can I also use some of the unused pairs for the power transmission?

[cordel]

No, you would not be able to run power on cat5 in that range. you can run 24 volts AC for ~100 feet or 48 volts AC for ~300 feet but thats the limit of what you can do on cat5.

You will need a remote power source or run a extra 16 ga. pair to get power out at your camera.

Regards,
Corey

[jameswilson]

lol yeah you could run the power down it but only if you plan on powering an led! 1000ft is that about 300m? even if you used 3 pairs for power id expect you to have problems. You need a local supply or a much bigger cable for power

[ma77hias]

Sorry guys we're talking about ca. 700 m

1. If you have line of sight then just use Directional Wireless LAN to bridge that distance. Yes you will still need to run a power cable. No easy solutions there.

This is maybe not the most stable solution but certainly the cheapest.

2. from our telecomunication guy

Create your own little DSL network.
A DSL router on either side and some cheap CAT3 cabeling.
Depending on the encoding this can bridge up to 15 km (10 miles).
Once again you will have to run a power cable.

This is probably a more expensive solution, but stable.

[jameswilson]

how would you do this little dsl network. Can you just put 2 routers back to back, i assume its a little more involved

[Flash_]

As someone who's done a *lot* of cable and pipe laying this year, I still think wireless and a car battery is the cheapest, easiest and fastest solution.