Two POE Cams Over One Ethernet Cable

rfj

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I have an IPC-T5442T-ZE mounted on the soffit. I would like to mount an IPC-HFW5241E-Z12E next to it to read license plates. Unfortunately, this part of the roof is not accessible to pull another Ethernet cable. So I was wondering if I could mount a small outdoor switch and hook both cameras up to that switch. I have an outlet right next to that area so I could power the switch from that. The question however is if the Ethernet cable will be able to provide enough power for both cameras? Are there any other concerns?
 

1fxman

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You can use a splitter thats made for IPC cameras or a Ethernet repeater (my favorite) with 2 outputs.https://www.amazon.com/dp/B094QWL4TJ?psc=1&ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_product_details

Here’s the other option 1649294720523.jpeg
 
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rfj

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wittaj

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This one works great. And you only need one POE port. The one above requires two available POE ports.

Plus this one is sold by Andy! If your POE has the power available, this is good to go.\

Many people use this one to power their Z12E being used for LPR with an overview cam next to it.

 
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TonyR

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+1^^^.
And you can buy 3 for the price of 1 of the outdoor unit.
Plus it'll likely fit in a typical cam junction box or round electrical box from Home Depot or Lowes, etc.
 

Broachoski

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i have several of those cheapo combiner/splitter units in operation and they work well. Each camera is operating on only 4 of the 8 wires and those units take advantage of the 4 unused wires.
 

wittaj

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Will this do the job? Or am I forgetting something ( I have Sumtimers disease)
This works, the only issue is you then need two POE ports.

The one I referenced only needs to use 1 POE port. So if the POE switch is capable, you can then get more cameras out of the POE Switch. My 8 port POE switch is powering 10 cams LOL with this one. If you use the one you referenced, you will only get 8 cams in this example.
 

rfj

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@wittaj how would you use two POE ports if there is only one cable? It this why they show two items, one with the blue end and one with the black end, i.e. one is on the camera side and one is on the side where your POE switch is? I have a 16 port POE switch so using two ports can be arranged. Though I would still prefer just one cable. The Loryta isn't outdoor rated but I might give this a try.

Btw, now it makes sense why these splitters work from a physical perspective, i.e. each cam only uses 4 out of the 8 conductors. I just wonder how the "other side" knows that these are two different streams instead of one 1Gb stream.
 

Left Coast Geek

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I just wonder how the "other side" knows that these are two different streams instead of one 1Gb stream.
normal 10/100baseT connection only uses RJ45 pins 1-2-3-6 (1 and 2 are the orange pair, 3 and 6 are the green pair), pins 4-5 and 7-8 aren't in use.
Cat 5/6 cables have all 8 wires, 4 pairs.
So the '2nd' POE cable has its orange and green wired to the blue and brown pairs 'main' cable, then at the other end it breaks those back out to the correct pins.

so the PoE switch sees each camera on the correct 4 pins.
 

rfj

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That makes sense. So that is why they have one 1-to-2 cable on the camera side and one 1-to-2 cable on the switch side and that is why you need two ports on the switch.

The other solution is an actual switch and that one only has a 1-to-2 cable on the camera side and only uses one port on the switch side.
 

Left Coast Geek

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OTOH, a 3 port 100baseT switch is a tiny chip now, and if the cameras only need a few watts each, and teh PoE source can provide more than enough watts for both, then yes, you can do the single PoE cable into two PoE connections using an active cable adapter with a cheap switch chip encapsulated in it, thats what wittaj's version is.
 

eeeeesh

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So I pulled up the diagram I made when I screwed up the pigtail to one of my cams and had to splice on a new jack.

The pigtail from my Dahua Camera is on the left and the labels are how they match up to 586b wiring. As you can see, the Camera POE wires are the gray and the yellow, and there are two wires from the ethernet/poe port going to each of the cam wires. I would think by using two POE ports the cams would get more power if you used the splitter from Nelly's, but that would depend on the size of the wire and the distance? The drawback as mentioned is you need two POE ports to use it.

PigTail.jpg
 

tigerwillow1

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The camera will get its power over either the blue+brown pairs OR the green+orange pairs, depending on which mode is provided by the power source. In the majority of cases, a POE switch sends the power over the green+orange pairs, and the blue+brown pairs are unused in the ethernet cable. POE injectors usually send the power over the blue+brown pairs.

If you use the Nelly's splitter, each camera will have access to the full power of each switch port. If you use one of the POE switch solutions, the power provided by a single switch port will be shared between 2 cameras. Your thinking about the power issue is correct. I like the weatherproof connectors on the Nellys boot. I'm using a few splitters that don't have these covers and despite trying to keep them sealed, I have a moisture intrusion failure once a year or so.
 

rfj

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This one works great. And you only need one POE port. The one above requires two available POE ports.

Plus this one is sold by Andy! If your POE has the power available, this is good to go.\

Many people use this one to power their Z12E being used for LPR with an overview cam next to it.

I installed a second cam this weekend using this adaptor. I can see both PoE cams in BI and has been working fine so far. We will see how long it lasts as it is outdoors. I am thinking of getting a second one instead of those "protected/outdoor" versions that cost like 3x.
 
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Left Coast Geek

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cute, takes a high power PoE+ (802.3at) input, and splits that to 4 low power PoE (802.3af) ports.

PoE+ can provide 25 watts, while PoE is max 15 watts, but obviously if you are sharing that 25 watts with 4 devices, they can't be more than 6 watts each (probably a watt or so runs the switch itself, so split the remaining 24 watts any 4 ways you want. I just looked, my favorite camera to date, the IPC-T5442T-ZE draws max 6.9W off PoE, so yeah, you can just barely run 4 of those on this without any headroom as long as all 4 cams aren't concurrently drawing their max load (they draw 2.2 watts when they aren't streaming full res). make sure your master PoE source is a full 25.5W PoE+/802.3AT
 
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