I have a customer that has a fully furnished house with speaker cable in place for six different rooms however they don't have any CAT5E cable in place (a common scenario perhaps?)but do have coax cable running to each room for the television, satellite distribution coming from a central point.

I beleive I can send the infra-red down the coax cable, Xantech produce the INJ94 RF/IR Injector (could I use the Channel plus ones which I already have?) and CPL94B Coupler to extract the infra red.

The problem is the aerial cables run into an 8-way booster which I beleive is going to cause a problem.
(Do I need the Xantech by-pass kit, how does this work?)

Has anyone had any experience of using this type of setup, what are the pitfalls or limitations?
Has anyone produced a panel that will work off the coax cable or is this an impossibility?

Longest cable run from central point to outlet is about 100ft (about 30m).

Any help greatly appreciated.

Channel Plus has an amplified, two-way CATV distribution panel available with multiple inputs and an IR engine designed to route IR anywhere you've got cable drops. Works like a champ when you don't want to pull new cables.

Yeah, the Xtra link stuff works well. Here's the scenario that works the best in my installs.

1) Use a seperate splitter/amp scenario in distribution. Then place a VBC (voltage block) at the INPUT to your 8-way (or splitter network). This will keep your IR from being grounded out by any amps, and also distribute your IR through your splitter. (your splitter must pass DC, Tru-Spec works). So, in reality you could control any IR device in any room in your house.

2) Use an injector to inject the IR and where the device you want to control is, pull the IR off the line.

3) BEWARE, any television that is connected to the system, BUT, does not have any type of coupler on it MUST have a VBC on it's input. Otherwise you'll ground out your system.

These systems really do work well, if someday your system suddenly dosen't work, I'll bet the customer added a television on the system without a VBC.

To me, the channel plus stuff is over rated and expensive to do the same job as a couple VBC's here and there. Although, they do have some nice modulators. As far as your length of runs, the IR signals will travel over the coax even further than cat 5, the resistance of the cable is inversly proportional to it's cross-sectional diameter. Simply said, bigger cable, less resistance to current flow.

Hope this helps.

This message was edited by Matt on 07/14/02 13:36.41.

Hey dude,

To send Ir up the cable and by-pass amps can also be done by by-passing any amps or splitters by placing a coupler on either side and connecting a 3/4" sterio adaptor cable between the 2 couplers to by-pass the Ir and phantom voltage. If you have lots of runs use a panel such as a 3308 etc.... many$$$ though! You can also offer the guy Ir learning key-pads in ech rooms connected via the cables Really freak him out look at the new touch pannels from Speaker craft!!!!

Ir is fun and profitable!..

Twix.

You don't need to bypass the distribution splitter, only the amplifier. Unless of course your not using a DC capable splitter.

The benefits to this method outweigh the jumper method.