Has anyone tried using Cat5 cable to connect to digitrax componets?

CPRail

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Apr 1, 2004
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Brandon Manitoba Canada
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Hey guys:wave: , been a while since i was last here.
I've got a question for the dcc nuts out there.
I am thinking of buying a digitrax zephyr and using a computer to control the system, but i would like to put a wireless router in place so that i do not have to run cabling from the zephyr to my booster unit, but the wireless router i am using only excepts cat5 cable not RJ-11 cable (phone cable.) So has anyone used cat5 cable to wire their digitrax componets together? (for example, command station to booster) Or is there an adapter out there that i could use to convert one to the other?
 

AlienKing

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Apr 19, 2006
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The physical connector is different (6 pins vs 8), and the electrical signals are different (2/3 vs 4/8). The software protocols are very different and would not work together.

To get something like this to work, you would need to convert loconet to TCP or UDP, and then back to loconet. You would need 2 locobuffers, 2 computers (or at least a small embedded system that can talk with the loco buffer and ethernet), 2 wireless adapters, some software to convert the loconet to TCP/UDP, send to the other computer, software on the other computer to convert it back to loconet.
 

Nick8564

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Sep 3, 2004
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You may could use the CAT5 and just use the 6 pin connectors I guess. You could try and use the extra two wires to power the panels around the layout. Like mentioned above, it would take two computers, two wireless cards, two digitrax computer interfaces, looking at a minimum of a few hundred dollars, unless you use second hand stuff. Computer communications uses IP addresses and MAC addresses. I don't believe loconet uses that kind of addressing.