While working as an admin you come across some unusual requests. We have a conference room at work where we’ve been requested to have a fixed-position USB webcam, but they want to locate the usb cable approx 25+ feet away. They’ve also requested not to have a lot of running cables in the room, so this means also hiding the cables away in the wall. This would also mean some kind of adapter/extension cable. Looking around online, you can buy USB extension cables (some powered), that run 50-ish feet, but they’re usually in the $40+ range. I’m cheap, so I wanted a viable alternative.
Cat5e cabling is pretty plentiful and cheap, and, as you may know, has 4 twisted pairs inside. Originally we had the thought that we’d be able to use 4 of the strands (2 pair) for the USB wires and the other pairs for some audio jacks or whatever. Trying this, we were able to go over 30 feet to a USB card reader and it seemed to work OK, but upon trying it with a webcam, despite maintaining voltage, it wouldn’t be recognized. This was true, in the case of the webcam, for anything over roughly 7-8 feet.
Next we tried some shielded 22-gauge 4-wire security cable. Same results.
As a last-ditch effort I tried stripping the ends off of each of the strands in each pair and twisting them together and then attaching each pair to the stripped wires of a short USB extension cable, utilizing the twisted nature of the cables to reduce cross-talk and interference. To my surprise (mainly because I honestly didn’t think it would work, we were able to get a webcam talking with no issues with a 50+ foot section of Cat5e.
I cabled it thusly:
Orange-White \
---- USB Red (+5v)
Orange /
Green-White \
---- USB Data-
Green /
Blue-White \
---- USB Data+
Blue /
Brown-White \
---- USB Ground
Brown /
Cabled on both sides, this apparently reduces enough noise and crosstalk to allow the signal to pass that length. 50-55ft. was all we tried, so it may go further than that.