Observatory Cabling

[George]

When I built my obs last year I laid cat5 (network cable), Power and TV Aeriel cables before I landscaped the garden, the power cable was connected immediately to the fuseboard but the cat5 and Aeriel cables were left coiled under my patio decking to be done another day. I have been using a wireless connection in the meantime on the laptop but have just acquired a 2nd PC for the obs.

Well today I decided to connect the cat5 to the router so I lifted a couple of boards on the decking to pull the cable under the floor of the house and discovered BL00DY MICE had chewed halfway thru the cat 5 :crybaby: . An IT guy at work made this cable up for me as its 50 metres long and the weather resistant stuff, obviously I cannot go to the local PC shop and pick a cable up of this length and spec so I'm wondering if it can be spliced?

I'll be cutting the damaged bit out and splicing together then heat shrink each individual wire.

I hope this works otherwise I'm going to have to-go the wireless route with the other PC, digging the garden up to relay another cable is NOT an option

[steppenwolf]

A soldered and heat shrunk splice should work but try and keep the pair twists as close up to the patch as possible. This would be preferable to making up a socket/plug extension which would be open to oxidation of the contacts

[MikeP]

Could you consider sending the signal down the mains cable to the obsy? I've no experience of using that sort of connectivity, but I've seen threads on here where it is being used around the house.

If the mice have developed a taste the cable, they'll have it again. You'd think they'd stay away from CAT5

Mike

[Sam]

You'd think they'd stay away from CAT5

Mike

:laughing3: :laughing3: :laughing3: :laughing3: :laughing3: :laughing3: good one Mike!

[George]

Northern mice are illiterate :cheers:

[Astro_Baby]

It could be spliced if done carefully, you may get signal degradation which could be soreted by putting a cheap 10/100 switch at the obs end before the PC. TRy it firts is my advice and see what happens.

I know its easy to be wise after the event but I would have run trunking up the garden so the cables could be pulled back and re-run if needed and also it would have protected them from the mice - word of warning here - mice dont actually like cheese all that much but they do like chocolate and - believe it or not - PVC cables. I worked for a cabling company once and this was all too common in buildings and ducts.

[MarkAndLeanne]

It's true about mice loving chocolate. We had 'issues' with harvest mice getting in between the floorboards of the house, and the pest control man recommended Kit-Kats as being one of their favourite temptations to stick in the traps. Seemed to do the trick, cos we didn't have a mouse problem for very long

[beamish]

A soldered and heat shrunk splice should work but try and keep the pair twists as close up to the patch as possible. This would be preferable to making up a socket/plug extension which would be open to oxidation of the contacts

Could you not use the socket/plug method but use a larger diameter "shrink" sleeve with it ?

[George]

I imagine that would introduce more signal noise or loss, I'll just solder the broken wires together and shrink wrap individually and maybe wrap a bit of tinfoil around the bunch before shrink wrapping the lot together.

I'll get some shrink tube from work tomorrow hopefully

[George]

I know its easy to be wise after the event but I would have run trunking up the garden so the cables could be pulled back and re-run if needed and also it would have protected them from the mice - word of warning here - mice dont actually like cheese all that much but they do like chocolate and - believe it or not - PVC cables. I worked for a cabling company once and this was all too common in buildings and ducts.

I started off doing this originally but the USB cable I was pulling thru jammed and broke thereby blocking the trunk luckily I had everything thru but the cat5.

[Beyond_Vision]

Lets hope they chew through the mains cable next time that will sort them out.

[George]

Lets hope they chew through the mains cable next time that will sort them out.

Nothing less than bolt cutters will get thru the mains cable. its steel wound armour plated