This is my second Instructables. This time, I'm gonna tell everyone how to extend your USB using UTP. Why do you need to do so? Because the USB extender in shops only around 1,5 meters. It's very short, if you need 50 meters for a USB WiFi antenna on your roof. So I share to you people this technique.

P.S.: I will be making the Instructables of the Indonesia's style of USB WiFi antenna. The picture is below.

Step 1: Gather your parts

You need:
(1)USB Cable
(2)UTP Cable
(3)Small PVC Pipe
(4)Rubber tape
(5)thermofit / heatshrink
Use adapter to prevent power loss :)
<p>Adapter? What type of adapter and where?</p>
<p>There is a lack of research here, and a lot of misunderstanding about cables, ie twisted pair or shielded etc.</p><p>To put the record straight, its nothing do do with either of the above, you can have the best cable in the world, even fancy gold plated low resistance stuff, and the chances of getting any appreciable RELIABLE extra distance above the 5 metre limit is virtually zero.</p><p>The reason for this is not interference, nor is it voltage drop, but the timing of the signals that USB uses. Two of the cores are for power, +ve and Ground (red and black) the other two, green and white are clock and data (signal). The clock is a chain of pulses thats used to synchronise the data between the device and the PC, the data, well its just that. What happens when you extend a USB cable is to add a delay in the signals, for example, when a USB sevice wants to send data to the PC, it will do so on the start of the clock pulse, and any data it then sends is kept in step with the clock. As you increase the length of the cable, you increase this delay, to such a point where the data ends up completely out of step and meaningless to the other end. <br></p><p>There are other factors, but thats the reason in a nutshell.</p>
<p>No, USB is differentially encoded; each data line is NRZI encoded data + clock. The D+ is the normal signal and D- is inverted. USB then uses a non-symmetric state to indicate end of packet. I cannot see how timing could be an issue when transmitting digital data over long distances unless one of the UTP pairs are of unequal length. USB does suffer from RF noise due to it's operating frequency, and at lengths also suffers from induced slew due to natural capacitance of the wires. The former can be guarded against with shielded-twisted-pair, the latter can only be avoided by keeping the cables short. High-Speed USB operating at 240 MHz is prone to RF interference at 720 MHz which is used by 3G and 4G cell phones. Full-Speed at 12 MHz or low-speed (750 kHz) would be far more practical at line lengths this long (aka, USB 1.1 if your BIOS supports downgrading or grab an old USB 1.1 hub from eBay).</p>
<p>Its a timing issue.... </p><p>http://www.usb.org/developers/usbfaq/#cab1</p>
<p>So what about these? Is this a scam?</p><p><a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1076684-REG/optical_cables_by_corning_aoc_acs2cva030m20_type_a_plug_to.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1076684-REG/...</a></p><p><a href="http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1038629-REG/comprehensive_usb2_amf_75proap_pro_av_it_active_plenum.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.bhphotovideo.com/c/product/1038629-REG/...</a></p>
<p>Those are active usb extenders, so they have some electronics at either end which allow further than normal transmission length (they use some other protocol/method than normal usb cables which allow longer distances). So they're not scams.</p>
<p>i need create an usb extension of 100 meters </p>
<p>Whenever someone asks how to do something technologically creative, innovative, or requests feedback on a theoretical method; invariably there is a torrent of negatory techno-babble from well-read pseudo-experts and shade tree intellectuals that live for the opportunity to show off by chiming in to publicly school someone and eloquently dismantle their idea using parroted facts &amp; shoplifted logic that they've memorized from posts based on books written by prestigiously constipated scholarly faggots who spent the first half of their lives convincing themselves that they knew everything, and devoted the second half to seeking validation by lobbying peers and leveraging subordinates. Often times, these scholarly faggots will succeed and set off a chain reaction of taken for granted ignorance that is passed down for generations. So when a creative supposition is presented for online review and the call for feedback is answered with the typical fanatical discouragement of the &quot;online-experts&quot; regurgitating their misinterpreted data-points and desperately insisting that: the idea can not work, it's stupid to consider it, uppity to suggest it, and foolish to attempt it...</p><p> I have a standard question that I ask them in response: <br>&quot;What happened when YOU tried it?&quot; </p><p>... Well they didn't, they don't, they never have, and they never will.</p><p>Essentially these are moderately knowledgeable people of moderately poor character. They acquire a little knowledge and they like it. They like being empowered by it and they like being considered smart by others. Shortly after the &quot;moderately knowledgeable&quot; stage however, they recognize the effort-to-reward ratio gets progressively disproportionate and the &quot;poor character&quot; part kicks in and they get lazy.They start trying to do things with the &quot;moderate&quot; skill-set they've already attained, they have a couple of successes, a few failures, then some more failures. They start to get a little discouraged. Then they realize that the appearance of intelligence has been consistently rewarding the whole time so they start leaning on that to fill the slowly increasing void of self-esteem/confidence that the failures have been creating. Gradually the value system shifts until they've talked themselves out of learning, working, trying, and risking failure entirely and are now fully committed to a reward system that's 100% based on the idea and appearance of knowledge and they've completely tapped out on the substance aspect. Next comes rationalization to solidify the commitment, and eventually total self-deceit. Next thing you know they're spending all their time on the forums trying to get that quick fix by looking smart and spending any extra energy they have trying to talk people out of advancing their own knowledge and ability, encouraging people to quit and inspiring ignorance and low self confidence wherever they can in order to keep the bar artificially low in order to maintain their relative status without putting any work in to follow the evolutionary curve. So whenever you see someone making a concentrated effort to convince you to quit, insisting that you'll fail, pulling out all the stops and speaking at length with total conviction about all the reasons why your idea can't and won't work, ask yourself what their motivation is for being so invested in your preemptive failure, and then ask them: &quot;Well what happened when YOU tried?&quot; Then get the hell out of the loser conversation you're in and go get the job done.</p>
can I use two lines to power a USB hub on the side of the female USB port ?
Sure, just add a capacitor across the power lines at the far end to smooth out power fluctuations.
Great uses of USB extender, KVMSwitchTech provides various kinds of USB extender products. To know more details visit http://www.kvmswitchtech.com/cat5-usb-extender-c11634.htm
Does 10 - 15 meters would work on a laptop?
what does that cirucuit above illustrate ?
I have a usb wabcame and i want to put in my office.. bt i want extend usb 25 meters so wat can i do?
Your best bet is to use a wireless Webcam. If you want to extend USB cables you'll need a repeater (or a USB hub every 5 meters) to do this properly. The USB2 specification is very clear about this. You may get ' lucky ' making a cable. But, the cost of making a cable (using quality copper cable) , and a few repeaters, and your time depugging problems will be more than an inexpensive wireless camera. Good Luck.
The correct colors for any CAT 5 or CAT 6 cable are <br> <br>1. slate-orange <br>2. orange <br>3. slate-blue <br>4. blue <br>5. slate-green <br>6. green <br>7. slate-brown <br>8. brown <br>
I'm using a CAT 5e cable as well... so what color combination should I use to connect this to the usb cabling?
hi first thanks for the great work.<br><br>i tried that and its showing USD not recognized pls tell me how to solve this issues? <br><br>i am using windows 7 os
I made 7meters extension and it works fine. But it randomly disconnect my wifi usb adapter. Can someone help me?
why does it tell me that my usb device is unrecognized when i plug the device into the usb cable?
i got that same thing in windows 7, whats going on is that it doesn't have enough power, So what i did is set my motherboard to USB 1.1 in the BIOS and it work fine. But i works fine in linux with out setting all usb to 1.1. <br><br>In windows 7 if u dont want to do the USB 1.1 thing u can get it to work with some of the back ports of the PC try each one and try like a pen drive and the WiFi dongle then again i should say &quot; may get it to work &quot;<br><br>right now am looking to implement the following to try and solve my problem http://www.howtofixcomputers.com/forums/hardware/stupid-question-remote-usb-95093.html , , o yea and this to http://imamqu.blogspot.com/2010/10/additional-power-supply-for-usb.html
thanks its superb!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!<br>works nicely<br><br>I am from tamilnadu, india<br>
Just a quick point you could use a usb hub (with all the plastic stripped off) to regenerate the signal. So using the utp as well you could extend the cable theorectically to any length. You would need to remove the power socket on the hub and have a powerful enough 5v source. hmm i should create an instructable.
This is correct although you would need a USB hub every fifteen feet or so.
i was tried using 15meter utp cable.but not works coz the power is drop down.
15 Meters is WAY too long.
When I connect the flash drive to the connector through the set up of USB over UTP to PC, the computer does not read the data from my flash drive device, why is that?
Most USB devices won't work with an extension that long without the aid of a USB powered hub. They use 5V provided by the computer, and the voltage drop over more than about 20 feet is enough to create a "USB device not recognized" by the PC. I Use webcams for security on my home, and have to use a powered hub or it won't pick the cams up. Try it.
&nbsp;what if you use a USB &quot;y&quot; cable? that draws power from 2 ports, therefore doubling the power... am i correct on this?
No. Drawing power from two ports won't affect it. It will probably fry the USB device however. And even if it was plugged into two different ports on the computer it would only be able to transfer data from one.
It isn't the voltage that is affecting it. If the cable isn't shielded the interference could affect it or the data stream isn't powerful enough. It isn't voltage.
Your cord must be too long then
Hi there. I already made up a 10M USB 2.0 cable and I thick I remember it works ok from the computer with a webcam. But I want a longer USB cable to use the webcam to take photographs about the house and outside. Can I use this telephone cable. It has 4 wires and is used for the telephone but I am not sure if it is the same as the UTP cable.
You need 5 for ground wire<br />
<p>Thank you.</p>
In correction to the needing five statement, If the cable is shielded it'll work with just the four.
This man doesn't included the detail way of put the IC and the input power, if some body need more clear picture, try to visit http://www.dhegleng.or.id/qe3/?p=136. I don't know is the man who wrote this instructables article and the man who wrote the article at the link i gave is same person. But the link i gave have more clear description. The problem only that my link is in Indonesian language, but don't worry it has clear picture just to see.<br />
Hi Bayucandra,<br>thanks for your idea for using regulator IC7805 to power the usb device at farther end.but what is the maximu length of cable u have used.<br><br>tks.<br><br>danraja4082@gmail.com
i was worried after puchasing evo usb for net surfing.signals were very week i made the utp wire and connectors and found that the signals were very high even a distance of 24 feet from computer to usb..thx instructable ...i loved that
I did this with a cheap 25ft UTP cable from e-bay and it worked perfect. I try with USB and web-cam there was no lag or anything like it while watching or capturing video; webcam to backyard, I have fear phobia.
i want to keep my web cam 50meter away.purpose of keeping web cam far is monitoring of my small brother from my room.does it works properly.<br /> <br />
hello,i already follow your procedure for the usb extension using UTP,but i cannot make it detect as a 2.0 usb,coz ill use it with a 2.0 compatible devices.Please let me know if you have an answer for this.thank you
in my experience,USB 2.0 will talk USB 1.1 as well,and USB 1.1 can connect to USB 2.0 hosts.
in my observations a shielded 2 x 20g 2 x 28g good quality cable will do about 25 feet. but it all depends on the voltage drop or resistance of the wire test for example 20ft wire with my multi meter i read 1.1 to 1.2 ohms on the shield but 1 ohm on the vcc and gnd and 1.5 ohms on the data lines but you don't use those values to calculate your voltage drop first you need to subtract your test leads from the resistance since all wire has resistance on my meter they have a .6 ohm reading keep in mind i'm not using a cheap 10 dollar meter here&nbsp; so that leaves me with .6 ohms on vcc and ground&nbsp; and .9 ohm on the data lines but we really don't need to worry about the data to much unless your going over 35 40 feet using ohms law E = I R&nbsp; E being voltage drop I being current (.5 A or 500 ma) and r being resistive load (in ohms)&nbsp; the formula works out to be .45 volts so knowing that usb won't work below 4.4 say 4.5 to be safe then finding out my computers 5 volt line runs at 5.13 v so&nbsp; 5.13 - .45 = 4.68 volts after voltage drop and thats at max load and most devices don't use the full 500ma theres some room for error&nbsp; now as long as the signals are clean at the far end then it should work now if you lose to much voltage over your run of cable and you can place a power supply regulated +5v and MAKE&nbsp;SURE&nbsp;TO&nbsp;TEST&nbsp;THIS closer to the end of your cable and just disconnect the +5v from the computer now for those longer distance runs you need to use a larger conductor data pair single wire for each no doubling up here or you can get some nasty interference now if you have enough power larger conductor data wires and you still have a dirty data problem try using&nbsp; some ferrite rings on both ends they really do help with EMI traveling over wires sorry for the crudeness and no punctuation but i hope this helps somebody<br />
<span class="medium_text" id="result_box"><span title="eso funciona perfectamente.">It works perfectly. </span><span title="M&aacute;s adelante voy a dar los detalles de c&oacute;mo eso funciona mejor con el mismo cable UTP.">Later I will give details of how that works best with the same UTP cable. </span><span title="Muchas gracias por tu idea.">Thank you very much for your idea.</span></span>
The USB works in a way that theoretically limits any cable length to 16 feet, If I remember correctly, that includes the powered repeater cables too. I think they do have some usb to cat5 converter boxes, but thats way different from this instructable. This instructable will not work, it's not magic. with UTPs, you won't get much more than 15', thats my guess
i've tried this a year ago... works great on my epson c59 printer..

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