POE Passthrough For Tower Climbers
For those of you that are a “one man show” like myself, you will often find that you need to be on the tower and align an antenna at the same time. This generally requires you to log into the antenna while still on the tower…which can be difficult if your antenna is PoE(power over ethernet). What I did was whip up a little contraption to solve this conundrum.
As you can see there is a simple clam shell RJ-45 enclosure that holds 3 RJ-45 keystones. I like to use a different color for each to help remember what is what.
The far left 45 is where you plug in your POE coming up the tower. Only the power wires are used from here. Run the blues and brows over to the center 45.
The far right 45 is where you plug in your laptop. You are using the 4 ethernet wires from this port. Connect the greens and oranges from this jack to the center 45.
The center 45 goes to the radio. You are sending the power from the POE and the ethernet from your laptop.
If you source the parts from deepsurplus.com, you can get everything to your doorstep for less than $10…which is a price I like! If you don’t have time to build your own, I’ll gladly sell you one for $100 and offer free shipping!
Now you can hang off of a tower with your netbook and align your radios all by your lonesome 🙂
I usually use my android phone & vpn into my network. I use the power of webkit browser to align my tantianas while vertical:) Nice Solution!
I’m not sure what a tantiana is, but I’d like to try one. Perhaps it’s a bandanna that you use to cover areas you don’t want to tan?
Cordless drill battery + JB Weld = mobile power and ethernet!
http://i.imgur.com/hCSt0.jpg
I use this and a netbook to align ptp dishes.
I made another one with a pole so I have the battery, CPE radio and a Wifi AP on the pole and then use my cell phone (Droid) on my right to do surveys.
Then I made a third one that is nothing more then a simple clip to put a Wifi AP on the back of a CPE when aligning the reflector.
@Josh
A man after my own heart! That would only look better if it had duct tape on it.
The pole mount version is pretty brilliant as well. Nicely done sir.
Awesome. All I have are 4 port boxes so I used the 4th for the orange and green wires from the POE switch in case I need internet and don’t want to power cycle the AP to get it.