Cheap ways of extending VGA, USB, Serial, etc.

[roussell]

Thanks for all the responses, there is a lot of good information in this thread!

I think I will try roussell's suggestion (but will wait for him to test it first), as it seems to be the cheapest and most efficient solution for VGA so far. Looks like USB and serial won't be an issue judging by the many good suggestions.

Only thing left to figure out now is power, as I want to keep things code compliant (or as close as possible, just for safety reasons).

I just noticed that TigerDirect has this Sabrent and this Cables Unlimited USB extender at $34.99 and $39.99 respectively. At that price, it's almost not worth trying my extension cord thingy. I'm still out of the country, and may still try it when I return; but these are appealing. Has anyone tried either of these extenders specifically?

Terry

 

[drozwood90]

So, I just finished wiring up my setup.

I have taken a single DB15 - M, soldered wires to it, then to a small piece of PCB. Then from there, I wired ALL wires per the elephant staircase website to a piece of 25' CAT5 (not e) as well as a 3" piece. This was so I could split the video to the TV and the touchscreen at the same time.

On the end of the 3" piece I put a DB15-F, which I then plugged my TV into (my TV can take VGA directly).

On the end of the 25', I have a DB15-M. This plugged directly into my touchscreen.

Per the website, the last comment was that if you NOT wire the grounds as indicated, you can eliminate the ghosting. It KIND of shows ghosting on my TV, but shows it on the touchscreen. This is at 1024x768. When I went to 800x600 there was not ghosting. I'm going to CLIP the GNDS from the circuit and make a single GND wire. Hopefully this will eliminate the ghosting (per the comment).

As for the USB extender...the one I linked worked right out of the box with the 100+' cable attached ( just left most of it in a coil).

Next step is to finish my "custom" cable for the extenders, re-work the GND wires, purchase DVD Profiler, embed the touchscreen into my couch. I'm hoping to post pictures when I finish this up!

--Dan

 

[electron]

Thank you for posting this update! Can you please report back if the connecting all the grounds fixed the issue? I actually thought that the article said you had to do this in order to eliminate ghosting.

 

[drozwood90]

I defiantly will report.

The article stated he connected 1 wire per ground. The guy at the end stated to use less to eliminate ghosting.

The reason it would work better with LESS wires, is IF the wire it acting as a reference, NOT a current sink (which I think is true), making a SINGLE line the ground eliminates the ability for the circuit to have a ground loop.

There are (as far as I measured) 4 ground pins. Each were shorted to each other on the VGA cable that I measured on (I measured pin to pin on one connector end, to make sure wires were not crossed funny). As that is the case, I think I'll short all the ground pins together. Right now, there is one GND pin that is floating on the touch screen (per the article). If this does not work, I'll then try to eliminate the wires to allow just one GND wire to be connected to ALL GND pins. This should eliminate the ground loop (if there is one).

--Dan

 

[drozwood90]

ok,
I finally had time tonight.

I had to connect all grounds together and lower my resolution to 640x480 to get rid of the ghosting.

I think it was my splitter that I made that was killing my signal. I see on mono wire that they have pre made...certified splitters and 50 to 75 ft vga cables REALLY cheap.

I'll eventually buy the cables...but this is good for now.

--Dan

 

[drozwood90]

So, the adventure is over. I finally just got one of the generic KVM things listed elsewhere in this thread.

The reason...well, I couldn't get the video to split well. Extend, sure, but split and extend...too much.

Ehh...oh well.

At least the cat5 was already run! Just had to clip off the DB15s and crimp the RJ-45 on there.

--Dan