More wiring questions!

[Sifter]

So am I supposed to use 4 wire cable or cat5 from the M1XIN to a DBH? Tried the cat5 route using the diagram for the keypads, but it didnt power up. It had an RJ45 on one end, and bare wire on the other into the XIN. It powers up just fine using the 4wire bench testing wire included with the elk.

Confused and dont want to burn anything up!

 

[tmbrown97]

Yes - be very careful; someone here recently wired the RJ45 backwards and fried a keypad.

The RJ45 end is wired as a standard T568A jack - make sure you get it wired the right direction. At the keypad, just double check all your connections are as shown on the diagrams.

4-conductor really requires the M1DBHR; with the M1DBH you need Cat 5; it'll use 6 of the 8 wires.

 

[Sifter]

Yes that person was me, thats why Im gun shy! So on the XIN, Ill have multiple wires going to a screw down terminal? But still wont be using the blue pair.

Cat5 cable is brittle and hard to work with outside of a RJ45 plug.

 

[tmbrown97]

Agreed - but the biggest trick is to make sure you don't score the wire when stripping it - that'll weaken it faster than anything. For the places two wires have to run together, twist them then screw them down on the terminal.

Don't worry - as long as you wire everything right, you'll be fine... the power is single wire so no much issue there; the double-wires are data and won't fry anything unless they short to power. Plenty of Elk's in the wild installed this way.