Where'd you get your patch panels?

[felixrosbergen]

Hi Guys,

For termingting the Cat5e and Coax in the wiring closet i am looking at mounting a 6U panel on the wall and then placing the Cat5e and Coax patch panels in there.

Anybody have any thoughts/experiences on the product link below??

Middle Atlantic HPM6 Wall mount panel

Looks to be only $40 (withouth the patch panels).

I think i can fit 3 1U patch panels and 3 1U wire management modules in there. If that turns out not to be enough I can always mount another one directly underneath.

The panel has a hinged side so you can rotate it open to access the rear terminations.

 

[Sacedog]

Anybody have any thoughts/experiences on the product link below??

Middle Atlantic HPM6 Wall mount panel

Middle Atlantic makes VERY nice gear. I have used it a lot both at work, and at home. They have some of the best slide out HT racks available, and even make custom surrounds for just about any type/model of equipment. For example, if you had a Denon receiver, you could get a surround from them that fits perfectly around your receiver, taking up all of the empty space. It makes for a killer looking install, however, you would want to make sure you had adequate cooling behind the panels.

Anyhow, I would recommend Middle Atlantic's products.

 

[ctay]

I'm a little late to the party on this but I used THIS for my Coax connections. Decent price and it is made for the 19 in rack I used it on. Very clean looking.

 

[beelzerob]

Well, I ended up buying even MORE screw terminals.....over 140 more connections worth.

Here are some pics of how I'm using them, by the way....

Obviously there's a lot of slack left in the system, but once they're all connected I'll pull the slack out of the way so it's a bit cleaner. This pic represents me using all of the 22 and 14 contact strips I bought....but I wasn't even close to done with the 22/4 wires I had left. That's why I bought another 4 22-connection and 4 14-connection strips, as well as another 2 bags of 100 fork connectors each.

Here is a closeup of one of the 22 strips. I just measured the gap between the terminals and sized up some lines in MS word to match them and then printed the labels.

The number represents the floor (B, 1, 2, or A).

There's probably fancier ways, but this was the cheapest way I could find, and given how many of these connections I have to make, it works good enough I think.

By the way, if anyone is looking for terminal strips like this, I definitely recommend the ebay vendor I got them from, found here. If you're buying a lot like me, he'll give you a price break.

Anyway, I'm pleased with the result. Simple, but more importantly...organized!

 

[IVB]

Damn. you have more room allocated to your screw terminals than I do for my entire setup.

 

[beelzerob]

Heh...I've actually had to expand to another wall. I'm leaving the rest of the room on the first wall for the Datanab32 and Ocelot, since those mount to walls directly.

I also finally finished the wiring for lights, switches, and a new quad outlet directly below all those terminals, which will feed the wall warts to come.

I'm definitely fat on wiring room space....but since it doubles as my PC-troubleshooting-hobby room, it's a good excuse. Plus, we weren't going to use that space down there for anything else anyway.

 

[SnyperBob]

Heh...I've actually had to expand to another wall. I'm leaving the rest of the room on the first wall for the Datanab32 and Ocelot, since those mount to walls directly.

I also finally finished the wiring for lights, switches, and a new quad outlet directly below all those terminals, which will feed the wall warts to come.

I'm definitely fat on wiring room space....but since it doubles as my PC-troubleshooting-hobby room, it's a good excuse. Plus, we weren't going to use that space down there for anything else anyway.

Why did you run all of your wires into blocks like that? Are you going to run wires from the other side of the block to your alarm system? Connect the other side of all the 'common' wires to ground?

 

[beelzerob]

Why did you run all of your wires into blocks like that? Are you going to run wires from the other side of the block to your alarm system? Connect the other side of all the 'common' wires to ground?

Ya, whatever they're connected to goes on the other side. Also, this makes it really easy to link them in series if I want to monitor a whole room of windows at a time. I'd just take one signal from one window, and then connect all the other windows to each other in series and take the other signal from the last window. That's probably what I'll end up doing. But wired this way, it also makes it really easy to troubleshoot them since with my multimeter I can check each sash for correct operation (already found one munched reed switch that way).

The naming was kinda of madeup...there really is no signal and common, it's just 2 wires, and they're interchangeable which is which. But for using with the Datanab32, one of them does go to ground. So ya, I was planning on just connecting all the "common" screws to each other and then to a single wire and then to ground. I just named them "signal" and "common" so I could keep them consistent.

The datanab32 and ocelot are going to be mounted on the same plywood wall just below, so the connecting wires won't have to go far. I'll route them through the same plastic pipe brackets for neatness.

 

[IVB]

You could put expander zones just to the right of each block, so you don't have to run a crapload of wires down. Just run the one databus wire. Of course, that drives costs up, but it'll look prettier

 

[beelzerob]

Expander zones? Is that an Elk thing? beelzerob no do elk.

I'd be scared buying an Elk here, I think the hunters would shoot at it just out of principle.

 

[IVB]

it is an elk thingey, but there must be an equivalent. Otherwise, you're going to have one monster ass main panel with that many zones in it.

 

[beelzerob]

Well, 90% of those contacts are ending up in my Datanab Ai32. Neither monster, nor ass! :blink:

32 contacts (the "signal" wire), and then the 32 grounds are all connected together to a single ground input.

The connections to the green bars aren't that hard since they're removeable, but I'm probably going to wire them all to another terminal strip. That way I don't have to remove the wiring bars on the Ai32. I just figure the more removing and re-inserting of stuff I have to do, the more likely some pin somewhere is going to get broken.

 

[Lagerhead]

Expander zones?

Rob -- Expanders can be very convenient. One of these worked out perfectly in my situation.

Here is a shot of my "legacy cabinet" which formerly housed a 1995-era security system. I was able to re-use and organize the home run perimeter wiring onto a 66-type block, build-up the zones from the home runs same as you are doing, and then take them all over to the Elk (in another cabinet) on just 4 wires (2 power, 2 signal).

The flexibility in zone configuration and access for testing are much as you have in your design.

Dave

EDIT: My wiring map is on one sheet inside the cabinet door.