Potential Uses for Cat5e Cabling in walls??

Andycap8

Hi all,

I'm wondering if anyone can suggest some potential uses for Cat5e cabling we have in our walls.

We have 7 old home audio control panels around the house. They were for an audio system installed in 2005 but the system (amps etc) was removed when we bought the house.

I've the ceiling speakers connected to sonos amps so I don't need control panels but I'm wondering if there is something I could do with the cables that are there now? The ends of them all go back to a central cabinet in the utility room so I could connect them to something at that end if needed (a switch or router or something).

The control panels (where the cables end) are all located next to light switches so I can't use them for TVs or laptops etc but there must be something I could do with them.

Whatever use it would be would be best powered via the Ethernet cable itself.

Any help would be appreciated.

Andy

Stoner

Low voltage switching for iot smart lights,

Tenshot

How old is your Sonos system? Do you still have some CR200 controllers, or do you use Smartphones for everything? We have a very similar setup, with spare CAT5 at old speaker control points and a modern Sonos system directly driving ceiling speakers.

I did have a plan to install wall-mounted charge points / docking stations for the Sonos controllers, using power-over-Ethernet to supply 48V from the central wiring closet and small PoE 48V->5V converters in the wallbox to power the Sonos controller stand for recharging.

It floundered mostly because I couldn't come up with a good way to dock the Sonos controller close to the wall (the supplied docks are designed to sit on a table), and one by one, our old CR200's having been losing functionality due to bad screens / dead batteries. If I was tackling it now, I'd be looking at 3D-printing an enclosure.

As an aside, we ended up with a couple of bedrooms that had the ceiling speaker cables terminating at the controller wallbox without exiting anywhere else; we were able to use the CAT5 controller cable to extend them back to a central point where we located the Sonos amps. This actually worked much better than expected; the sound quality from those rooms is absolutely fine. The CAT5 runs would be around 10-20M.

Andycap8

We've an AMP (powering 4 ceiling speakers) and two Sonos Ones currently and I've another amp on the way from the states due to arrive in August (they're way cheaper over there - $599 versus €699 here). We use our smart phones (and Alexa for the Ones).

I did not know you could get controllers for Sonos. But that's an idea - perhaps I could use them to power small Alexa devices (maybe dots- that way you've got control over the speakers in more rooms).

It's a shame - as 10 years ago you'd give your right leg for these cables to be run through your house but now with cheap extenders & 5g wifi they're kind of pointless.

Tenshot

Yep, Sonos used to have their CR200 controller back in the day, when smartphones were a luxury item, not standard fare. They were pretty decent, and "woke up" a lot faster than the current apps, but while they're still supported, they stopped selling them in 2012. We had four, or might have been five, but only two are still working properly now.

I reckon you can never have enough CAT5E in your walls - the more stuff you keep on a wired network, the more wi-fi bandwidth remains for mobile devices. The only things on wi-fi in our house are tablets and phones, plus an occasional laptop brought home from the office.

Andycap8

Andycap8 wrote: »

We have 7 old home audio control panels around the house. They were for an audio system installed in 2005

Back in the day when I was wiring big houses we wired loads of these systems (didnt 2nd fix them).
They were so expensive and were dated so fast!
Its amazing how far wifi tech has come and how flexible the newer systems are.