If you’ve ever needed to place a VGA monitor further than the standard 6 foot cable allows, you may be familiar with some of these problems:
- VGA cables are expensive
- Several cables chained together affects signal quality
- Running a VGA cable through conduit is pretty difficult
You can avoid a lot of these problems by making a couple VGA to Cat-5 adapters. This will let you run standard, cheap, easy-to-pull ethernet cable between your computer and video display. The twisted pair helps reduce signal loss, though it doesn’t work quite as well as the long-run shielded VGA cables. Unless you need to extend your display to over 50 feet, this might be a much easier and more cost-effective way to do things.
VGA over Cat-5 ethernet cable – Link
8 thoughts on “VGA over Cat-5 ethernet”
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You might be able to get a little more mileage (yardage?) out of this idea with a little more work:
By using a simple circuit to combine the horizontal and vertical sync signals into a composite sync signal (searching for vga2rgbs will find you such a circuit) you would be able to have another ground wire in the cable – which would provide a little more shielding.
Also, some monitors support using a composite sync signal as is, without having to split it up again, eliminating the need for a splitter circuit at the monitor end.
Are there commercial versions of such a thing available? Seems like something I’d like to spend a few (not *that* many) dollars. My soldering skills are … weak. No need to get into exactly how weak; weak enough that I can say there’s no need to get into exactly how weak.
But Boy, it would be nice to have a 2d monitor 20 feet (I could have a screen for the Daily Show downstairs :)).
timothy
This worked like a charm! thanks i was looking all day for this after i needed a VGA run to my kitchen wall from inside a cabinet.
Thanks again.
http://www.vgaextend.net has them for sale