The week my DIY camera setup went haywire from one dumb mistake

Honestly, last Tuesday I spent 4 hours wiring up a hidden camera in my backyard birdhouse to catch who keeps messing with my garden. Ngl, I was pretty proud of it until Thursday when the footage showed nothing but static. Turns out I used a USB extension cable that was too long, over 25 feet, and it killed the signal completely. Had to rip everything out and start over with a powered repeater. Has anyone else tried running long cables for outdoor cams and found a cheap workaround?

3 comments

3 Comments

shane_clark19d agoMost Upvoted

Rough lesson right there. Did the exact same thing with a trail cam last year. Used a 30 foot cable and got nothing but snow on the screen. Grabbed a cheap powered USB hub from Amazon for like 15 bucks and it fixed everything.

john_fisher19d ago

That 30 foot cable thing bit me too. I ran one from my deck to a bird feeder cam and got nothing but static. @shane_clark nailed it with the powered USB hub fix. The cable length just drops voltage too much for the camera to get a clean signal. A cheap hub in the middle acts like a booster station and everything clears right up. Night and day difference for under twenty bucks.

sean_green4419d ago

Wait, @shane_clark had the same issue but didn't the powered hub add a whole other point of failure?