What exactly did you do to make it outdoor?
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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Ran it outside.
Do you specifically have to run it? Can’t walk it? How does a jog vs a sprint compare?
That's some vintage memeing
👀
Can't say I haven't done it in a pinch 🐸
There’s a specific jacket material that makes it outdoor rated. It is UV resistant and handles temperature variation better. Some are gel filled so that there’s water resistance too. If it’s being buried you need the gel; if it’s an aerial cable you need shielding. The jacket material, gel, and shielding all make the cable harder to work with, and more expensive.
what happens if you raw dog unsheilded cable
I really doubt shielding will make a difference. It's mostly useful for running it along power lines, through factories or places with lots of EM interference.
I should hope OPs garden is pretty quiet.
Nothing. Looked at work what we had, and outdoor cable was there. We rarely use that so i was welcome to use it
direct burial
It's been a while since I did cabling but I think there's a specific jacket material (CMX?) that you need to do direct burial.
I could also be wrong and PVC is fine as long as you seal the ends.
I like conduit because I can easily expand capacity/repair/whatever with a vacuum, paper towels and some string.
yeah DB is certainly more expensive, for whatever it's made from. also it'll have some grease or powdery stuff inside the insulation.
conduit was always my favorite also!
I can pretend to be a plumber and also not have to deal with plumber problems
POE?
Yes. I have no electricity there (for i would have built a wifi bridge if i had) and puting my generator there scares the hell out of wildlife
Good job!
Did you get outdoor direct bury cable or are you running the cable in a tube?
It's Outdoor cable.
I haven't made a cable in years, but as soon as I saw this post I was thinking " orange-white orange, green-white blue, blue-white green, brown-white brown". Is it the same with cat 6 now?
Did just that and got full-duplex link (don't ask me how I know you get half duplex with your own pairing scheme)
How much was the cable? What camera did you go with?
Cable was for free (perks of the job) I only use reolink ip camera's for they work perfectly well without cloud (i'm self hosting frigate).This one is an rcl-510A. It's only disadvantrage: you need to use their app once (still no cloud required) to activate web and rtc etc. I always buy from their refurbished deals.
Nice, I use Amcrest cameras with Frigate and I've been happy. No app, no cloud, and I have them on a VLAN with no Internet access.
I'm just trying Frigate again for the first time in a couple years, it still seems really bare of features compared to Blue Iris. I guess I'll keep playing but getting object detection working has been a chore, and the PTZ controls are rudimentary. I really want to get rid of the last Windows install in my life, but it isn't looking good.
I assign all iot like stuff (printer, camera, ap's ikea gateway, shelly, etc etc) an ip in 192.168.1.192/26 range in my dhcp server and block that range from internet access
Same, Amcrest cameras just supply an RTSP stream and Frigate likes that.
And get a good PoE switch, it'll save you so much headache vs other power options. If you're using solar cameras, make sure you have enough capacity to handle extreme events (around 3 days with storms/cloud cover is a safe margin).
Research the security issues with network manufacturers before you decide on which to buy and try to buy from as direct as source as possible (not Amazon, they comingle their inventory). Supply chain attacks are a fact of life and network hardware is a prime target.
Is there and outdoor cable you would recommend?
Not really, this is just what I got (can look up brand/type if you like)
What is the distance rating of Cat6? I thought more like 33m?
When used for [10/100/1000] BASE-T (which I do), the maximum length of Cat 6 cable is 100 meters.
(Frigate is already pulling a steady and stable stream)
I think that’s only for 40GBASE. For say 1000BASE, it’s 100m. Could be wrong though.
There's even an extend.mode on some POE switches that's good for 250m or so, but it drops to 10Mbps. That's possibly enough for a POE camera with one client, though.
CAT6 is rated for 10Gbps up to 55m or 1Gbps up 100m. In reality, outside with no other RF interference sources speed losses upto 100m are going to be negligible even on CAT5.
Even a 4k video stream only uses 24Mbps on average so whatever you use above CAT5/5e would be more than enough.
What did you do to secure your network? I always thought the problem with these is that somebody could just pull the camera down and connect into the home network. I’m paranoid about this stuff though.
It's low risk, it's quiet here ..... Not visible from the road, only 5 houses in a 1km radius.
But everyoutdoor cable is in it's own vlan with a /30 subnet and with nowhere to go (i only pull from those devices)
How did you do your wall penetration to get it back indoors to whatever switch you used?
Through the nearby airvent