Cat-5

I know this issue was discussed already with Cat 5 being good for alarms and such, but how well do you think it would hold up to engine heat? Even if wrapped in plastic shell? I was thinkin about running two cables through my firewall into my engine bay because that would greatly simplfy all the switched wiring I have in my headlights. It would give me 16 wires to play with (strobes, knight-rider light) + other crap.

yeah i've done that, but you might as well use some better wire

put loom around the wire and you will be ok. W/out loom I wouldn't try it.

are you using that for your neons and such? i didn't know cat5 could be used in 12 volt situations like that. are you using each strand for a different application, or am i way off here?

I would not recommend to anyone using CAT-5 cable for powering something..... the gauge is way too small... put any load on that wire and it will heat up, then melt the plastic and eventually short out......

NOT something you want......

CAT-5 was designed for data transmission.... if you absolutely want to use CAT-5, use it with relays..... have a very low voltage, low power circuit control a higher voltage, higher power device....

Can you explain relays then? Right now my current setup is:

Liteglow Strobe Controller -- two pair strobes in headlights -- switch in console
LED scanner --Switch in console

Should I:
http://www.oznium.com/albums/99XLT/diagram.jpg

That diagram doesn't make much sense to me.

Yeah, I'm far from an electrical engineer. Fancy symbols...hah

Ok, ignore the diagram. It was an attempt at understanding the point of a relay.

The main reason CAT-5 sounded attractive was because of the amount of wires I have running. The LED scanner has 8 wires (Which I could extend w/ the 8 cables in Cat-5) and the strobes are 4 more wires, plus power feeds. I couldn't even get away with the LED's on the Cat? Strobes I can understand, they're a bit more high power, but maybe I could put a relay between them and the Cat. As I understand from reading, I could power the relay off the battery, but still get away with the Cat-5 on the switch?

You can get away with LEDs just fine on cat-5

Yeah, s'what I figured, plus its only firing one LED at a time, just on different channels.

As Phil said..... you'll be fine for LEDs.... But since I've never seen the hardware you're intending on using, I won't confirm or deny that it's safe to use CAT-5....

As for how relays work.... the relay would only be good to turn on/off a device.... like your controler..... NOT to flash your LEDs or your strobes....

If you need more info about relays just let me know and i'll try to explain....

Yeah, I have a control box for my LED scanner and for my strobes, both are located in the cab, and separately switched in my console. Unfortunately, that is a TON (12-1 of wires going in and out of the car, so Cat-5 was just a nice way of consolidating them being they're mostly 18-22G wire. The relay would go under the hood so I could use the CAT-5 to pass the +/- wire into the cab while actually powering the strobe device itself off the relay. Is that the right concept?

CAT-5 is actually 24AWG.....

And I don't think you got it right... by device I mean your control box...

The function of a relay is basically a remotely controled switch. So you're gonna use the relay to power up your LED Scanner box and your strobe box.... but for this to be of any benefit to you, you'd have to put those controlers under the hood....

Here.... have a look at this page... it's way better than me trying to do some half assed diagram...

http://www.eatel.net/~amptech/elecdisc/relays.htm

I meant the wires I was already using were 18-22g

But each box is switched itself

So couldn't they switch on/off the relay?

Here's an analogy of the working of a relay that anyone should be able to understand.

Think about a relay like you towing your friends car out of the gutter after the moron took it off roading and got it stuck in the mud. What do we know about this situation?

Well first we know that there is no way in hell you are stong enough to pull it out of the ditch yourself. In this case, you are simply the cat5 cable. So what do you do in this situation? You get a rope, right?

So you go and get the rope and tie it to the ditched car. The rope would be your thicker guage wire you'd use for power supply. The knot you tied to the car would be the relay.

You have to have some way of using the rope to pull the ditched car out though, right? So you take the rope and tie it to the back of your pickup truck. Your truck in this case would be the battery. In this situation, you (cat5) were used to tie a knot (switch the relay on) that allowed the pickup truck (battery) to pull the ditched car out of the mud using the rope (thicker guage cable). So you sent a low voltage signal through the cat5 to the relay, telling it basically to switch on, in essense tieing the knot and puting power through the relay (the knot) into your lightsource (the ditched car).

If the rope (thicker guage cable) didn't exist to tie between the the truck and the ditched car, or if you were unable to tie a knot (use a relay), then the pickup truck (battery) would never have been able to get towed out (get power to the light source), as you are not strong enough yourself to pull the truck out (cat5 just can't handle the power required to power the light source).

Hope that was a little more understandable =)

omg im so confused.

im just gonna tell my friends not to go mudding in their cars and i wont need relays, right??