Looong cable reel

January 14, 2015 11:05 AM

Do very long (>100') retractable cat 5 cable reels exist? If so, where can I find one?
posted by btfreek to Technology (6 answers total)

Yes they do. I've seen them used with underwater ROV.

However, Cat5 loses it's strength after a certain distance.
posted by bbqturtle at 11:11 AM on January 14, 2015 [2 favorites]

You could probably put a spool into any standard TDS (Tether deployment system) which is used for underwater vehicles.
posted by bbqturtle at 11:13 AM on January 14, 2015

I have installed these 75ft retractable Cat5e cords for a customer.
They must make them longer. Call an electrical supply company.

You could also probably make your own without too much trouble,
but don't make it any longer than 250ft, because signal drop will start occurring.
posted by Flood at 11:25 AM on January 14, 2015

Response by poster: Sorry, forgot to specify: preference for spring-loaded/auto-retracting reels (e.g. this sort) Thanks for the tip on the ROV reels!
posted by btfreek at 11:26 AM on January 14, 2015

Note that the product Flood links uses shielded twisted-pair cabling. You're probably going to want to make sure anything you get is shielded. I assume you're usually going to have some cable still coiled on the reel when you're using it, and I have a hunch that doing that with unshielded twisted-pair is going to cause interference and signal loss.
posted by McCoy Pauley at 4:17 AM on January 16, 2015

Response by poster: Well, looks like my client has bought their own spool of cable and now wants me to rig up/retrofit a self-retracting system onto it... We'll see how that goes. Thanks for the help, everyone.
posted by btfreek at 10:15 PM on January 19, 2015