The POE Cat 6 test passes now but there is no camera connection.
The POE Cat 6 test passes now but there is no camera connection.
Can you change the mode? One is named A, and the other is B. I don't remember which one they are without checking them up. One has 1236 and the other has 4578. I'm not sure about the 5 watts usually found on these devices unless something is actually using that power. Devices can use less than what the power injector supplies. Maybe the meter only asks for 5 watts of power? The voltage goes down when something uses it up and shows a high number with no load.
I am sitting on my roof right now. My Reolink camera has a power supply attached to the network box, and that box is plugged into the LAN port of the power injector. The power injector also has a port for a CAT6 cable, which leads straight to this specific camera. I haven't actually hooked up the camera yet; I just connected my power tester to check things out. On the wire going from the box, there are 70 volts and zero watts being measured. Is it somehow adding the voltage from both devices together? I am still waiting to plug in the camera because I'm scared of accidentally burning it out!
If you plug a voltage meter into something, it checks if electricity exists. The 802.3af/at standard is an active protocol, but it only gives power when asked by a device. It still sends some signal so PoE devices can turn on, which means the system isn't 100% "active" in that specific way. I've looked at the details for years, and this design makes sure not to hurt devices that don't support PoE. However, you must check that your gear is really 802.3-based PoE because there are other ways to give power all the time, and many of those use passive power. Most of them only send low voltages like 24 volts so they won't break anything.
The power injector I bought probably isn't working right now because it's likely passive. I'm going to put it back so I don't make a mistake. Instead, I ordered this new Ubiquiti GP-V480-032G model so I can try it next week. To my knowledge, the Ubiquiti device is not passive, but maybe I am wrong anyway. Before this whole thing happened, I used this exact Ubiquiti injector before to power my Dad's access point in his house. Of course it's a very good product and even has a grounded plug, huh? Anyway, for the S&G cameras, I connected them directly to the NVR again (avoiding using that cheap POE injector). It turns on right away! According to my meter, which is hooked up to the camera while running in-line with it, I'm seeing 48 volts and about 3.5 to 4 watts. Maybe this long run of CAT6 cables has a small power problem or fluctuates sometimes, so that's why I hope to get more power added.
I took another step forward by installing the POE injector but did NOT connect it to the Reolink NVR at all. Then I connected my meter and camera outside our house instead. The camera turns on as I can hear a clicking sound (though there is no video because nothing connects to the Reolink). My meter shows 52 volts and 10 watts, which is higher than just using the Reolink NVR by itself. Maybe not enough power is the real issue?! To test this with NO camera, if I run that cheap injector in-line with the Reolink NVR outside our house, my meter reads 70 volts but 0 watts (zero). However, when I connect my meter directly to the POE injector in my basement using a short five-inch cable, it shows 55 volts and 5.5 watts. I am scared to plug my camera in while reading those numbers because I don't want to kill yet another camera that Reolink just returned for me mistakenly as they were wrong about it being damaged. I also don't know why I would see 55 volts in the basement and then somehow add hundreds of feet of CAT6 cables, causing that voltage to go up by 15 volts from 55 to 70? That is confusing! All in all, it looks like this is NOT a cable connection problem but perhaps being the camera with the longest run causes an intermittent power issue, which I am glad about. I understand that I can simply use a POE repeater but that would require splitting the CAT6 run and make it much harder to hide on the exterior of my house by doing so. Ideally I would love to be able to do something at either end of the entire cable run rather than in the middle, which is why the idea of a POE injector came to mind.
Ubiquiti sells both kinds, but they are really good about specs and technical info so you just have to read all the small print. Power is a messy thing when there are big chunks of wire in your way. I can't remember what the expected voltage is on a 100-meter cable even though there is a planned drop that causes it to start at 48 volts. What makes this more complicated is the actual current, or how many watts you're using... because higher current means more voltage reduction. It's been years since I had to memorize all this for certification tests and I can only give general advice; you'll have to look through wiki stuff for details. You can put a PoE booster in the middle of your cable. Microtik sells a small switch that takes PoE in and gives PoE out to an end device... but there is some watt limit on it. Someone built one of these into a waterproof box in his yard to get more than 100 meters of PoE cable. I don't think he ever came back to tell how well it actually worked.