The Shrine

Ok, so before I moved in I decided that I wanted to in-wall a bunch of low-voltage cable in the living room, master bedroom and upstairs bedroom. I purchased over $200 worth of wall plates, keystone jacks, mounts, cables and ends to do this.

Saturday I finally finished pulling all the cable through the walls to my low-v box in the basement. The DirecTV came over also on Saturday and terminated all of the ends on my coax cable and ran the satellite cables to the house and into the box. While he was doing that I was attempting to get my Ethernet cables all wired. I have about half of the ends in the basement done. I purchased a bunch of these (http://www.monoprice.com/products/produ ... 1&format=2) to put into the keystone wall plates I had purchased. I've wired about 4 of them and none of them work. If I plug my computer into one of the finished jacks that is connected to the switch in the basement, my PC never connects and I am met with a flashing yellow light on the switch. I'm using TIA 568A standard for all wiring.

After fucking with this most of the weekend I'm about ready to throw up my arms and buy these (http://www.monoprice.com/products/produ ... 1&format=2) and call it done since I know my cables are good and my ends at the the switch are all good. It's just the ends with the jacks that I'm having problems with. I'm very surprised that no one else has any problems with these jacks really.

Anyone have any suggestions before I refund these to monoprice?

If you are wiring cables, you absolutely require a testing device. If it's plugs, you need this. If it's Ethernet, you need this. Any sort of cable wiring absolutely MUST have a tester.

If the tester says the cable is good, then the cable is good.

I figured it out. I wired my ends starting at pin 8 instead of pin 1. Basically I wired everything going to the switch backwards.

Imakeholesinu wrote:I figured it out. I wired my ends starting at pin 8 instead of pin 1. Basically I wired everything going to the switch backwards.

I was honestly going to ask you if you wired the ends correctly but didn't want to sound like an ass. Even had the post written up just decided not to post it. I know that fucked me up a bit when I was making some cables once. It's irritating wiring those ends.

Yep, which is exactly why you need a tester.

I remember I was carrying around a plug tester for my house hunting. I would test the outlets on the house to see if there was anything bad. Everybody thought it was stupid. So, one day, my dad is installing an outlet on the house. He put the plate on there, and I said "hold on, let me get my plug tester". Everybody joked about it until the tester said that something was wrong with the plug and said exactly what was the problem. I believe it was a ground problem, which would have never been detected unless a tester was plugged in.

So, yeah, a tester. Every time. It will keep you from going crazy when troubleshooting problems like this. Many good ethernet testers would have even told you that the wires were reversed.

Do you have one you recommend? I'm going to finish wiring up all of the keystone jacks tonight.

My dad recommends either an Ideal or Seimens, though Seimens is the more expensive one.

I'll see if I can get one of those retail. I think I have two bad cables. Luckily they aren't in the bundles of coax, fiber, and cat5, they are the extra cat5 I ran.

I finally finished the keystone jacks in the office. I now have 5 of 6 ethernet jacks and 2 coax jacks in the office! FUCK YEAH!!!!!!

Oh, and I now realize I should have gone with a managed switch over an un-managed.

Well, I finished the Living room wall plate last night. I pulled way to much cable I think and that made things a bit difficult but I was able to fanagle the stuff back in there.

So far I am only down 2 internet jacks. One in the office (5/6) and 1 in the living room (3/4). Both are from the extra cables I ran so I'm guessing there is a kink in the wiring somewhere. If that is the case for the one in the living room there is nothing really I can do as it would require me to take the cold air return apart for just one cable and I don't think it is worth it.

Also figured out how to use my compression crimper last night so now I can make custom coax cables. I'll get to do the bedroom tonight and move furniture and clean up tonight and tomorrow in preparation for sunday.

Here are pictures of the jacks.



That one is the office. 5 of the 6 Ethernet jacks work. The two coax jacks are run in wall to the multiswitch in the basement in a cabinet with the 1GB switch.


This is the one in the front room. The speaker wire isn't run yet and I have plates that I still need to put in the walls for the wires around the TV. I went with a 5.1 panel since my living room is kinda small.

3 of the 4 Ethernet jacks work here. The two coax jacks go to my HD DVR from DirecTV.


This is my TV on the wall. It's a 40in Samsung 1080p.


Here is a picture of the mount I used. This mount is FUCKING AMAZING! It not only comes out from the wall close to 2ft but I can pivot it to the left or the right and tilt it up or down.


Here is a picture of the recessed power outlet and the in-wall HDMI plugs. What I ended up doing here was since the cold air return is in this wall I dropped the cables down it and ran them to the wall plate in the first image. I had 25 feet of cable which was more than enough. I probably could have gotten away with 16ft no problem. There was an outlet at right below where I put the TV which we removed and re-wired since the outlet wasn't grounded and then ran some more 12 gauge wire to the outlet above. The recessed outlet also has a 6 plug keystone jack next to it so if I was ever to get antsy and run component connections to the TV or 1.4 HDMI I could do so, but that would mean taking apart my cold air return again.

wow, very nice setup! Im dying to put a flatscreen in our living room upstairs. Our big tv is downstairs, and we just have a crt in an old ass hand me down tv stand in the main living room. Im really the only one that uses the room, and will be using it a lot more when the baby arrives since I dont wanna keep dragging him up and down the stairs. Theres a perfect wall to mount a tv on as well.

Seraphina wrote:wow, very nice setup! Im dying to put a flatscreen in our living room upstairs. Our big tv is downstairs, and we just have a crt in an old ass hand me down tv stand in the main living room. Im really the only one that uses the room, and will be using it a lot more when the baby arrives since I dont wanna keep dragging him up and down the stairs. Theres a perfect wall to mount a tv on as well.

Well, tell sine I knocked this out in about 16 hours, but I had some help with the wall mount and putting the tv on the mount.

www.monoprice.com is your best friend.