USB Extenders for webcam? (1 Viewer)

[captainflash]

We have used some Gefen USB extenders in the past to extend the length of a USB cable over cat5 for our conference rooms, as we use Polycom PVX software combined with a webcam for some of our conference rooms. The extenders never really worked well to begin with, but for whatever reason they don't appear to work with any of the new webcams we buy. I have a feeling it's because they probably only run at 12mbps or something and theres not enough bandwidth for a high def camera. Regardless, we are in the market for some new USB extenders and i can't seem to find ANYTHING that will work with webcams. I have seen several things advertise that they work with webcams but when you read the reviews people say they don't work well with webcams. I'd say we probably need to run about 50FT or so. SO, i'm wondering if any of you have used anything in the past to extend USB for a web cam and actually have it work. I wanted to just use an IP cam and skip the whole USB extension problem, however, the software of course won't work with IP cams, only USB.... Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated!

 

[porky996t]

I bought some self powered USB extenders for our village webcam. I got them off eBay - sort of have a built in hub (I think) very similar to this here. By using one of these along with a standard USB extension lead I managed to get the webcam working OK on a 20m lead. It is a cheap Logitech webcam only working at 640x420, and running into a USB 1.0 port on a old laptop.

I think the problem is down to the delay caused by the length of cable, it is not power loss or anything else.

I suspect this is really at its limit of operation - I have tried a higher res camera and it wouldn't work.


HTH,


M