Make your own VGA cord of CAT5 cable!

Step 2: Soldering is fun!

Well the next thing to do is solder the wires to the VGA connectors you bought. The best connectors are male ones. But my local radioshack didn't have em, so he sold me the female ones with an male-male adapter. As long as it works i say! The connector have got the pin numbers on the solderside, and with the help of a scheme i stole from http://www.geocities.com/dougburbidge/vgaovercat5.html i can solder the right wires to it. Note that im not using an RJ45 connector as shown on the illustration, thats not necessary in my application (very awsome home cinema set).
Just solder the shown colors to the right pins. Good luck with the bridge for pins 5, 10 and 8, naah it's not really that hard =)

Comments

[daleruisky]

Great Instructable!! Helped a ton. I made a 35ft. cable for a projector mounted on the ceiling. No problem with the image quality whatsoever. Thanks again!

[NatDaGamer]

Great Instructable man! Helped a lot, and save me a few pennies as well. Needed a long enough lead to hook up my projector, and now I have one! In regards to bridging the connections, I found using some bare wire in each terminal 5, 8 and 10 all joined together and then soldering the blue dotted cable the easiest way to bridge the connections. :)

[mlandgraaf]

hi man, good to hear it helped you out!

[churchsoundguy]

I made a 100+ foot one of these for connecting our church computer to our beamer...and so far every computer I have used, laptop or desktop has worked perfectly. Would recommend to anyone.

[mlandgraaf]

good to hear it helped you out!

[Zigster007]

 I just did this, I bought the D-Sub Connector and Connector Hood from RadioShack. They already have solder terminals on them. So far i have tried a 50ft cat5e and it works perfectly, i also tried a 300ft cat5e and it did not work. So obviously somewhere in between is the limiter. But for any normal household 50ft should be enough distance to go from one side of the house to the other. 

[drmrfrk03]

From everything Ive read, you can only run cat5e up to 295 feet (90m). That's the standard when using the wire with a switch/router/repeater at one end. I have no idea how much power output comes from the video out connectors on a videocard but I doubt it would match that of the switch/router/repeater. Anyone have luck with a cable between 50ft and 295 ft?


Amazon has a hdmi to cat 5 convertor that supports full 1080p that claims to work at 100ft.  It's "Passive" as it only uses the build in power output of your videocard.


 

[Zigster007]

Once i installed it i notice that the maximum resolution you can get on this is 1600x1200. To fix this i followed a tutorial on www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/7947-force-dvi-hdmi-resolutions-refresh-rates.html which gives a walk through on how to force resolutions. But now i have a weird refresh rate that makes it hard to watch anything on the television. Will update when i figure it out.

[junbata]

Halo ! I am new here.. I have a question? May be you can help me. I want to control may LCD monitor through cutting of one of the pin of D-sub cable and not the Power source. (To Avoid damaged).
May purpose to this is to Always run the CPU and only Blank the screen if nobody used or force to blank screen to stop the user.

NOTE : I will used relay to ON/OFF this LCD by separate control. Through opening of contact of 1 of the 15 pins.
my problem is I dont know which pins is i will going to control OFF/ON.

Hoping for your future answer..
Thanks !

GOD BLESS..

[zealroy]

Use pin 13 or 14 or both f you want using dpdt relays...

[CrudeBuster]

The scheme lacks the DDC wires, the video board won't be able to detect which monitor type is attached. But its a good idea nevertheless, I was about to do it but I needed the DDC signals, or else Windows don't let me use some resolutions, and some hacking through settings would be necessary.

Too much ado for a simple extender, for me, but it's useful for a lot of people, kudos to you.

[mdavez]

To elaborate a little bit on this issue. zigster100 pointed out it is possible to follow the instructions at www.sevenforums.com/tutorials/7947-force-dvi-hdmi-resolutions-refresh-rates.html to force the correct resolution. Basically in the old XP days it was possible to specify any resolution for a screen, but with Vista/7 you can only use the resolutions permitted by your screen (presumably in order to prevent damage to your screen). And because this cable is missing a few wires windows will detect the screen as Standard Screen and only allow 1024x768 which is no good for modern wide screen TVs/Monitors.

However, if you are able to connect a computer to that screen temporarily with a normal VGA cable (or hdmi, dvi), it is possible to "read" this info from the monitor, save it and then force it on your computer so that you will get the correct resolution and other settings when you connect your screen with a UTP hacked cable. Please see the full instructions at the above link as well as all the warnings there! Trust me it is not difficult, please see below:

Warning:

Prerequisites

Read and understand what you are doing. Visit the link above for more info
Don't blame me when you ruin your $3000 HDTV. Smoke CAN happen.
Don't edit the settings you extract unless you know what you are doing!!!

Procedure

0) Connect the monitor with a proper VGA cable, or any other cable that your tv/monitor accepts, e.g. hdmi, dvi,
1) Download Phoenix.zip and extract it to a working folder.
2) Run it and click the registry toolbar button.
3) You don't need to edit the settings, unless you are feeling very brave and want to try to force non-standard resolutions or refresh rates - please see the main link at the top for more info
4) Save the EDID to a .DAT file in the working folder.
5) Connect the monitor with your hacked VGA/UTP cable
6) Download moninfo.exe and install it.
7) Open the saved .DAT with MonInfo and make sure it doesn't complain about it - if it does, please see the link at the top
8) If MonInfo reads in an displays the settings the way you configured them in Phoenix then...
9) Select Create INF... from the file menu and save it to the working folder.
10) You can edit the INF if you are feeling brave (see disclaimers!)
11) Open Start, type devmgmt.msc and press Enter.
12) Select the monitor you want to change, right click and select Update Software
13) Use the tried and true "Have Disk" method to select the INF and install it (don't forget to confirm that you are happy to install an unsigned driver).
14) Reboot and enjoy the proper resolution!

Most of the info is c/p from the source link, all credit goes to the author of that tutorial!

On a different note, all VGA cables I've seen in my life feature ferrite cores for interference protection. I don't know whether it needs to be installed, or whether the twisted pairs in the UTP cable should do the job?! Any ideas?

[chuckconder]

 Use a simple VGA DA....MSV12

qvs.com  search MSV12

[CrudeBuster]

But this kills the prospect of using a ethernet cable as extender.

[therocker284]

will it damage the source of the video if ever i got troubles on connecting the wires (inverted wire connection)?

[redhat11]

can i directly use cat5 to connect the vga port directly to vga port?

means vga port - cat5 - vga port

[mlandgraaf]

Sure, if you're good with soldering it wouldn't do harm