[g__day (Matthew)]

This appears to be an ugly problem, after reading the USB 2 specification today.

What I want to do is set my PC up in the backyard, and after aligning it on nights when I want to do astro-photography run everything from inside. It's easy to control the mount from 20 - 30 metres away, a simple phone line spliced into the right DB connectors and serial dongle does the trick. But the CCD is proving a nightmare.

I don't want a desktop or laptop outside near my scope running my CCD that I could in turn remotely control from another PC inside (although it looks like a slaved server may be where I end up). I simply wanted the equivalent of a 20 - 25 metre USB 2 cable. So I thought a few 5 metres USB 2 cables daisy changed would do the job.

Each 5m cable has a repeater / signal booster and re-sychroniser in-built. I can't even go through one daisy chain length before it says Imager not attached or device not working. The problem is likely not the device not getting enough clean power, it may well be the signal timings. USB can be very, very sensitive to timings. Even an extra 5cm would kill the signal on a 5 metres cable.

So I asked tthe comm's techies at work. They considered:

1. Bluetooth - but it requires USB for power too
2. Router with a USB connector - but they are built to send data to a USB printer - not sure if it would read from a USB camera
3. USB 2 / RJ45 (network cable) converter - that's my next hope.

LAN cable (Cat 5 or better) can run well beyond 100 metres before you need repeaters, although I'm not sure of how much power they can deliver to a USB powered camera.

Can anybody please offer me their suggestions.

Either how can I get a USB cable daisy chained far enough (must I edt Windows XP device settings) or can I convert my USB to a LAN cable somehow and run this back into a remote PC?

Mant thanks for any help you can give!