I have had my system on an Apex Classic running two years now. One major fall in my design is I do not have a back up power source for my Apex. My setup is fully enclosed in a custom built cabinet and I do not have any place I can safely shoehorn a battery backup, UPS or other option. I do have my entire home network centralized in a cabinet with a dedicated UPS and battery backup. I use a centralized router and switches with three wireless access points (WAP) scattered through the home. The WAP's are powered using a 48v POE switch made for these units. This had me thinking...
Is there any reason I could not power the Apex with a 12vdc POE setup? I can inject the 12 volts into the ethernet cable, which uses pins 4/5 on 10/100 Cat5E wiring. I would have a corresponding 12vdc splitter at the Apex that pulls the 12vdc from the Cat5E and transfers it to a barrel jack.
With this setup, I can monitor power outages via the EB units and still report the power outage and maintain control my Eco Vortechs, where the slim 14vdc batteries were planned for in a slim location.
As a note, I did look into just powering the Apex from the EcoTech batteries but was told by EcoTech I cannot and read somewhere on this forum that it was not advisable.
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