Tech Forum

Just thought I would share a solution I came up with for getting Ethernet to the pulpit for high quality presentation of broadcast. I'm a new STS getting ready for a conference broadcast. One of our older buildings doesn't have Ethernet near the chapel, nor does it have decent WiFi signal in the chapel. I was scoping out what it would take to run Ethernet, and had an epiphany. Why not just use a MoCA adapter to ride Ethernet on the building cable setup?

So, I bought a DirectTV MoCA adapter pair off eBay for $25, plugged one into the mixing block in the Satellite cabinet and the other to the cable output at the pulpit and I have 100Mb Ethernet, with speed-test holding 6Mb steady (ISP bottleneck)! I did verify that this only works if the particular connection your're on isn't connected via a splitter as it attenuates the higher frequencies used by the MoCA adapter. I also verified no impact to the audio and satellite distribution (this is an old stake center).

(kfred)

kfred wrote:Just thought I would share a solution I came up with for getting Ethernet to the pulpit for high quality presentation of broadcast. I'm a new STS getting ready for a conference broadcast.

Is there any reason the FM group can't just run an Ethernet cable? They could not get it done in time for our first stake conference webcast, so we ran a temporary line and used it. They came in and did a more permanent run after the conference.

When internet was installed in the buildings, our FM did it without asking.

1) Time; I'm a brand new STS, and our stake conference is this week. I didn't want to run a 50ft Ethernet cable and tape it down. This approach is much easier on my back and the FM group.
2) Simplicity; seems a much better use of resources to spend $22 on these devices than to have someone spend a couple hours running Ethernet cable. This one device gives me Ethernet anywhere I can connect to coax, although I'm not sure I'll need Ethernet anywhere other than the chapel.

Our facilities group added Ethernet to the pulpit in one building but told me they couldn't do it in another building. We have a new group so I may ask, but otherwise this might be a good solution; we do have an extra unused coax line, although I'm not sure if it goes through a splitter. Otherwise I might look into powerline.

* Should this thread be in the Meetinghouse Internet forum?

craiggsmith wrote:Otherwise I might look into powerline.

I'd think the reliability would be questionable. All it would take is for someone to plug in a noisy device (perhaps a cheap cell phone charger) and there goes the connection.

craiggsmith wrote:* Should this thread be in the Meetinghouse Internet forum?

Yes, moved.

Our stake conference this weekend was a success. The site using the MoCA Ethernet over cable adapter ran flawlessly. As for the splitters, you just need to make sure that they don't attenuate frequencies below 1500 MHz. This solution is somewhat limited; it worked for me in this case because it was an old stake center and had coax run across the building, so I have quick, cheap, and easy Ethernet connections all over the place. Non stake-centers likely don't have coax outlets anywhere, so you're back to running cable in that case.

Glad your solution worked. Just as a data point: our 60s-era building received an ethernet jack at the pulpit during a sound system upgrade. This was after the FM group had previously run a jack to one side wall at the front of the chapel when internet was first installed.