Hi,
I'd like to add an intercom functionality to a broadcast camera and I'd appreciate opinions about the different solutions I have in mind. The main restrictions come from the cable, which is a big shielded cable with optical fiber inside, a pair of 37.5Ohm/km for power (300V DC), and a pair of conductors for RS-485 control signals. The cable can be up to 1km long.
The first option is to add analog audio on top of the DC power but I see 2 problems here:
- the power cables are not individually shielded so I'll get noise from the RS-485 signals, I've no idea how bad that can be and if that can still be OK for voice;
- as I need bi-directional audio, I guess I have to shift the audio signals to higher frequencies to have both on the same line.
Second option would be to use the RS-485. It's currently at 9.6kbps but I've read that bitrates can be up to 100kbps for 1km lines. At that bitrate I should be able to use speech codecs with half-duplex transmission. Would the transmission still be reliable at 100kbps?
Third option is to use the optical fiber and stream UDP audio. Here it sounds like a more complex architecture to design, but maybe I could find commercial modules that handle that already so it might be the easiest option in the end.
Any thoughts?
Thanks, David Bourgeois