My workshop stuff includes many unused phone cables, discarded when their respective phones were replaced over the years.
I'd like to use these for general wiring around the house/garden/garage/workshop. Can anyone recommend a cheap socket to make interfacing easier please? With breakout leads to either plain (and thicker) wire ends or screw blocks or similar?
Terry, East Grinstead, UK
hopefully for signals, not for 240V.
if they're like the phone cords we haver here in NZ they're BT on one end and RJ12 on the other,
we have these for the RJ12 end.
but that gives you 4 more terminals than you need for a two-conductor phone cable, so not ideal. (or maaybe you have a 4 conductor cable, most phones here are 2 conductors, but there are still some with a separate ring wire)
I've not found anything for the BT end.
They are standard UK BT cables like this:
There must be a huge number of such discarded cables (or their equivalents in other countries) so I?d have thought there was a demand for comp act, cheap adapters for one or both ends. However, googling hasn?t so far found me any.
Looks like I?ll end up just cutting off the two plugs, stripping th e thin and fragile four wires, and crimping or soldering slightly more robu st ends.
You can get a BT 431A socket to RJ11 male:
You can also get an RJ11 breakout board:
Easy & compact connections, but not cheap. I'm assuming two breakouts and one BT 431A to RJ11 per cable, like below: [breakout]-[your cable]-[BT 431A to RJ11]-[breakout]
If you end up going the cutting/stripping/soldering route, I'd recommend you use a small PC board to provide some strain relief.
Ed
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