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KAT5 is an acronym for Keith's AutomationTechnology for Cat5 cable. It is a range of projects designed to distribute audio and video signals around the home and provide control of AV equipment located in other rooms in the house.
CAT5 or Category 5 Cable to give it it's full title, is a low cost cable consisting of 4 tightly twisted copper pairs inside a PVC sheath with an overall diameter of around 6mm. It's primary use is for data transfer between computers most commonly at speeds of 10 or 100 Mbps although the speed barrier has now been pushed to 1Gbps. Many commercial building are now flood wired with CAT5 cable from every conceivable location back to centralised patch panels. This allows computer and telephone circuits to be instantly patched to any part of the building without any rewiring or disturbance. Many of the Home Automators in the US spotted this trend and adopted this wiring scheme for their homes. Over the last 2 years several manufacturers of professional video equipment have developed products to distribute Video and Audio over the same cabling schemes. The KAT5 projects are my own designs to give the same kind of functionality at a much lower cost for the domestic environment. Modules designed so far are
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