Have you ever looked at the cost of USB extension cables at Future Shop, or wherever? They're ridiculous! I recall that a 10-foot USB extension cable was priced around $30. Well, rather than shelling out my heard earned cash for the cable, I took it upon myself to build my own.

 

Required Components

• Category 5 or Category 5e patch cable

Preferrably uncrimped, because you'll just have to cut those off anyway. Use whatever length you'd like the extension cable to be.

• A standard USB cable that you don't mind cutting in half

Or you can just use the USB cable for your device, although don't blame me if you fuck it up.

• OR: Just the male & female USB end-connectors.

These can be purchased in bulk, or ripped out of an old USB device you don't need.

• Soldering Iron
• Wire Strippers

Or your teeth.

• Glue Gun or Electrical Tape

Preferrably both.

Basic Idea of What's Going On:

You're going to use the cat-5 as the middle section of the cable, with the proper USB cable cut in half, and used on either end. If you just have the USB end-connectors, it will be a similar setup, except you'll be connecting the usb-ends directly onto the Cat5 cable.The USB cable is made up of a set of 4 wires. So we'll be using 4 out of the 8 wires in the Cat5 cable. In this example, I've used Orange, Brown, White-Brown and Blue.

Colour Code & Pinouts:

Pin	Name	Description	Color
1	VCC	+5 VDC	Red
2	D-	Data -	White
3	D+	Data +	Green
4	GND	Ground	Black

4 Pin Male "A" Connector

4 Pin Female "A" Connector

Connection Steps

As I said above, we're using Orange, Brown, White-Brown and Blue for our Cat5 wires. We need to remember which colour wires we're connecting with which colour USB wires, so both ends will be wired correctly. I've made a table below of the Cat5-to-USB wire matches that I used. I've connected both USB data wires to the brown Cat5 pair. The reason for this, is that it theoretically, should help eliminate interference. The +5V and ground pins should be kept as far away from the data pair as possible, so I've put them on the Orange, and Blue wires.

Pin	Cat5 Wire Colour	USB Wire Colour
1	Orange	Red
2	White-Brown	White
3	Brown	Green
4	Blue	Black

The photo of the left should give you a better visualization of how the wires will be spliced together. I'd include a photo of a similarly stripped USB cable, but I don't have one!

Make sure you cut away the unused wires (white-orange, white-blue, white-green and green) as they'll only get in the way.

Strip about one half inch of jacket from each of the Cat5 and USB wires. Now splice the wires together (If you've never spliced wires together, get someone to show you how to properly.) and drop a dab of solder to solidify the connection.

Once the soldering job is complete, I used a glue gun to cover the exposed connections with glue, so I don't have to worry about any short circuits. When doing this, be VERY careful none of the stripped sections of the wiring come into contact with each other. The last thing you want to do have a short between two wires and fry your USB device and/or motherboard. Once I had everything glued and dried, I wrapped that area in electrical tape.

If you're going from the approach of using Cat5 for the entire length of cable, and directly connecting the USB male & female connectors, the idea is the same. Ensure the pinout is proper on both ends. A word of caution however, the female connector's prong that you solder the wires onto are are extremely close together. Please ensure that none of the wires are touching in that area. Once I finished mine, I used a glue gun to fill in the spaces between the pins so there is no worry of them shorting.

My end result: