I have attempted to extend the USB cable for the low-light USB camera, but without success. I can extend the power wires (black and red), but when I extend the white and green control cables, I no longer have contact with the camera on my computer. The cable I have tried extending the USB camera cable with is a standard USB cable (2m) and a 15cm cable with the same thickness as the USB cable, but none seem to do the trick. The cables should not be broken, as I’ve tested with a voltmeter to verify that signals can indeed be transferred on the wires. Does anyone know why this does not work? Do I need some special cable for this, or is it simply not possible to extend the cable length for this camera?
Some additional info: My computer is an Ubuntu 16.04 (Kernel 4.15.0-30-generic).
Can you show us the cables that you are using? Are the data wires or power wires twisted like the cable that comes with the camera? The twists are important of maintaining signal integrity on the data.
The cables were a standard USB (male-male) cable, with twists and insulation for reducing electromagnetic disturbance/noise, and a plastic/rubber coating which is typical for wires (similar to this).
I did manage to get it to work with using a standard male-female extender, though, so that will do it for me. If others struggle with extending the USB cable of the low-light USB camera by soldering, this might be your solution, too. However, I find it odd that soldering of a USB wire to the existing camera USB cable did not work.
All wires had color codes (red, green, hvite, black), so I do not think that was the problem here. It might have been something with powering or refreshing the signal, which is something the USB extender is able to do, but raw cables are not, perhaps.
To my it makes no sense. I am starting to think it has to do with the RPi as the the laptop have no problems with the camera even if I extend the cables by 2m.