I am looking for a price-performance ethernet tether. There are some posts here about this topic but with no real conclusion. What type of cat5 cable is the best for 200-300ft (100m)? Is it good enough? What about fiber optic, does someone have experience with it?
Rusty, if you could please share, what is the current status of your tether solution?
Thank you for all the answers.
Grega
Grega,
We are all waiting for BR to solve the tether issue. It can’t come soon enough.
Richard
Hi Grega,
It’s tough to find affordable Cat5 cable that is suitable for use as a tether, unfortunately. None that we’ve found a truly suitable. You need something with stranded wires, light weight, ruggedness, and strong construction.
We’ve been working on a solution to address this for months now and we’re getting very close to releasing something. We’re currently on schedule to launch the product in the second half of April (2016). I won’t say too much about it now but it is a very high quality cable that ideally suited for use with ROVs. In addition to the cable, we will have several tether interface board options to provide lots of flexibility and capability.
Tom C is one of our beta testers for the cable and posted more detail here.
I know it’s taken a long time, but I think everyone will be very happy with the product! We’re certainly looking forward to it.
Best,
Rusty
Rusty,
thank you for the update. I can’t wait to see it in your store in a month 
Grega
@Rusty can you share any “from the lab” news about your tether yet?
@Grega - I can do one better than that! Tether launched today: https://www.bluerobotics.com/store/parts/cables/fathom-tether-nb-4p-26awg-r1/
@Rusty, a proper check-raise Just one thing before I order. What is the max length you have tested with RPi to computer?
@Grega - You should be fine with the standard Cat5 spec of about 90m. We’ll have an Ethernet Tether Interface Board around June that will allow to be extended to 300m+.