Mikrotik have stated that "improvements" are planned in the area of 802.3af support on the mAP. Read in to this what you will. On Fri, Sep 5, 2014 at 4:54 PM, Thomas Jackson <thomas@thomax.com.au> wrote:
Generally - the risk of destroying a switch is low - I've done some pretty silly things to them in the past and not had a problem. They have various protections in place to shut down ports with misbehaving devices connected etc. Not entirely impossible for something to happen though.
The trick here is going to be "separating out" the data and power - unfortunately it is not as simple as just jumpering between the pins. In short, the transformer that sits between the RJ45 connector and the rest of the circuit (sometimes a separate device nearby the RJ45 connector, other times it is integrated into the RJ45 connector) needs to have a centre tap available to take the power from. See figures 2 and 3 of [0] for more details.
I've just pulled my mAP apart, and from a very quick look at the RJ45 sockets (which appear to have integrated transformers), I can't see a pin that obviously relates to a centre tap - so I don't think it is going to be possible to modify it.
An external adaptor could be a possibility though...
[0]
http://www.microsemi.com/documents/powerdsine/whitepapers/PoE_and_IEEE802_3a f.pdf
-----Original Message----- From: Public [mailto:public-bounces@talk.mikrotik.com.au] On Behalf Of Mike Everest Sent: Friday, 5 September 2014 2:35 PM To: 'MikroTik Australia Public List' Subject: Re: [MT-AU Public] mAP and 802.3af
Interesting proposition!
Although potential of destroying a 50 dollar router is probably no great loss (for some) such hardware hack will hopefully not risk destroying a $5000 switch! :-D
In any case, to try something like that would probably mean jumpering one core each from 1&2, 3&6 over to one each of 4&5, 6&7...? Couldn't do both, since that would end up shorting the data pair and at killing the data transmission at best, killing the device at worst ;)
So is it probably also a good idea to add a diode to prevent current flowing in reverse, and I suppose a capacitor/resistor pair to take out the data signal? To my mind, with few basic electronics nouse, it seems feasible - anyone else care to comment?
I'm thinking: if it is possible to do that, then it is also possible to build it as some kind of adapter...
Cheers!
Mike.
_______________________________________________ Public mailing list Public@talk.mikrotik.com.au http://talk.mikrotik.com.au/mailman/listinfo/public_talk.mikrotik.com.au