I'd like to learn about using an Ethernet cable to download pics from my camera. I heard once that it was much faster than USB. Are there any block diagrams or articles about how that's done? It's about 70ft from the computer.
You have to compare apples to apples. USB comes in different speeds. Ethernet comes in different speeds. For the STX specifically, it has: a) USB 2.0 that is 480megabits/second and goes about 5m / 15 feet without powered hubs or extenders. b) Ethernet (100BaseT) at 100 megabits/second, so it's about 4.8x slower, but goes about 20x further (100m / 328feet). A full frame is about 33.6 Megabytes of data to download. USB 2.0 will do that in about in about 0.7s Ethernet (100mbps) will do that in about 3.4s; so it will add about 2s to the download time. The STX sensor readout is actually the slow part. It takes somewhere around 10-12s or so + the transfer time over the wire. The manual for the STX says how to set it up. The Ethernet connection we use on the new AC455 runs at about 10Gigabits per second (that's 10,000 megabits/second). If the STX had that, then it could download in about 0.03s, so would be a lot faster than USB 2.0 I recommend Ethernet for long connections and reliability.
