PS5 in any room

Ever want to let your kids play their game console in any room in the house?
We needed to do this to allow some space flexibly for the family.

We do have a couple of constrains in our house that really drove this particular solution. The most significant is that out house is built on a slab and also has a vaulted ceiling throughout so there is no simple way to run new cabling between rooms. I did, however, run a significant amount of CAT5e during a remodel a few years ago. As a network engineer it is only logical that my solution ran over IP.

I also wanted to keep whatever solution as native and simple of an experience as possible. Sony does have Remote Play technology but this requires some sort of player at each endpoint/TV and has the complication of pairing controllers and gameplay latency introduced through protocol.

So……all of that being said I ended up with two problems to overcome. Video and bluetooth. I will break the solutions down below.

Problem 1: Getting video from the PS5 in their game room to the TV in the living room.

Having working experience in broadcast media and video conferencing, I knew that technology existed to take a video input and encode it in an IP stream. Obviously we didn’t want to afford multi thousand dollar encoders so I started hunting for something a little more prosumer.

In this space there seems to be two technologies. First being HDbaseT which requires dedicated ethernet cabling between encoder/decoder with no switching gear in between. This is essentially just putting the native HDMI signal over twisted pair. Not going to work for me.

The second technology is true H264/265 encoding onto IP. So many benefits here first being multipoint receiving and the second being network/infrastructure convergence. Coming from the IP/video telephony space I appreciate putting as much stuff on a single IP network as possible.

Initially I stumbled on AV Access which has a pretty solid portfolio of products but eventually ran across Monoprice. They had a really affordable pair of encoder/decoders that supported multicast which on paper seemed solid.

I ordered a pair of these, a few Ubiquiti FlexMini switches, HDMI & ethernet cables and waited a few days. Unboxing to setup took about 10 minutes. Very simple cabling with zero configuration.

There are just a few options in the web interface of the encoder/decoder. You can choose H264 or H265 codec and max bitrate for the main and substream on the encoder side. On the decoder you only have one option of subscribing to unicast or multicast streams.

Problem 2: PlayStation consoles use Bluetooth for controller connectivity

Since these devices were designed to be used in the same room, the range isn’t all that great between the controller and console. This required pulling the case apart to install a pair of external antennas.

I am not going to go through the process of opening up the case of the PS5 as it has been done before. iFixIt has a great video: https://youtu.be/r-rxy1rq2s8

One note on the teardown, you will need a Torx 9 security bit/driver. You can get it here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07ZKLCSN5

One obvious comment here. This mod is likely going to void any warranty you my have on your console. I live to void warranties :)

There were essentially two parts to this mod. First is probably a little scary for some. You are going to want these antennas to stick out of the case right? That means you are going to have to poke a couple of holes. I spent a good bit of time digging around looking for optimal placement. Our PS5 stands upright so the top of the case made the most sense. I believe there are a couple of revisions of the PS5 wireless chipset with internal and external wifi antennas. Our PS5 does not have an external wifi antenna which I believe makes my external bluetooth antenna placement a little easier.

I had to cut out some of the internal ribs in this piece to get a nice mounting surface on the inside of this piece. I used a small 2mm drill bit to make nice little pilot holes and finished the job with a 6mm bit then deburring.

The RP-SMA side tightened down nicely with an 8mm box end wrench.

You can get the cables here: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B099R3GR91

2 pack of RP-SMA to u.fl

A little trim job of internal ribs

Super clean finish

Step two is connecting the u.fl side of the cable to the wireless radio on the PS5. Just take care popping the OEM antenna connectors off with a spudger or tweezers. Note that if you do have a model with external wifi antennas, you will only be popping off the “FW” & “FB” antennas leads which should be white a blue heading towards the bottom of the case.

The u.fl side of your new cables should snap right onto the board. I coiled things up and secured them with a few pieces of VHB tape.