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Comment by cuonic | Hacker News Reader

But PoE isn't actually built-in to the Pi, it requires an external hat, purchased separately, and using a PoE hat has been possible on previous versions, yet they decided to announce it now, it's confusing.

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They are not announcing PoE now. It is listed next to this particular model's features. The new/updated functionality is even bold (and power over ethernet is not).

I'm aware of the fact, it was just strange how they announced it in the video [0], as if it was a new feature. PoE has been possible on previous versions with a PoE hat aswell, so nothing really new.

0: https://youtu.be/i62xdD4QKtA?t=44

Weren't previous PoE hats just ethernet splitters that also had a 5V output to the Pi rails, but still required another Ethernet cable to connect to the Pi's actual Ethernet port?

Funny thing is you don't even need a HAT, there are passthrough extractors and they're cheap (30 bucks for a pack of 4): https://www.amazon.com/ANVISION-Splitter-Adapter-Compliant-R...

Let's see how much the official PoE HAT is, but it better be cheap or I know what I'll be buying (more of)

This is definitely not PoE, just a hack on top of normal ethernet infrastructure. If you use one of these with a normal PoE switch you will fry whatever is connected on the other side, as it won't step down the voltage from 48V to 5V. Both sides need to be using this, but then real PoE is guaranteed to work even on 100m long cables, with this your 5V will end up being <4V with a 100m long cable and potentially useless.

And this will not work with gigabit ethernet.

Nope, this is not the ghetto "Passive PoE" variety which uses the 4 wires not needed for 100Mbps to carry power. This is an actual 802.3af/at compliant adapter.

I have 2 in my home (not the exact model I listed because I'm on the other side of the Atlantic, bought them off Amazon Germany), hooked to a Netgear GS110TP (8 PoE copper ports, 2 SFP ).

Actually there's so much stuff drawing power (2 Pi, 2 Ubiquity APs) that I'm starting to worry about the load on the switch.

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