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A quick write up on replacing the ethernet port on a “Reolink 5MP PoE” in case anyone else ends up needing to do this. My own issue stemmed from water getting inside the port and rusting through the wires in the original connector (My own fault due to how I’d set it up) – meaning the device was unfortunately pretty much dead without more drastic action.

My original plan was just snip the port off and wire as it as a normal RJ45. This turned out to be a little less straight forwards, as after cutting the end off I was greeted with 6 wires (including a white and purple) rather than the 8 I was expecting to see.

After cutting apart original port to see what was going on, I was able to determine pin 4/5 were wired to white and 7/8 were wired to purple, which after reviewing a super helpful wikipedia article finally made sense again (see the “10/100 mode B, DC on spares”).

Deciding to chance it, I rewired the port as;

• Pin 1: White/orange stripe
• Pin 2: Orange solid
• Pin 3: White/green stripe
• Pin 4: White
• Pin 5: Empty
• Pin 6: Green
• Pin 7: Purple
• Pin 8: Empty

I’m happy to report the above resulted in my camera coming back to life (despite my questionable wiring). My guess would be that pin 5 and pin 8 with white and purple respectively would also work just as well, although I’ve not tested this myself.

As with any “DIY” on electronics, make sure you know what your doing and are aware of the risks before attempting anything. There’s always a solid risk you’ll just end up bricking your device, shorting your POE switch or worse.

Hope anyone in the same predicament finds this handy – or at least doesn’t need to do quite as much head scratching before getting it all working again as I did.