I'm not sure I would do it that way. I have tried long active extender USB cables and I found the PC bases tends to hang. I also want to have access to the base rather than putting it outside. It may also depend on what other USB devices you are running on your computer.
I don't buy my cables from BEC. I buy them from L-Com. Depending on the length of your cable run, you can get 200 or 400 series rf cable. I don't have any issue connecting the 400 series cable I got from them to my PC Base. It is a one time connection. The USB, I have had to unplug and replug from time to time if a power outage or surge or something locks it up. It doesn't happen often, but I don't want to be going up an antenna mast when it does. There is no problem using a long (but in spec) passive USB cable so that the PC base is inside the structure so your RF cable is shorter than it would be otherwise.
Also consider what kind of antennas you want to use. I buy them from L-Com as well. If your cameras are all in the same general direction, you should get a yagi for the base. The size of the yagi (in db) will depend on how wide of an angle the cameras are at. He higher power the antenna, the narrower the beam width. IF the cameras are distributed around the PC base location you can use an Omni. You can get them as high as 8 db.
I think with the X80 series, they come with a rubber ducky rather than a 6 db yagi. You can use as large of a yagi (in db) as you want on a camera that only talks to the PC base. You just need to point it at the base. 900 mhz does not bend much. 6db and 9db yagi antennas are fairly small. When you get to 13 db, the physical size increases significantly.
Finally, keep in mind that any camera can be used as a repeater. So, you can route the signal from on camera to another camera closer than the base, and from that router camera , back to the base. You would typically use an Omni on a router camera. You can route multiple terminal cameras through a routing camera. The key here is sizing the solar. RF transmission uses more power to transmit pictures than the camera uses to take pictures. So, a routing camera uses a lot of power. Fortunately the X80 series is 12-volt. This makes solar much easier than with my X-series. Again, I don't buy BEC solar panels any more. They work fine for a terminal camera if it is not programmed to take pictures quickly in high resolution in a high traffic area. You need to balance the picture load with the available power. So, I've gone to buying 60 watt solar panels with their own PWM or MPPT charge controller and connect them to the external battery. As I recall, the X80 only uses external batteries.
SLA batteries form sulfate crystals if left at a low charge for any length of time. This significantly reduces battery life. I like to keep my batteries above 80% charge. This means when the load get heavy and the battery drains, I want the solar panel to take it back to full charge quickly. When you get multiple cloudy days in a row with bad weather, the drain continues with little recharge. Larger capacity batteries (AH) take longer to loose less of a percentage of their charge. I've found a 60 watt panel works well in my area to keep even routing camera batteries charged. I use a 5 minute delay between pictures. The reason for this is that I'm collecting data for QDM decisions and I need to be able to compare data from year to year. I found 5 minutes works well for this. Whatever you choose for a delay, will impact your power management. More pictures means more RF transmission.
As I say, I only have one X80 and many Orions, so I'm less familiar with the X80 than the orions.
Hope this helps,
Jack
