I live in a house that has CAT 5 cable in the walls running to wall plates in various rooms.
Would it be possible to remove the existing regular switch, replace it with a powered POE switch, and then plug in a POE device into one of the wall plates?
Also, for the non-POE devices already plugged into wall plates, would they be okay?
I’m trying to wrap my head around the interoperability of POE and non-POE and struggling.
Fyi there ar multiple standards for Poe with different voltages and some Poe switches only does one or maybe two standards (most often at 48-57 V) but if you have older/cheaper Poe devices they might use passive Poe at 24-38V and not all switches supports that mode simultaneously with the more modern Poe standards. Some switches will “support” both modes but only one mode at the time for all ports or maybe its just pasively passing on the input voltage as output voltage. Luckily most Poe switches support auto detection (unless its a crappy no name brand) and having that feature will protect your non Poe devices from damage. Poe is detected by some specific resistance steps on the wires (don’t quote me) but this means if you have very long wires auto detection might not work but that will always default to off. You can usually on a proper brand switch force a port to be on but then be sure to physically mark that port with a sticker or something saying it’s “HOT” because then there’s no protection for non Poe devices any longer.
I won’t recommend any switch for you at the moment untill I know more about your skill level and use case.