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cable tracker

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This is kinda cool. The receiver is a very sensitive e-field probe with a speaker. You can wave it around wires in the wall, led lamps, LCDs, cell phones, calculators, instrument panels, USB cables, brushless DC fans, all sorts of things, and hear what's going on.

My Logitech mouse makes a very mousey screaming sound. The space bar of my keyboard wails.

We just reworked a bunch of stuff in our kitchen and an outlet nearby is dead now. Some junction in some box must be messed up, and I don't know which box, so I want to trace the wiring in the wall. This should work.

Reply to
John Larkin
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You can also put it near an analog phone line and hear the conversation.

I would be hesitant to connect it to a /live/ 110 / 120 VAC line. Though ringing voltage is 110 VAC superimposed on the (nominally) -48

If you could arrange for ground and neutral (or even one wire) would probably be safer.

A dead circuit is probably perfectly fine.

--
Grant. . . . 
unix || die
Reply to
Grant Taylor

My problem is precisely that the line is dead.

The transmitter box seems to behave like a wobbled square wave of about 1K + 100 nF impedance, so it would probably survive being connected to 120 VAC.

I could even drive the ground wire, against a real ground.

--

John Larkin      Highland Technology, Inc 

The best designs are necessarily accidental.
Reply to
jlarkin

In space, no-one can hear you wail!

Reply to
Mike Coon

This is knock-off standard fare tracer for telecom use. Here's the trick- hold the probe with one hand and use the other as the antenna. You can cover way more space, way faster. It's also the only good way to trace out pairs under tone with thousands of connections. You just run your other finger across all pairs.

This one is still fractions of the price of the industry standard 77HP generator and 700? inductive amplifier kit, now made by Greenlee.

Reply to
Cydrome Leader

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