What test equipment needed to find correct cable/phone line?

On Aug

Bill

Lots of ways to do this. And several names for each of the devices used to trace the pairs/wires.

So if you don't have a cabling plan for the office the next best thing is to connect a buzz set, we called ours, or an audio signal where you want to connect the phone. Find the pair in your cabling/telephone closet and go from there. Are you aware for the color coding schemes for telephones and the like? If not now is a good time to learn.

If all this is greek to you find someone like me who understands what to do.

Bob AZ

It's called a tone generator. You need some sort of receiver to hear the tone generated. You can get receivers now that are inductive pickups (called probes) and speakers all in one. They come as a set. Google for them.

These things are not cheap. At least $100 for a set. If you have a friend, and a multimeter, then you can set the multimeter for continuity, and hook the wires up to the multimeter. Then at the other end, you short the wires and the gauge will change if that is the wire.

By yourself, if it is on the weekend and the place is quiet enough, most multimeters have a tone setting in the continuity test settings, so you could hook up to the wires you wonder about, short the wires on the other end and listen for the beep.

This is a good suggestion for finding the extension cheaply. However, it would be a good idea to check that it is a truly dead socket that you are hooking to before you do this, as the phone system may not like a short being placed across an extension that is still connected ...

Arfa

I was looking on Ebay after I posted this. The tone generators are pretty cheap used, the probes, not so cheap, but still a whole lot cheaper than new. I've got an old butt set and a banana probe. I just tried to use it yesterday and realized that the battery in the probe is dead. Uses a 9 volt odd ball Eveready.

Bill

This item on Ebay should do real nice.

Bob AZ

On Mon, 20 Aug 2007 16:59:50 -0700, Bill put finger to keyboard and composed:

You could build a 20mA current source like this:

IN OUT _________ o---| LM317 |---| |---|---| | | | red LED 9V |- 62R -| |--||--o Tip o--|--|>|--|-- 100R --| green LED green LED | | o----------------o Ring o---------------------|

Fox and Hound. Can be had from any well stocked electronics store.

You need what is called a cable signal tracer. It comes with a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter is connected at one end, and the receiver at the other. The receiver will pick up the signal for at least a few feet. You can then zero in on the single cable set at the opposite end. This tool is not cheap. They can start from over $100 and go very high in cost, depending on the type required.

You would be best off to call a telephone installer. This way, you will not have to buy the tools for this type of job, and the job will be properly. You may only need them once in a life time, unless you plan to do telephone installations.

--

JANA _____

Background: We have a small office, with about 30 phones in 12 rooms, and a central, small phone room. The phones have been moved around over the years, so we have some currently non-active jacks, with possible cables running to our central phone room.

Question: Isn't there an electronic device that I can plug into the phone jack (connect to one end of the cable) and have it make a signal (noise) that I can then go to the phone room and find the cable that the signal is coming from?

Question: What is the name of this electronic device? What is this piece of test equipment called?

Or can you suggest another way to find the correct cable?

Thank you, Bill

signal

It sounds like you have a real dogs breakfast which needs sorting out.

You seem to infer that your phone cables are terminated on a patch panel in the phone room. If the cables are cat.5 and the patch panel connectors are 8P8C (RJ45) but you don't know where all the cables go, you really need to do a full ident and test each cable in turn. This can be time consuming and it is easier to accomplish the task by disconnecting all phones on a Sunday and testing each cable in turn.

There are numerous testers around, some cheap, some expensive eg.

Of course, carrying out the job effectively means you have to know what you are doing, so it might be best to get a tech in...

And don't forget to mark each the jacks at end of the circuits so you know where the cables go in future.