Cable Tracker || DIY or Buy || A useful tool for every electrician!
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- Опубликовано: 4 окт 2024
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In this episode of DIY or Buy we will be having a closer look at a cable tracker. It is a tool that is used to locate wires in you wall. This is helpful to drill holes in your wall or to locate a fault in your wiring. I will show you how the sender and receiver functions and afterwards I will create a super crude, but functional DIY version in order to find out whether we should Buy the product or create our own DIY version. Let's get started!
Thanks to JLCPCB for sponsoring this video
Visit jlcpcb.com to get professional PCBs for low prices.
Music:
2011 Lookalike by Bartlebeats
DIY or BUY?
Mehdi: "Just remove the breaker and short the cables. Trace the red-dark lines on your wall"
XD I see a person of culture :)
Haha, I have the same idea xD
That sounds like a task for...
*THE RECTIFIERER*
Who's Mehdi?
"Thankfully I live in Germany, where there are standards"
Laughs in old house where every corner is anything but 90°
Laughts in newish house where the wireing was done when the principle contractor already started to not pay the sub contractors.
Smiles in 85 year old house where every single wire is surface mounted. Also water lines.
yeah, here are some in 45° to safe copper, "Stegleitungen" and other funny stuff that makes every drill a thrill.
@@Teknopottu ...makes drilling holes easy.
@@underwoodblog NYIF cables are the worst. Even worse if they use the old color scheme
I find it unreasonably funny that the jlcpcb sponsored a video about a mid-air soldered circuit.
And the conclusion was to buy the product.
Great video Mr Scott (let the comments begin correcting me about your name)! Question: in your receiver schematic when using a BJT or MOSFET as the antenna input stages, the schematic shows base or gate are pulled to ground which would turn the transistors off (especially in circuit with BJT the collector is also pulled to ground, should be VCC?). So this means the circuit is relying on the strength of the signal picked by antenna to turn the transistors on and pass the signal through. Is that correct? In such case I think that's why the receiver is not doing great as you showed because the antenna is working based on a weak capacitive coupling not strong enough to trigger the circuit with existing resistive and base current loads on the antenna. I suggest to improve the circuit by biasing transistors in ON mode and just let the weak signal to get buffered through transistor. Of course the bias can only be very high resistors not to load the weak signal, or in case of BJT use Darlington to reduce base current... I think! I don't know... good luck!
Oh wow, I am the first like and comment of this. Hey Mehdi, nice to see you.
+1 for the Darlington and explanation!!! Nothing blew up, what are you complaining about!!!!!
*FUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUULLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLLL BBBRRRRRRIIIIIIIIIDDDDDDGHGHHEEEEEEE RRRREEEECCCTTIIFFFFFFFFFFFFIRRRREEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEERR*
Hey Mehdi love from India
Hi there. Keep in mind that in his version of the circuit he´s jusing a JFET, which behaves different than a normal BJT Transistor. The way he´s "pulling gate to ground" is the right way to do it here. Over all his circuit isn´t to good. The Jfet should have higher resistance or a better said a higher resistor in the source line, and the coupling capacitor to the op amp should be bigger. Also, if I recall correct, I think I saw some kind of frequency selective part in the original circuit (like to attentuate other frequencies and peak the 1Khz Signal), that was done using a RC circuit. In the short demonstration that was shown, it also could be heared that his version of the circuit did pick up a lot of intefference, whereas the original circuit (the one he purchased) did receive his diy transmitter rather well. I guess he used the JFET (which behaves different than a standard transistor) to have a very high input resistance and due to that make the circuit very sensitive. So yes, for standard Transistors biasing "Base" towards plus does indeed work, but for a JFET you have to "bias" the gate ("Base") towards ground. If you put it towards +, it will make the Jfet less conductive (reduce amplification). The circuit (receiver) could be improoved using a high impendance LC tank circuit, with a coil with many mH (>10mH) and a parallel resonance capacitor so the circuit will have a resonant frequency of about 1KHz. That also would put away the humm noise you heared when he tested the bought circuit (It´s not necessarry obviously, and was left away due to cost reasons). Anyhow, just wanted to reply to you. I watch your videos too, you´re an amazing entertainer.
"Thankfully, I live in Germany and we have standards ..."
My grandfather while building his house: "Ich denke nicht."
Thankfully here in Finland old houses were often build using surface mounting on cables and water pipes. Makes them maybe not easy on eyes but very easy to fix and easy to avoid.
@@CoolKoon
Yes, and it was in the GDR and not the FRG.
My man did this whole video to flex all his play buttons 🤣
Haha not quite
Lool🤣
You are great this is why you chosen the name "Great Scott" 😉
Back to the Future :-)
@@greatscottlab Hey great scott a big fan of yours but as you are interested in leds you can make a rgb led SIERPINKSKI'S triangle you can google it the concept of fractals
@@greatscottlab Then your real name is Felix?? 🤔🤔
6:48 DIY metal detector next time? 👀
Yes good one
Yes
More like: "Mental" 😂
Yes, I vote for metal detector too incl. pulse vs VLF 👍
I'd like to see a DIY ground penetrating radar project!
I absolutely love your 3D soldered circuits.
Who needs PCB when you can solder all the parts on mid-air?
I know, right?!
"Stay creative...."
Yes. And then they sprayed it with a film of wax so that any dust that got in would stick and turn to grime when you worked on it. Those were the days, eh?
@@greatscottlab JLCB PCB are not very happy about this.
The principal advantage of purchasing, and purchasing a good quality version from Harris/Fluke or the like, is the durability of the tool. Doing telecom work I've found that cheap ones end up internally using gossamer-thin varnished wires the ultimately break when the tool is inevitably dropped, but quality ones use either just PCB traces or thicker, insulated wires that survive falls. Sometimes the probe tip breaks, but good tools have modular tips anyway so replacing it is straightforward and the tip is intentionally weaker than the PCB so that the tip, not the PCB, breaks.
It's along the same lines as using a proper telephone butt-set instead of a trimline phone, the butt-set can handle being banged-around in the truck or on the belt as one works, and can handle falls from-height if it's dropped, while the trimline phone just breaks.
Another advantage of buying, and buying quality, is that the oscillating tone can be changed, so that if multiple techs are working in the same area, they will be able to identify which tone generator corresponds wit them or with a given circuit.
I use Tone generators alot in my work. Handy for finding a single CAT5 cable in the riser of an office building that has 400 CAT5 cables. Just follow the tone !.
0:50 Ohter contry has summular standars too my contry norway, but never trust the house cuz you never know if it has beend done by a pro electrician or not so :)
on DIY version I would add the lcd to it and by analysing amplitude to vicinity ratio (i.e. distance of 0,5m = 0,4V and 1m = 0,2V ) output the value to display making it better, probably then there would be need of only arduino nano, lcd and amp for receiver.
Sometimes while tone tracing communications cables like category 5 or category 6 data cables through electrically noisy environments it is necessary to span pairs with the tone instead of just testing one single pair in a cable. This is because within a single twisted pair of a cable that is merely bent too acutely the signal can be shunted but spanning two different pairs with the tone both lessens the characteristic impedance presented to the tone generated while lessening the chance of tracing signal shunting. The result is a much louder and stronger tone for tracing.
It's known as live wire detector,you can make it using 3 transistors,see electroboom video about it,Live wire detection circuit
This is very similar to electroboom's circuit, but different use cases.
Great Scott's allows you to trace a circuit without turning off all the other circuits. Only the circuit under inspection produces a tone.
Electroboom's circuit tells you if mains voltage is present, so it is great for ensuring power is off before you work, but if you want to trace a wire through a wall, you have to turn off all circuits except the one you are tracing! Not always practical.
Similar principles, but different use cases.
@@DonaldZiems yaa some things are different like it doesn't use light to show signal,instead...use an amplifier circuit and a speaker,and instead of using live wire's ac radiations,this circuit sends over a pwm signal and is a transmitter and a receiver by itself
It's a circuit for electrostatic detection or basically measuring a parasitic capacitance from my point of view
No it is not. It is known as a fox and hound.you have a transmitter on a DEAD cable and the reciever can detect the signal shiwing you where it is. It's very handy with LAN and phone cables. Where hundreds of cables can be in one box and you need to find one.
Realizing now I spent 80$ on a Fluke toner for work when I could have made one. I will say the Fluke does have an advantage: if you set it to an alternating tone and then touch the leads of the transmitter together, it changes tones to confirm you found the correct wire.
If you hold the tip of your toner in one hand, and the bare wires your testing in the other, you will hear the toner pick up the signal through your body. That’s how I used to use mine to confirm the cable.
i dont care if diy or buy is the winner, iam winner to have discovered your channel
Awesome👍
The ones I've seen:
The transmitter uses two 555 timers (or one 556 dual timer). One 555 is set to astable mode (pin 5 is the output through a 1k resistor) with its frequency modulated by the sawtooth from the other 555 (makes a warble tone).
The receiver is the same lm386, but uses the jfet input amp (like your version), but the jfet is from one of those capsule microphones (remove the microphone diaphragm. You'll see the gate of the jfet. Extend the gate wire). The jfet in the microphones are specially designed to not need a bias resistor (self biased) and have a really high input resistance.
You can use the transmitter without removing mains power. Just wrap the transmitter wires around the mains cable (no need to separate the conductors) and short the clamps together. It uses inductive coupling. Receive distance is reduced.
I used one of these day in day out for many years and never used the contestant tone mode (diy) as the variable frequency is much easier to pickup when there is interference from other sources. Especially over long distances. Buy would be my winner for sure.
I am in class 9 and learned many things from your videos. Diy or buy is my favourite series
I can ensure you by experience that in Brazil the DiY version is way cheaper than buy it, because those instruments offen arrive in our country with very high taxes, actually your tutorials have been helping me for a long time, making it possible to build tools that I can't afford!
What are salt taxes?
@@jimjimx5418 sorry, I mispronounced the word, I wanted to say "salty" meaning that the taxes are very high
"Stay creative, And I will see you next time!"
-Great Scott, 2020
I have several of the commercial products due to working in the telecom industry for decades. We often used them to identify wires in a multi-bundle cable. The original used a common buzzer to generate a nasty tone that was picked up with an amplified probe.
You can also use a non contact voltage detector thath you can build with a 555 timer two resistors and a capacitor. It also works well. Nice video thank you.☺
does it works on concealed wires
I was wondering where the cable in my wall was going when I woke up this morning for real, how the hell did youtube know to recommend me this the same day?
I knew that the sound was somewhat familiar! During the 1980s and early 1990s I had a homebuilt phone to my best friend next door - and the signaling was done with the same time of dual-tone oscillator around a hex-inverter 74LS04. Each side of the chip was wired by connecting the three inverters in series with a resistor feedback over one group of inverters and a capacitor over another pair. Then mixing the two tones together gave quite an efficient siren effekt.
I've got one of these and by the square-wave sound that it makes, always thought that it was quite simple - but I didn't know it was as basic as this! Still, it's worth the money. I previously used a cheap AM radio as a detector but the main problem is that it's not very directional and due to design, it is tuned to receive radio stations instead of signals in cabling.
Scott your "DIY or BUY" videos are a source of lot of interesting information. Thanks and keep it up.
In Germany, we have standarts... weird flex
OH BOY, HERE WE GOOOOOOOOOO
In Germany we have people, who "pfusch" (not follow those standards, therefore creating inconsistence)
You dont need to tell me that, but yeah "pfusch" is a thing
Every country has standards. And every country has pfuschers...
So glad I live in bavaria, we don't have " Pfusch ", we just have " Passd scho " 🍻
Cable detection tutorial for my birthday is best birthday gift. Thank you 🙏. Greetings from Indonesia 🇮🇩
"Thankfully I live in Germany"
I wish I could say the same.
Love the videos btw.
Why did you try to go simpler for the DIY version instead of adding features? You could have added an led bar graph or tunable senitivity or something to make the DIY version a better value.
Very interesting video! It was most interesting to see how the circuit works. Thank you very much for the explanation. Yes, probably to buy is more convenient for that price.
@Navkaran Singh same doubt? He is probably the patron guy
your 15 min is equivalent to my 15 months
Prototype wiring is great for a mock-up to test circuits. Through to the '60s all valve/tube, and some transistor equipment was hand-built utilising point-to-point wiring until PCBs became the go to method. It is still done today in audio gear like guitar amplifiers and HiFi amplifiers using tubes/valves where not only the traditional characteristic sound/tone is sought after but also the traditional build method for perhaps a unique, non mass-produced piece of gear. Tag strips or turret boards, a rectangular bakelite strip with a row of lugs, are used as solder points between components, the same principle as pads on a PCB. The difference in sound tone between point-to-point and PCB construction is subjective and similar to how someone might taste wine.
I bought the bosch wall scanner 120. I save time on every job just avoiding drilling in the wrong place.
Luckily I have brick walls so the cables go straight up from outlets and use the roof cavity to move horizontal. Just have to avoid places above an outlet.
Wow the in depth look into a pcbs schematics and workings of separate parts is amazing!! Thanks :)
Huh it didn't occur to my I can use a tracker to find cables in walls, nice tip! I bought it mostly for differentiating un-labeled cables...
Hey Scott... Pls make a video on iot blynk home automation.... Which includes real time feedback. And manual control .. From appliances to the app..... With explanation.... There are lots of videos but none of them explain clearly....
What kind of feedback do you mean?
Because i've made a climate station with a Esp32, Dht11 and a bmp180.
I can check flor de values for those sensors whenever i want and see the values that they're are getting.
If You need help just say It and maybe we can talk about it
@@luisfelipesaldivar5100 feedback... In the sense... I wanted to know whether the appliance is on or off.... In my application
ruclips.net/video/ZAqNKaX3LQ0/видео.html he already made such a video
Two comments,
1. This is not a ring oscillator. As you explained, in a ring-oscillator you the frequency determined by the delay of the invertors
In this circuit the delay determined by the R, C values and the hex invertors use as inverting amplifier (delay is neglected)
2. Try using a piezoelectric speaker.
Loved this episode.
T
I have ben tracing wires this way for decades. I am on my third toner. You can trace live wires neutral to ground. I have had a water leak into the wall cause the tone to go away-the insulation was soaked! This does not work well when there is conduit, you have to open junction boxes at both ends to find the wire with the tone on it. I found a fried wiring harness in my car with a toner last week. It saved the car from the junk yard!
I see you're a man of culture, The Art Of Electronics "Best of the Best on teaching electronics" from Paul H.
Excellent video. Personally I used a simple oscillator as transmitter as yours and a AM-radio as a receiver. Much cheaper as i already had that portable radio and also got better Gain.
Only one word
GreatScott!!! 😉
Scott can you fix your receiver schematic at 7:25. The Q1 D1 parts nicht work
We have used friends guitar amp and guitar connector for finding installations in the wall. It starts to buzz when you are close to the wires. At first we started with the whole guitar, but later found out that it is also ok with just a jack.
I'd love to see some version of this type of equipment that could trace WiFi radio signal from a router/AP. Not just a Netstumbler-esque software-based solution like NPM, but a circuit/device you could solder together and build from parts, like this cable tracker, that would give you a real-time read out of the RF signal being transmitted from the router. Probably plenty of reasons why it's problematic, but would still make an interesting project.
A Walabot would also be a good option.
15 years ago when I was telecom technician this kit worthed $150. And it's schematic was completely the same. I couldn't believe how it was overpriced.
P.S. Based on experience, version with additional 50/60Hz filter is much better.
The art of electronics, now that is an awesome book!
I love all of the videos made by great scott
I learned from them a lot !!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH GREAT SCOTT!!!!!!
There's a commercial product called walabot. It uses radar sensor to scan the wall and you can get image on your phone. But it's much more expensive than cable tracker.
I like GreatScott! but I really understand "Let me know your farts" at 9:23
I new it! I was waiting for this vedio it is 10:20 pm here in India and I am still watching it
I would love to see a water in pipe tracker. In the US, we have similar rules for where water pipes can be installed, but that doesn't mean every building was built to spec. I "found" a water pipe mounted against the inside of the drywall when installing a TV wall mount, which made for an "exciting" day (and a $70k insurance claim)
In North America, the Loomex is stapled to the studs going vertically, and when running horizontally, drill through the centre of the studs with 1 1/4" of wood on either side. Loose cable flopping around behind the drywall is not an issue, as the wire will move out of the way when hit by the drill bit.
You can also use transistors or op-amps to create and oscillator.
Awesome ! I'm making my first RPi PICO based Ethernet tester with the 74HC595N IC. I'm going for a swiss army knife approach to this "multi-tool" will have a display and run some i2c scans for debugging + cheap logic analyzer (why not) 😂
I modified my toner by putting in an am/fm radio modulator board from a car radio so now i just listen for the station i tune the toner for.. makes it less annoying and when your looking for wires in somebodies house you look like youve found some weird signal .. learned it worked when i was hooking up the t1 connection for a radio station in town.. they have a circuit with the radio on it for in house listening stations..
thats why we pull the cable's from the sockter to the ceiling and in the ceiling we bring them to fuse box in the netherlands
Love the DIY, will definitely buy. So jealous of your home wiring, I live in a 1928 house which is charming, but so deficient in electrical connections!
5v quartz oscillator + basic AM radio will also do the job
thankfully I live in Morocco where no standards are existing so we can practice wire tracing the whole day long when we don't have a life 😅
I would go with the buy for once, for a safety concern I don't want to screw up everything and short circuit wires. Even if both work exactly the same if i buy or do one what I'll look at first is relibility
If you want an even simpler sender, you could probably use an arduino and just rip a beeper example from the internet.
Very nice project
Just Bury that wired in mid air contraption in epoxy resin block. Job done.
i have no idea about electronics, but this sure is a cure circut
That's why i like Germany. I wish we could learn a lot from it.
Scott sees this as a comparison
We see this as as competition
You can make a sender unit from a (very cheap) battery powered window alarm.
It won't have the same signal but it works as a transmitter.
I haven't found an inexpensive (off the shelf) receiver unit.
I love this DIY or Buy, now I know what is best.
Can you understand Czech?
The JFET, as you used it (common drain) was not really amplifying voltage, it was just buffering it, in which case you could just use an opamp as a buffer.
You can do it cheaper with a bad quality CFL lamp and a cw hand radio!. I like a lot these diy or buy videos!
Great video as always. But I have another idea. Which is very simple. Just connect 100mH inductor to microphone amplifier. If inductor get close to wire, you can hear 50 or 60 Hz humming from speaker.
The transmitter with an Arduino that encodes the signal would be awesome. Then you could have multiple outputs with different beep patterns for tracing multiple runs at once. And keep using the bought receiver.
“Fewer” for things you can count, “less” for things you can’t.
With a cascode amplifier as the input stage you can directly pick up the hum at 50 HZ that you can hear louder when the antenna is close to the cables: you don't even need to turn off the electrical system.
Perhaps at this point diy costs even less, and in terms of accuracy I think it is very similar.
But if you add a potentiometer between the input stage and the amplifier you can adjust the sensitivity of the probe, in order to increase the signaling precision: at each passage on a critical point, reduce the sensitivity until you find the passage of cables as precisely as possible.
Hi and to the next video.
P.S.:
Even in Italy too, there is some regulation on how to build a civilian electric plant.
In any country you live, the biggest problem is in old houses, built without rules or with rules different from those of today.
im a big fan of this diy or buy
My multimeter has a non-contact voltage measure function. You can find the AC wires with it while keeping the voltage on your wires.
Really, really interesting project! Great work, dude! 😃
There's those "life line detectors" or something like that... Are you going to try those?
Anyway, stay safe there! 🖖😊
...wow yesterday I was searching for this, here in Mexico we don't have any srandards, walls are made of concrete or bricks so it is difficult to track the power lines
alternative is the astable multivibrator and tree transistor one (milion gain amplifier using a piezo) don even need to turn anything off too
Buy sounds right in this case. Big fan of your channel.
Here in Canada and the USA our cables go through the middle of the studs, and the distance between the wire and the surface of the wall is calculated so a normal drywall screw won't be long enough to hit the wire. A framing screw for hanging kitchen cabinets, on the other hand, does damage wires. Ask me how I know...
I had hit a cable with a pretty tiny piece of metal.
I hit the nail once and light had been gone cause it had been laid horizontally far too low where there shouldn't have been a cable.
Luckily I was able to fix it by pulling the nail out of the wall and without digging into the wall an replace the damaged cable by an insertion.
Many clamp multimeters have a NCV (non contact voltage) function, it works quite well on my UT210E and does not require a sender, just detects the field from mains AC. Seems more useful to me, especially if there is no outlet nearby. Or is there any advantage with this injected HF signal?
I used a similar device to locate underground metal pipes on a gold course I worked at. We would drive a metal pin (rebar) in the ground for one lead and clip the other to exposed pipe. The corrosion on the pipe would insulate the pipe from the earth enough to track the pipe. Supposedly that unit was $600 USD. What would it take to make this device detect a path up to a meter or two deep?
Probably about $590 worth of parts 🤣🤣🤣
Can u make a diy multimeter ? It will be great if u do.
Very good
DIY version is sometimes called "dead bug" construction. Nothing wrong with that. It just looks like an upsidedown bug.
Great video Scott .
That is an awesome work of you.
How can it be made more strong? To be able to catch the signal farter?
The actual one needs to be too close to work. Help us, please.
Circuit traces can easily lead you the wrong way as well, and if the cables goes through a large server room, it's not much fun. The two tone tracer are better distinguishing the difference between data cables and what your tracing, there also helpful with hearing aid loops👂, you can even hear people taking over landlines with them.
very good Explanation. Sir you are great
Very nice and well explained video, i learn a lot, watching your video's
I use this tool a lot, to track utp cables. A must have tool
Very cool!
I have made my own tone generators using arduino / digispark/ attiny85 tone melody for tracing wires
Okay I'm not a patron but this comparison is truly essential: battery spot welder diy or buy