Can this be used to trace the path of a wire behind a wall? How close does the probe have to be to the wire being tested?
1864258
This probe needs to be very near to the wire to initiate a tone, and directly in contact with the wire to confirm a specific wire.
1407323
Possibly... I used one on a security camera mounted about a hundred yards away, aimed at a bottom-tier DLink wireless router inside my house. I would think that a pair of the Keedox antennas aimed at each other should easily handle the distance. I guess the real question is just how much metal is in your concrete wall. If your wall is unreinforced concrete block construction, you probably won't have a problem. If the wall has a lot of reinforcing metal inside, there might not be any antenna that can help you.
998336
On mine, the flexible wire, between the plastic "edge" of the connector and the beginning of the plastic of the probe end, is a little over 49 inches. The probe, including the lozenge-shaped plastic part, is 6 inches.
2044146
I would think that depends on the moisture level (humidity). It would certainly work but if the gauge itself is in the same high humidity environment as the probe, it might not have as long a life. I use mine at ambient room conditions with the probe in a lab oven at 113F and 70% humidity. Works great but my gauge display is always cool and dry.
2155824
If your wires are in wire harness and bundled up, then I'm going to say no. This may be good for tracing wires but not good for finding open circuit because the transmitter is too strong. I would not recommend this one.
2275342
i would not recomend it on a live circuit. but if you new it was a dead circuit, it would work. pervided you could get close to the wire you were tracing.
1436533
If you can attach the toner between one end of the cable conductor and ground and the cable conductor itself is not grounded you should be able to trace the cable. If you are trying to trace a shielded cable, you will have to make sure that the shield is not attached to ground and that the toner is attached to the shield. I am assuming that the cable is not buried too deeply and not under standing water. Relatively dry soil should not shield the signal too much. I haven't tried this myself, but under these conditions, I would expect this device to be able to do the job.
492280
May I suggest a different tool. The Klein Tools "PROBEplus - Tone Tracing Probe". Cat. No. VDV500-060. $44.00 + sh. Trace wire paths and identify cables in common wiring systems. 9V Aklaline batteries required (not included). Also, you will need about 10" of shielded heavy duty wire to stick into to the left and right slanted 240v. socket then connect the "Tone" end to the heavy duty wire, the use the probe to trace the wires.
232359
To be honest, I only use this device to track and test 4 pair cables on an active network. I don't find the trace to be very accurate, but my analog tester can't test in a live network. I would recommend the Fluke Pro 3000. Much cheaper and more accurate trace. You can clip on to the ends or use a plug adapter to connect.
2264976
The tester is in 2 pieces just connect 1 on each end of your cable. On mine I had a 100 ft cable with problems and it scanned it and found 1 broken wire. The tester scans by stepping through the cable 1 wire at a time and if broken it will skip the bad wire. Hope this helps the cheap thing works...
76384
Rj, I'm not sure, I only used it to test CAT5 over about 50 feet and coaxial cable about the same distance. It worked great.
1773976
It's probably not the best tool for the job. The toner won't be of any use at all through the wall. The way I would approach this problem is to take my VOM (volt ohm meter) and a spool of small gauge wire to extend one of the meter leads, then measure resistance from one termination to the other end of the speaker wire.You might be able to use the cable testing functions to check the continuity, but you'd have to convert it to an RJ45 connectors, and it's not worth the bother. =^..^=
1664499
It should work, though I haven't tried to clamp around individual wires on an extension cord. Someone could unclamp it to defeat your monitoring.
1218490
Michael, I don't have a caliper to measure butI'd say the thickness of the wire is about the same as the pencil lead used in mechanical pencils.It's very tough stuff
1274189
Yes, you do not need to touch a connection the probe can detect up to several feet away. You can get false positives with air flow so follow directions and you should be fine. I used the probe to find a LP leak after two HVAC guys failed to find it. It was in an air return where a piece of flex pipe was routed and had a pin whole leak. I keep getting weak readings around the duct opened it up and inserted the probe and wow, it was a hot spot, actual flex pipe was about 5 ft away.
1753257
On small wires on utility poles at a moderate distance from 30 yards no, but bigger heavy lines im not for sure I don't know if it's the small diameter of the surface or the roundness but it's very hard to hold steady enough for scanning
1276535
I don't see why you couldn't do that. The controller reads the probe as a value of resistance so it would really depend on the cable and wire you use. I've only used this with about a 3ft (1M) cable length. I guess you could run the wire, then test and calibrate the settings/readings on the controller, that should work. I haven't had any issues with mine. But again, I'm not using long cable runs either... Hope this helps.