Cable Tracker || DIY or Buy || A useful tool for every electrician!

You can get the Buy version here (affiliate links):

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

Music:
2011 Lookalike by Bartlebeats

[thisfeatureisbad]

DIY or BUY?
Mehdi: "Just remove the breaker and short the cables. Trace the red-dark lines on your wall"

[gonun]

I find it unreasonably funny that the jlcpcb sponsored a video about a mid-air soldered circuit.

[ElectroBOOM]

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!

[canonip]

"Thankfully I live in Germany, where there are standards"

Laughs in old house where every corner is anything but 90°

[Pseudynom]

"Thankfully, I live in Germany and we have standards ..."
My grandfather while building his house: "Ich denke nicht."

[roboticdart]

My man did this whole video to flex all his play buttons 🤣

[Asu]

Who needs PCB when you can solder all the parts on mid-air?

[harshitaharshita]

You are great this is why you chosen the name "Great Scott" 😉

[TWX]

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.

[sobertillnoon]

I absolutely love your 3D soldered circuits.

[StigDesign]

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 :)

[dj_paultuk]

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 !.

[jonathansnodgrass]

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.

[marekc]

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.

[MrBrelindm]

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.

[UnknownPerson-nlte]

It's known as live wire detector, you can make it using 3 transistors, see electroboom video about it, Live wire detection circuit

[MsGabrieljf]

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!

[therealjammit]

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.

[vripscript]

your 15 min is equivalent to my 15 months

[arpithjain]

"Stay creative, And I will see you next time!"


-Great Scott, 2020