Cable Tracker || DIY or Buy || A useful tool for every electrician!
Вставка
- Опубліковано 23 сер 2024
- $2 for 2Layer, 5pcs & $5 for 4Layer, 5pcs: jlcpcb.com
Previous video: • Creating an Overpowere...
Schmitt Trigger video: • Electronic Basics #35:...
Facebook: / greatscottlab
Twitter: / greatscottlab
Support me for more videos: www.patreon.co...
You can download the schematics for all of the circuits here: / 42624837
You can get the Buy version here (affiliate links):
s.click.aliexp...
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
![Lp. Сердце Вселенной #1 НАЧАЛО ПУТЕШЕСТВИЯ [Новый сезон] • Майнкрафт](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/380Q7gLWGvk/mqdefault.jpg)
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.
JLCPCB: When deadbugging fails you
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
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.
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?? 🤔🤔
My man did this whole video to flex all his play buttons 🤣
Haha not quite
Lool🤣
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.
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!
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 :)
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.
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 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
i dont care if diy or buy is the winner, iam winner to have discovered your channel
Awesome👍
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 !.
I am in class 9 and learned many things from your videos. Diy or buy is my favourite series
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.
Scott your "DIY or BUY" videos are a source of lot of interesting information. Thanks and keep it up.
It's surprising how many of my favorite UA-camrs are German. From The Mathologer to TheOftler to you, I love the variety of accents! I notice your accent sounds a lot like Sabine Hossenfelder's.
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.
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.
"Stay creative, And I will see you next time!"
-Great Scott, 2020
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.
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 " 🍻
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 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?
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
Only one word
GreatScott!!! 😉
I see you're a man of culture, The Art Of Electronics "Best of the Best on teaching electronics" from Paul H.
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.
your 15 min is equivalent to my 15 months
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
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
Wow the in depth look into a pcbs schematics and workings of separate parts is amazing!! Thanks :)
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.
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 love all of the videos made by great scott
I learned from them a lot !!!
THANK YOU SO MUCH GREAT SCOTT!!!!!!
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.
I new it! I was waiting for this vedio it is 10:20 pm here in India and I am still watching it
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!
Thanks to GreatScott! for this teardown, but...couple of corrections if I may ?
For anyone wanting the circuits of this yellow cable tracker, there are some mistakes in his diagrams :-
In the signal generator (4:54) , R8 is connected to the bottom end of C3 not the top, and there's other stuff connected to R8 that is used for the 'continuity' function - this function is very dubious as a continuity tester in my example anyway, I left R8 and C4 in but removed R7, and D4 led, and now the unit is 'off' when switch is at 'off' or 'cont', which is nice, you don't have to check it's off properly. You lose the continuity and active phone line tests if you do this.
There's an internal switch that pulls top end of C2 down to ground, this stops the tone varying and you get just a constant tone, which is more useful (and less annoying) in my opinion.
I removed the RJ cable as I will never use this and it was in the way.
In the signal tracer unit (7:26), the front end is wrong - Q1 is an n channel mosfet type LBs, and D1 doesn't exist. It's correct otherwise. It wouldn't work as drawn in the video in any case.
The earphone socket cuts off the speaker, but then wires the two earphones in series and to ground, the ground (sleeve) of the 3.5mm socket is not connected to anything, so you CAN'T use that as a handy external grounding socket without rewiring it. Q2, R1 and R11 turn the + power rail on when you press the button, the negative rail is connected by the switch on the pot. So even with just the pot sw on, there is zero power draw. No idea why they did this...just in case anyone else wonders what's going on there.
Also, as a tip for anyone trying to make one of these work properly such that it can home in on a very small area of peak signal (tone), like a single wire in a bunch, I added shielding inside - one side of the pcb is mostly ground plane so that shields that side, the other side is basically all aerial (antenna), so I lined that side of the case with ali foil grounded to the pcb ground. Some emi copper tape is handy here also if you have it. Also, I swapped the bare wire probe for some very thin coax up the plastic tip, strip outer for 1cm at tip, ground the outer. Now it will only hear the signal from that tip of the probe rather than the whole upper body of the thing !
If you are tracing a single wire in a bunch, do what the instructions say and connect red clip to the one wire, then connect ALL the other wires together, to the black clip AND to a good ground - when I tested a long run of 3-core mains cable, this is the ONLY way I could identify a single core at the other end. Too much capacitive coupling between all the cores just makes the signal appear on all of them when cable was even only 1m long.
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.
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.
Scott can you fix your receiver schematic at 7:25. The Q1 D1 parts nicht work
“Fewer” for things you can count, “less” for things you can’t.
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.
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...
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.
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.
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 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)
I like GreatScott! but I really understand "Let me know your farts" at 9:23
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!
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
ua-cam.com/video/ZAqNKaX3LQ0/v-deo.html he already made such a video
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.
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.
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! 🖖😊
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!
I love this DIY or Buy, now I know what is best.
Can you understand Czech?
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 😅
DIY version is sometimes called "dead bug" construction. Nothing wrong with that. It just looks like an upsidedown bug.
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
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.
A Walabot would also be a good option.
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
Very nice project
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) 😂
Very cool!
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.
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.
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?
Buy sounds right in this case. Big fan of your channel.
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.
If you want an even simpler sender, you could probably use an arduino and just rip a beeper example from the internet.
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
Putting the DIY version onto a glove where you point you finger would make for some laughs and giggles!
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.
Just Bury that wired in mid air contraption in epoxy resin block. Job done.
I don't watch this video's because I understand everything but just because I like electronics
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.
My multimeter has a non-contact voltage measure function. You can find the AC wires with it while keeping the voltage on your wires.
Great video Scott .
from your channel name "Great Scott", I thought that you live in England. =))
Thank for a great video.
Thanks for watching!
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.
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 🤣🤣🤣
Scott sees this as a comparison
We see this as as competition
That's a great idea!
Okay I'm not a patron but this comparison is truly essential: battery spot welder diy or buy
Crazy! I was just looking into what it would take to do something like this. Great video as always.
I like your reverse engineering techniques .😍
Very good
im a big fan of this diy or buy
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...
In the first minute, he shows us his Horowitz & Hill "Art of Electronics" book, his award from UA-cam, and shames all of non-Germany for having crappy building codes. I know where to come whenever I want to feel like a loser. :)
Nice video pal. Love from India