NOYAFANF-826 Underground Cable Locator Wire Tracker, for Dog Fence Cables Irrigation, Wall and Underground Pipeline Wire Detector, Advanced Circuit Breaker Finder for Wall and Underground Cables

Relatively inexpensive, buy does exactly what it says it will. Used this to trace buried telephone wire that carries the copper wire DSL internet----we aren't in a service area for anything else. Did have to open the "telephone company" side of the house box to see which were the powered and grounded wires and attack the leads. Also used it to trace the electric power utility buried lines (120 V) buried to house, barn, and well pump house. Again, some knowledge of what to connect the device lead clips to in the electric panel is required, but very simple and the built in voltage tester make that easy. Signal receiver worked well, even at 100+ yards from the transmitter. Saved me a lot of time and money.

I am searching for the phone line that comes up my 500 foot driveway in a rural setting to put in a sewer line that will go right over / under the phone / DSL line. At first I connected the leads to the 2 active lines. The receiver registered 53 volts. First good sign since phone lines have voltage and I was worried I might burn out the unit, which it did not. It signal only went out about 5 feet. I then connected to one active line and the ground. That turned out to be the correct connection; don't forget to turn the transmitter to transmit since turning it on does not automatically start transmitting. The user manual has lots of examples but being new to this, I wasn't sure which connection to use. The receiver comes on in AUTO mode, the most sensitive setting. It was so powerful, I stood there with the receiver at waist height and could follow the line at a walking pace. When I got to the spot where the sewer line was going to cross, about 250 feet from the transmitter, I put the receiver in the least sensitive setting by putting the receiver in manual and pressing the down arrow several times. Even at the lowest setting it still picked up the signal loud and clear. I then got on my knees and swept back and forth until I found the line and started digging. As I dug down, I used the unit to pin point if I was getting close. I did not want to cut the line so I was very cautious while digging with the shovel, even though in my area, the phone line is in a metal conduit. Just for fun, I even used the unit to find where my sprinkler values were buried. Overall, this unit is very impressive. I read several reviews of cheaper units where there were complaints of poor user manuals and weak signal. This unit is powerful and the user manual is very extensive... almost too extensive, but I would rather it be very detailed when I use it for more complex projects. Also note that when I first connected the unit to the phone line, I disconnected the modem thinking the transmitter signal would damage the modem / router. It started raining so I disconnected the unit and put the modem back online and had to continue later. When I went back out to continue hunting, I forgot to disconnect the modem. I finished flagging the spot and remembered the modem. It didn’t do anything to it and my internet service is working normally. I don’t know enough of the technical details of the transmitter to know if it could damage a modem / router, but in my case, it did not.

This system does work quite well, and worth it for repairing our dog fence. A few things I figured out helped me a lot to use it.1. Read the manual. I do have some experience with electronics, but I did find the diagrams to be a little small to see clearly. The text we pretty good, however.2. The quity of the electrical connection to the buried wire is critical to its operation. Can't say this enough. Sloppy or loose connections won't do! The alligator clips supplied are suprisingly good quality, but even so, just wiggling the clip connection produced a wide range of signal quality. My fix was to eliminate the supplied alligator clips and cables, and just make short adapter wires with banana plugs to plug directly into the source device and the system ground and the two fence wires where they connect to the control box. So much better!! You can buy banna plugs for a few $ on Amazon, Parts Express, etc. I had a few false starts until I did this.3. I plugged the transmitter into a charger to be sure I always had a strong signal. Set the output to its maximum, and start the transmitter (there are two actions, one to turn on power, and one to transmit!)4. Tape the receiver to a piece of wood, broomstick, etc. so you can walk with it and keep the antenna very close to the ground. The Antenna 'snout' seems to most sensitive in the direction its pointed, so point it at the ground, don't waive it in the air. For precisse location, point it vertically at the ground. The signal strength meter and audio DOES work well, and it reads highest when nearerst the wire underground.5. Keep the sensitivity on the receiver just high enough to receive the signal reliably. This is the most accurate. If you are searching for something when you have no idea where to start, then increase the sensitivity.6. First, check that the pair of wires leading from the control box to the perimter re intact. To do this,connect the source to one of the wires leaving the control box (and the ground of course), and trace the wire to the fence perimeter looking for breaks. If none are found, THEN connect the device to the OTHER wire and check that. For me, these wires were intact and I could see that one went right, and one went left around the yard. Start nearest the source - If you can see the wire exit the house, start there. The receiver would be responding strongly there, if it isn't, stop and check the connections and that the transmitter is transmitting.7. I decided to keep them both connected, and traced the wire's path around the yard. If there was only one break, I would not have detected it, as I have the transmitter conncted to both ends of the loop (so both sides of the break would have had a signal). If that happened, I would have just connected the transmitter to one of the loop wires and started again. I know we had or yard aerated twice, so I guessed there might have been more than one break so I just made my way around the loop.8. I detected and located one break with this setup (both wires powered), which meant thatere must be another! So I apprached the area from the other side where I had signal and found another dead spot, indicating a break. The two breaks were about 20 ft apart and under our garden (hmmm..). We decided to re-route the wire in this area, as we put in a larger garden, so the repair was straightforward using some new 14 gage stranded wire and waterproof wire nuts.Total detection time was about an hour including making come test cables.Next project is figuring our where some wires go in our house...

This tools has definitely paid for itself. I have had 4 random breaks in my lawnmower wire and this found them quickly. My old way to find breaks was to pull on the wire every 20ft and that took forever. I found it does work best if you touch the antenna to the wire. Most of my breaks are at the supplied stakes not the ones I 3d printed. I had one where I think a deer jumped over my fence.