F02 Underground Cable Wire Locator Tracker LAN with Earphone

This comes with instructions but needs some practise to pin-point the break. Having set up the “transmitter” walk along the wire swinging the probe either side of the buried wire, the null point indicates where the wire is. Once the signal starts getting faint you are approaching the break, in my layout (about 1/4 acre of lawn) I needed to put down a marker then repeat for the other half of the loop. The break (I had two) is between the two points at which the signal disappears. Repair using the right terminals, normal connector blocks will soon corrode.

We have a robot mower, which relies on a buried cable to define the limits of the lawn. After just less than a year, it stopped working, saying that it couldn't detect the loop. In other words, there was a break in the cable circuit. My son found this device as being recommended for finding broken cables, so we ordered it, and it arrived next day. This was when the guys who installed the mower came to investigate. They had a detector similar to this, but frankly not as good as this one. This detector will work by just wafting the sensor over the grass (theirs required sticking the sensor into the ground). They were so impressed, they've returned to base and ordered one of these! And the problem with the cable? Turned out to be a poor join at one of the connectors - it worked fine for 11 months, then failed. The device comes with a good quality case for holding all the bits. 5*.

I used the product to find a break in a robotic lawnmower guidewire. The product itself works well, but it needs a bit of work to learn how to set the volume properly: it is possible to set it too high and get a signal in the absence of wire, but the correct setting seems to depend on the depth of the wire, distance away from the transmitter (in my circumstances the wire is quite long). The product picks up the "side-to-side" location of the wire quite accurately and I found that you get an approximate location of the break within about 1 m along the line of the wire. In my case it helped me quickly locate a break where there was no obvious disturbance to the soil above. I would recommend for anyone with a robotic lawnmower.

I brought this to locate a break the parameter wire of my robot lawnmower. I had used a radio previously which I found useless and brought this to find the break. It took me 5mins to find the break with this product. So simple, easy to use and very accurate. No more stress when I get the dreaded blue light from the lawn mower!

I don't normally do reviews at all, but this is a super bit of kit at a great price. We needed to trace a buried cable in the garden because we weren't sure where it went. Literally five minute work and we had traced it. In places it snaked all over the place and is over 2 feet deep. Highly recommended.

All Good

So the headline is that despite my initial scepticism and a bit of user error this did the trick and my ageing mower is back on the go.I did a few things wrong at the beginning so learn from my over-excitement at turning it on in the first place without fully reading reviews and instructions. Take a moment. It comes with batteries (9v) x 2. It looks cheap, but works.1. Turn off your mower - disconnect from mains, unplug from the socket.2. If like me you have a three wire connection (loop and central return) - disconnect/unplug them all from the base station3. Get a screwdriver and put it into the ground - connecting the black crocodile clip into the metal shaft4. Strip the end of one of the loop wires and connect to the red crocodile clip (I got a much stronger signal doing this)5. USE THE HEADPHONES!6. Start off with the volume set to low (important to get the sensitivity right and to save your ears) and get used to the sound when you wave the weighted sensor over the wire7. Slowly move away from the base station in the direction of the wire you have connected to the red clip8. Adjust volume so you can still hear the noise it makes - the sensitivity will reduce gradually as you move further from the red connection.9. Keep going slowly - if not sure, retrace steps10. Find the break and mark the ground where you think it is.11. Now repeat in the reverse direction - this time you will need to connect the red clip to the other loop wire (the one going in to opposite direction)12. If you are right, or at least if you only have one break, then you should meet roughly where you were in the first run.13. Why not just dig up the first time when you scanned from one direction? Well you could but if like me you didn't have a broken wire, but just a wire where it was only slightly cut into (probably with a trowel) then you will start doing silly things like upping the volume/sensitivity too much and believing that something was wrong and picking up the current over too big a distance. Switching direction helps you add that extra probability that you were right in the first place!So my issue was a wire which was slightly cut. It worked fine initially, but I have noticed that through time any wire which is not insulated fully goes black and malfunctions eventually - these are really tough to spot. Also remember that having the central wire will continue the current in that direction also - if you have a narrow area with effectively three wires running close together you do need to reduce the volume to target properly.Finally, the device itself. It works! My 6 year old mower is still going and the lawn still looks good. I imagine that over time the boundary wire will become corroded and so it's money well spent as I imagine I will be using it more and more. However is is cheaply made and on build quality alone it definitely is a bit of a rip off - but it's selling point is that it works and will save you a ton of time and hassle. Finally, those cheap 9v batteries... make sure you remove them once you are done otherwise you may come back next year to a broken device!

We bought this as our Husqvarna auto mower was reporting a break in the boundary wire circuit. Tracing such faults is time consuming and laborious. Some say you can use an AM radio receiver. Tried that. Not helpful.So decided to give this a go. After a brief perusal of the instructions and a couple of experimental forays the break was identified. It was at one of the connectors. The connector was removed and replaced. Immediate solution of problem. Robert’s your parent’s brother and Fanny’s his wife.No real faults. The unit includes 2 PP9 batteries of unknown provenance and dubious quality. They held out for long enough. They’ve now been stored away with the kit, and if they last until it’s next required I’ll be astonished. The plastic quality of the casing is not great, but it does. There’s a nylon pouch supplied to carry the kit. It’s easy to turn on the detector unit as you push it into the pouch, so I removed the battery before stowing it. It’s better to remove dry cells when storing electronics in any case.Even if we never use this again I’ve no doubt its purchase price was less than the cost of calling out a professional. And if we do get another fault we’ve got it handy.