Gadgets

[golfball]

Is there a place to post product reviews of those "handy test gadgets" & "usefull little tool"

just how good are they?

[Guest]

How about here?

[golfball]

Seems a good a place as any

so what have you got then

ive just bought a battery tester for em lights from act i can do the load test on em light batts in minuets its accurate

its as easy to use as the i bit gold

green light good red bad

saves the time we spend on site testing the things

now we turn up test lights and fire alarm in one visit

no more turn up test fire alarm dissapering then coming back to see what the em light are up to

ive also bought the cable tracer from maplins

seen one in the act cat for loads of dosh then had to stop by maplins for a couple of resistors and saw something simmilar on the shelf

very good for finding whats connected to what on take overs where the ccts are not marked

or looking for the broken one

[breff]

Look Here

[arfur mo]

hi all,

many moons ago i designed a 'crasher' out of necessity when on service, most guys used an enertia analyser attached to the circuit cables, trouble was it was cumbersome and bodgy.

totally fed up with asking a keyholder to watch the meter while i 'crashed ' out the wiring, to come back and find them asleep or reading a paper

i started with a simple cmos monostable, which if it 'see' a loop it stayed quiet, tap arround (crash) with a hammer get a bleep fault found. now this was fine but if a door got left open by say a maid or nanny or you 'pinged' and broke a wire the bleep stayed bleeping - real anoying.

so i fitted a timer to cut the bleeper after 8 seconds, but then you did not know from the sound if the door was re-closed or still open, so after the 8 second timer i fitted an astable to 'chirp' the bleeper if not set but this then stopped intermittents from being signalled clearly as a door might be openned and reclosed quickly.

the final model had a modified input using a dual 741 op amp for 'pot les' automatic balancing of trip point using capacative discharge voltage drop sensing. this made it extremely fast. if it sensed a short break of less than 300ms it issued a fast pulse bleep for 3 seconds, if a door was openned or a wire broken a continuous single bleep for 8 seconds and changed to slow ramped doeing (like a pan being kicked) to show not set.

using a metal cased bleeper as a sounder it could be heard over 200 feet away in a warehouse when quiet, and saved hours of hard work and time while being very effective, it could even sense the RFi of a kettle being switched on when attched to frames - well handy .

today we don't have the large areas of CC lace wiring under hardboard, frames, foil, or 4 zones with 30 contacts on each, all unmarked. it used to help walk test and identify which door was on what zone no end, preasure pads were a breeze to find where they were and also when they were faulting due to chairs being placed on them (no site plans those days ).

i made about 30 units for the other service guys and supervisors after they see me using mine, it was nick named the 'Oky Coky 2k'.

i reasoned if they had this kit then i'd attend less calls on standby, as they would be more likely to have found the faults 1st time. they paid for the bits (as i'm not that much of a christian ).

when EOL arrived with the **** 6 it was less effective unless you shorted the balance resister, i left and started my own firm so no more developement time or places to field test it.

i wonder what others have made something as an aid, which started as a simple idea, then got refined and refined again and just grew and grew? (no condom or mammory implant designs please).

regs

alan

[Guest G.J.M]

Seems a good a place as any

so what have you got then

ive just bought a battery tester for em lights from act i can do the load test on em light batts in minuets its accurate

its as easy to use as the i bit gold

green light good red bad

saves the time we spend on site testing the things

now we turn up test lights and fire alarm in one visit

no more turn up test fire alarm dissapering then coming back to see what the em light are up to

ive also bought the cable tracer from maplins

seen one in the act cat for loads of dosh then had to stop by maplins for a couple of resistors and saw something simmilar on the shelf

very good for finding whats connected to what on take overs where the ccts are not marked

or looking for the broken one

sounds like a good gadget.

It's okay if it's a large site and before i start testing the FA,i put the E/L on test but this could be a handy gadget for small sites.I will have look at one . ta

[breff]

You will find that most of these cable tracers will only work if the cable being tested is open circuit, if its closed circuit you get no tone.

[james.wilson]

You will find that most of these cable tracers will only work if the cable being tested is open circuit, if its closed circuit you get no tone.

If youi mean the cable tracers i think you mean just attach to one of the other cores that aint shorted. I assume i have misunderstood though

[bellman]

While we are on the subject of cable tracers, I got myself a new TDR a few weeks ago.

link HERE.

Couldn't believe how cheap they are now, they used to be over

[Guest G.J.M]

We had and still have lying around the ACT meter which was a similar idea back in the days but is the size of a small flight case.