Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

By: Daniel Brindley

Homemade Network Cable Tracer

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

• Motivation for project

• Intro to my idea for a cable tracer

• Problem this will hopefully solve

• Assumptions of audience

• Solution to problem

• Assembly and testing of project

• Results and conclusion

SUMMARY

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

• Build a device to help clean up wiring closets

• Be cost effective

• Room for future upgrades

• This is a problem in most work places

Motivation

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

• Maintaining a good network closet can greatly help troubleshooting problems.

• Brand name flukes can cost thousands of dollars.

• A messy and non labled network closet can cause problems for new employees and for vendors

• A well organized network closet reflects on the technology departments image.

Introduction

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

• It can be beneficial and fun to build your own network cable tracer.

• With your own custom made tracer you can incorporate other features.

• You get to be creative!

Introduction Continued

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• Messy Network closets and racks can cause headaches for not only the networking department but for outside vendors as well

• A high cost is attached to network fluke devices.

• Often times you must receive a quote, price is not given upfront

Problem Statement

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• User knows basic network layouts

• User has seen a messy network closet

• User has seen a neat and well organized network closet

• User knows basics of soldering

Assumptions

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• Build your own network cable tracer

• What type of items could you build them from?•Window alarm•Self made circuit•Walkie talkies•Multimeter

Proposed Solution

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• I chose the walkie talkies because of its level of customization and user friendliness

• Also pricing is fairly cheap

• Acquire a decent set of fairly cheap walkie talkies

• You will need a CAT 5 or CAT 6 cable you can cut

• You will need to get a soldering iron, flux, and solder

Solution Continued

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• Gather wire strippers

• Tools to take apart walkie talkie casing•Mine required a torx screwdriver

Solution Continued

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• Disassemble both walkie talkie cases

• Cut the antenna off of one of the walkie talkies leaving just about a centimeter

• Use the soldering iron to completely remove the antenna from the second walkie talkie

Assembly

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

• Cut a desired length of CAT 5 or CAT 6 cabled to be attached to your walkie talkie

• I used about 8 inches

• Strip one of the twisted pair wires down to be attached to the board of the walkie talkie

• You can use more if you are not going through a switch for better signal

• Solder the wire to the board of the walkie talkie using your soldering iron, flux, and solder

Assembly

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

Reassemble walkie talkie with soldered on CAT cable.

Leave other walkie talkie apart for testing and adjusting

Locate the tuning pot on the walkie talkie and find out how to adjust it•Mine used a small flat head screw driver

Test walkie talkie by hitting the send button on the disassembled walkie talkie

Assembly

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

• If the second walkie talkie can pick up the signal without the wire touching the other walkie talkie you need to tune down the range

• Continue trial and error until signal is only received when the walkie talkie is touching the CAT cable

• Tuning pot is EXTREMELY sensitive.

• Time to test in actual environment

Testing

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• For my testing I did not go through a switch as the equipment was not mine and I did not want to break the $6000 equipment

• Plug walkie talkie with CAT cable into a network drop

• Have some one press the send button as you take the other walkie talkie into the wiring closet. See if you can locate the cable coming from a patch panel using your homemade network cable tracer

Testing

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• First few times mine was not able to pick up signal at all.

• Some adjusting was required

• After adjustments every cable I checked was giving off signal, I needed to turn sensitivity back down

• Was finally able to get the right settings and pin point the cable I was looking for

• Tested again in a different wiring closet that was farther away to test range.

• Results were good, I was able to locate the wire in just a few moments

Results

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

• These results show that you can build your own network cable tracer for around $20 instead of $1000

• You can probably get a more advanced walkie talkie for better results

• This would be a great project if you are on a budget and can not yet afford a fluke. While getting your work done at the same time

Conclusion

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• Did not get to test signal with cable actually running through a switch

• Future expansions include adding a continuous send button to the walkie talkie so you don’t require two people

• Possibly add alligator clips to trace more than just network cables

• Add an AUX port to send musical tones, using your phone or mp3 player, over the lines

• Build a housing for it to have a rechargeable battery

• Adding interchangeable output cables

Future work

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You may contact me at brindleydt@gmail.com

Thank You!

Eastern Kentucky Univeristy

• (n.d.). messy wiring closet. [Web Photo]. Retrieved from http://www.google.com/imgres?um=1&hl=en&sa=N&biw=1600&bih=799&tbm=isch&tbnid=S2ai0OdT9W36iM:&imgrefurl=http://www.windowsitpro.com/blog/networking-and-hardware-blog-9/networking/how-messy-is-your-cabling-closet

• Iectyx3c. Pocket Cable Tracer. Posted on http://www.instructables.com/id/Cable-Finder/step2/Internal-Mods/

• Curiousinventor. (July 25th, 2007). How and WHY to Solder Correctly. Video posted on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I_NU2ruzyc4

• Rick (2002, August 30th). Fox Hound Sniffer Project,  posted on http://www.pic101.com/foxhound/index.html

• Tony Van Roon (2000, June). Fox and Hound, wire tracer posted on http://www.sentex.ca/~mec1995/circ/foxhound.html

• vegmatic1966. (Aug 9, 2009). Make a wire tracer with some radio parts. Video posted to http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLMg_cq25P8

References