Tsx536

I just moved into a new house! During the framing stage of the building process I went in and ran a bunch of extra RG6 coaxial cable into all of the bedrooms. All of the telephone/electrical/cat5e is ran into a central box that sits in one of the main downstairs closets in our house. I made sure to label all of my wire, so I would not have trouble knowing which room each wire is run into.

Well, when the electrical guys came in during the final stages, they did a bunch of wiring into the central box, and went in and put connectors on everything. When they put the connectors on they removed all of my labels !!
It kinda sucks because I have a lot of coaxial running into each room and also about 6 coaxial run to the outside for my satellite TV/FTA. There are about 15-20 total wires run and now I have to go through and figure out where each run goes to again. I heard I can buy a probe to help me figure everything out.
1) Does anyone know how much a probes runs and where I can get one for a good price?
2) How is it used? I know I will have the probe on one side, but is there another piece that goes on the other end of the coaxial?
3) Can you still use it if there is not a connector on the each side of the coax?

They also messed up a bunch of the internet wiring. We used cat5e for the both the internet and the telephone (since it has 4 twisted pair it can support up 4 phone lines). Instead of leaving the non telephone cat5e cables on the side they hooked them all up to the central telephone splitter that distributes the phone signal throughout the house! I even told them ahead of time that I was going to put RJ45 connectors on the ends and run them to a router that is stored in the central box. I should have known they were gonna F it up!
If I ever see any of those electricians in the street I'm gonna kick them in the ding dongs!

Anyway, does anyone know if I can buy a probe that can be used for both coaxial and cat 5e?

I figure with all of the electronic gurus in here someone probably knows.
Thanks in advance guys!!

JTso

iTrader: (2)

What you need is a tone generator to identify those wirings. It looks something similar to this.

I used to do security pre-wiring for new homes with my brother and that's how we identify the wires after the home is completed.

Tsx536

Nice..!! Thanks man.

So will this work with both Coaxial and cat 5e?
What is the positive and negative clilps used for?
I noticed it has an Rj11 plug on one end...what's that for?

JTso

iTrader: (2)

Here are some instruction on how to use a tone generator and what the connections are for. It's also useful for tracing wiring in cars.

http://www.extech.com/instrument/pro...s/40180_UM.pdf

e_lectro

If you don't want to buy a probe, hook a battery to one end and use a multimeter to find it by voltage. Only the one with the battery on it will have a voltage.

Tsx536

Does it matter which size battery?
Will this work for RG6 Coaxial cable?

e_lectro

I would say AA or D, they are both 1.5V, the D just has more storage capacity.

It should work. Rig up something so that the battery + connects to the center pin of the coax and the - end connects to the shield.

I'm not saying this is ideal, but it is quick and dirty (and cheap!). All of the leads should read 0 except fo the one with the battery on it. Even if the wire reacts odd to the DC because of its impedance, you'll get some sort of reading, and you'll know it's the one.

Try it on some scrap wire if you have any left.

-e_lectro

Tsx536

I'm always down to try the cheap and easy method first
Thanks...man..I'll give it a try!!

Bass Mechanic

you can even short the wires together on 1 end on the room your looking for. then use an ohm meter to see which wire has the short.
there are tons of ways to find wires like that. the tome generator is the best idea. phone installers use the same type of tool. they plug a tone generator into the phone jack and then in the phone wireing closet sniff out the wire with the tone sniffer.

jlukja

The electricians didn't follow your directions but they were trying to be helpful by hooking things up for you. Slow mind but good heart.

Tsx536

Very true....I gotta give them credit for that part. They thought they were only helping out. I guess they didn't understand what I was trying to accomplish.

Plus, when they saw all of the wiring they must have said sh*t!!
It's a big house and I have dual coaxial and dual cat5e running into just about every room. There's probably at like 40-50 wires running into that box. It's all part of my master plan to have a great dish/pansat-fta/media pc setup....muahhhh hahah...

jaydub

Lucky man, the house I just signed a contract on has a clause that won't allow us to do any additional wiring or add-ons during the construction process. I'd have loved to get in there and run my home theatre stuff, but as it stands I'll have to deal with it another way and for internet I'll live with wireless.

Tsx536

Thanks. Yeah..I'm know I'm really fortunate...! Lots of my friends bought track homes and they did not get to touch anything....they hated that! Some of them are not even allowed to seal there own tile. Thatz BS!@

I guess the big reason I was allowed to go in was because we built a house that was custom. It's a little different than a track home because I interacted directly with all of the subcontracters. It was a lot of damn work though since our house was kind of big (4300 sq ft)...but in the end it payed off because I was able to customize and upgrade for a much lower cost! Also if anything goes wrong...I have all of their numbers!

majormojo

Hey 536, sounds like a nice setup. What does "pansat-fta" mean?

Tsx536

The Pansat 2500a is a FTA (Free To Air) receiver that will let you receive Free to Air channels such as major network/international channels. These channels are broadcasted in the air and are completely free w/ no sub. required.

If you flash the firmware on the Pansat though, you can can do MUCH more with these receivers. The Pansat can see the Di$hNetwork sats.

Use and you'll see what's up.

musicbox

I have one of those, too...

musicbox

And if you don't want to sneak in there, hehe..Most builders have a low-voltage place that will install that stuff for you, at a cost of course.

BUT if you know someone that has a "licensed" (depending on the laws of your state?) low voltage comapny, you can attempt to get them in...like if you have a buddy at an ISP, phone company, cable company, alarm company, etc...

When my place was being built, the builder just had a form you had the licensed company filled out, the builder approved it, then you can just walk right in with them...

Tsx536

Cool man!!

You runnin with a di$h 500 or the standard legacy ones?
I'm lookin for a good channel list for the 500.

elduderino

Congrats on the house!

I feel your pain... when I was a 19-year-old electrical apprentice for a shop that did pool lights and heaters, the guys who sprayed the gunite (acoustic concrete) would frequently eff up our light conduits. Now, in San Diego County, that was not too bad, because our conduits were Schedule 40 PVC... but in Riverside COunty, our conduits were copper tubing.

Sometimes they would kink the copper tubing, accidentally, I hope, and then instead of fixing it or flagging it, they would spray gunite on the kink to hide it!

I got way too good with a pick... and finally decided I needed to NOT dig holes for a living...

Tsx536

Thanks a lot Eld...

I'm glad you decided to go the anti-hole route!

musicbox

I'm not aimed at 500...

majormojo

Thanks for the info, it looks interesting. Tell me though, if someone isn't interested in "obtaining subscription services for free", is there much legit FTA stuff that's worthwhile? Most of what I found by briefly browsing around isn't in English.

Tsx536

Hey....I never said that I was "obtaining subscription services for free" I just said the Pansat is capable of that.

You are correct that there are not many english channels. The FTA satelite I'm gonna hit is Telstar 5 so that I can get some channels for my grandmother to watch. This has lots of asian channels on it.

I have heard of many people in Canada that hit some of the echost*r sats though.

Tsx536

The 500 is the actually 18" satellite dish you use and mount on your house. It's not one of the birds in the sky.

It has two independent LNBs that can point at both 119 & 110 at the same time without the need of a disq motor.

musicbox

Yes, depending on what your interests are. There are a LOT of sats up there and it all depends on which one you aim at. You kind of have to search around on the net for what channels you can watch on what sat. Such as this, one random site I found on Google...

http://www.wickonline.com/fta.htm

And just because a sat is "based" for a different country doesn't mean you can't aim at it from another country(ie dishes get AMAZING distance)...But there's also websites that will tell you which sats you can pick from different parts of the US...

If you interested in it, look around some more, there is a lot of info on the web, and there's LOTS and LOTS of viewing out there all free and legal...There's also motors you can get for your dish so you can easily switch between sats...


http://www.cyberestore.com/product_i...products_id=78

musicbox

well, right, you know what I mean, I'm not aim at dishnetwork, dish 500, echostar, whatever...

majormojo

I wasn't accusing you of anything... Just an observation that a lot of the info I encountered wrt these systems seemed to be focused on that kind of activity.

Echostar carries the Dish network stuff right? I have Bell ExpressVu which I think is essentially just the Canadian version of Dish. Uses the same technology anyway. As if it isn't already obvious, I don't really know that much about it all the satellite stuff. I just know that my wife gets grumpy if she doesn't get her TLC. (No, not that TLC the one with all the stupid home improvement shows).