Cable Tracker

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..
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We buy small quantities for prototyping and then let purchasing do the grunt
work for production.

Mouser will sell you four foot sticks of the stuff in all sizes from 1/16 "
to 4" in any of 6 colors for about a buck fifty each, you pay postage.
Shipping time is almost always less than a week. You slice and dice the
little buggers from the large stick.

See www.mouser.com and then the 5174 series in the upper left hand corner of
page 1027. You might also want to look at digikey to see if they have
anything similar. www.digikey.com

It shrinks with a hair dryer, any temperature above boiling water. The
shrink is almost exactly 50%; a stick bought as one-half inch i.d. will
shrink down to one-quarter inch.

As a refinement of the prior message for a "system", you can identify the
"lead digit" several ways. One is with a double-wide piece of shrink (or
two stacked so close together that there is no mistake of your intent, OR,
you always read from the wire END out, OR, you sacrifice the white color and
read from the white end always, OR .... use your noggin.

I prefer a 3 and 4 "digit" breakout. 3 digit for unspecified wires and 4
digit for specific wires. For example, wires going to the dimmer control
are 3-digit (primary power, control, etc.), but 4-digit departing for the #1
radio, 4-digit to the panel floods, etc..

***************************************
One last plea ... I wrote all this stuff up in a Kitplanes article several
years ago. Honest to gesundheit I don't have the time to keep my web page
up with all the articles, although each one of them is in a separate zip
file with all the photos and such. If some kind person is willing to keep
the web page up, then all one of you kind newsgroup denizens would have to
do is go to the web page and there is the article, available for download,
and we could all review it and bring it up to date.

THere are about six years worth of columns. It takes about two hours to
format, check, write the index page, and such for each article. If one of
you kind gentlemen or ladies would like to do one or two a week, in a year
we'd have them all done and up to date. Any takers?

www.rstengineering.com/kitplanes
***************************************

Jim

--
"It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought
without accepting it."
--Aristotle


"Peter Dohm" wrote in message
...

wrote in message
...
On Jan 1, 4:24 pm, "Peter Dohm" wrote:

I really like this idea, especially the colored heat shrink version
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you know a good source of small quantities of the required colors?

Writing on white (or at least, light colored) Heat Shrink is a pretty
good way of identifying the lead.

-Bob

Peter Dohm wrote:
wrote in message
...
On Jan 1, 4:24 pm, "Peter Dohm" wrote:

I really like this idea, especially the colored heat shrink version
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you know a good source of small quantities of the required colors?

If you've got a Fry's Electronics, they sell yard-long sections of heat
shrink in a wide range of sizes in a variety of colors.

Ron Wanttaja

On Jan 2, 8:15*am, "Peter Dohm" wrote:

I really like this idea, especially the colored heat shrink version
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Leaping some distance outside of the box, it occurs to me that
downstairs, with the electronic stuff, I've got hook-up wire in
virtually every color of the rainbow as well two-color stripes.

No, it won't shrink but I was homing-in on the IDENTIFICATION of the
leads, which has always been the problem a few years down the road.

I can't get to that part of the shop at present but I think it has the
potential to identify wires if held in place with clear heat-shrink.

Another thot is some glass BEADS I've got around here somewhere, which
would serve once the wire to be identified was threaded through the
appropriate colors, which were then sealed to the lead with heat-
shrink OR a dot of crazy glue... or some damn thing.

wrote:
On Jan 1, 4:24 pm, "Peter Dohm" wrote:

I really like this idea, especially the colored heat shrink version
----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Do you know a good source of small quantities of the required colors?

Writing on white (or at least, light colored) Heat Shrink is a pretty
good way of identifying the lead.

-Bob


I got some about a month ago when I was in Fastenal for something else.
They are located everywhere.

http://www.fastenal.com/web/locations.ex

wrote:


How to do it? The good ol' fashioned way, which I described in an
article some time ago, is to use a continuity tester. That is, a
hunka wire long enough to run from here to there, a couple of
flashlight batteries, and a flashlight bulb. You know you've found
the correct lead when the bulb lights up. I even described a do-it-
yourself tester based on an old-style Navy flashlight.

I built a continuity tester years ago when I was doing a lot of electrical
work on the bonanza. Rather than a flashlight bulb, I used a 99 cent buzzer
from radio shack. I found that with my head stuck up in the innards of the
panel, I couldn't always see a light bulb. I could, however, always hear
the buzzer.

--
Frank Stutzman
Bonanza N494B "Hula Girl"
Boise, ID

On Jan 1, 3:10*pm, Frank Stutzman wrote:

I built a continuity tester years ago when I was doing a lot of electrical
work on the bonanza. *Rather than a flashlight bulb, I used a 99 cent buzzer
from radio shack. *I found that with my head stuck up in the innards of the
panel, I couldn't always see a light bulb. *I could, however, always hear
the buzzer.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Frank,,

An audible continuity tester has many advantages over the simple
Blinking Light, in the article I posted. The only advantage to the
one I described is that it uses parts you already have in your kit
(ie, your flashlight).

As a point of interest, the Wire Tracker under discussion here
incorporates a light-type continuity tester in its transmitter.
Simply set the switch to 'CONT' and use the red & black alligator
clips (crocodile, for the Brits :-) The multi-color LED will show
green when you have a good circuit.

But it doesn't stop there. The 'Cable Tracker' (it's given name) has
a circuit within the tranmitter module specifically for telephones.
With the RJ-11 connector plugged into a telephone outllet, the
transmitter module will tell you if the line is clear, if you've
reversed the green & yellow leads, if the line is busy or if the line
is being dialed. I think this is worth mentioning because 2009 will
probably be the year during which the telephone system as we know it
will be replaced by the cable system most of us have installed for our
COMPUTERS. I believe it's called the 'ooma' system. It allows you
to make telephone calls as easily as your computer connects to distant
terminals... AND FOR THE SAME COST. This will probably see a lot of
people tinkering with their telephone systems -- and finding a device
such as the Cable Tracker to be quite useful in that regard.

-R.S.Hoover