Loading…
18
My $140 signal tester saved me from a 3-hour troubleshooting nightmare
Honestly I kept putting off buying one of those proper signal meters, figured my multimeter was enough. Then last week I had a door sensor that kept dropping off the panel, weak signal from a metal door frame in an older house. Spent $140 on a basic tester, found the issue in 5 minutes, it was a bad resistor on the zone expander, not the wiring. Has anyone else found their cheap tools actually made jobs take way longer than just coughing up for the right gear?
1 comments
Log in to join the discussion
Log In1 Comment
norab213d ago
That resistor thing is interesting because a lot of cheap testers won't even catch that. The $60 ones mostly just tell you if a signal is there or not, they don't show you how strong it is or if it's bouncing around. A dying resistor on a zone expander can still pass a basic continuity check on your multimeter, so you'd never see it that way. The meter showed you the signal was weak at the sensor even though the wiring tested fine, which pointed you back to the board. That's the part people miss, it's not just about finding breaks in wire.
9