DIY - LAN Cable Tester

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by Tarantula3 22
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DIY - LAN Cable Tester - With or …

Intro: DIY - LAN Cable Tester

There is nothing worse than running your

drops only to realize that you have a fault in
one of the cable runs. The best approach is
to get it right in the first place by using a
"LAN Cable Tester". Sometimes, cables can
also tear because of poor material quality
or bad installation or sometimes they get
gnawed by animals.

In this project, I am going to make a LAN

cable tester with just a few basic electronics
components. The entire project, excluding
the battery cost me just a bit over $3. With
this tester we can easily check RJ45 or
RJ11 network cables for their continuity,
sequence and if they have a short-circuit.

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STEP 1: Hardware Requirement

For this project we need:

1 x Perfboard

1 x Arduino Uno/NANO whatever is handy

2 x RJ45 8P8C Ethernet Ports

9 x LEDs 9 x 220Ohms Resistors

9 x 1N4148 Fast Switching Diodes

1 x SDPD Switch

1 x 555 Timer IC

1 x 4017 Decade Counter IC

1 x 10K resistor

1 x 150K resistor

1 x 4.7 uF Capacitor

1 x 18650 Battery

1 x 18650 Battery Holder

1 x TP4056 Module for charging the battery

few connecting cables and general

soldering equipments

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STEP 2: Logic

A network cable consists of 8 wires plus

sometimes a shield. These 9 connections
must be tested one after the other,
otherwise a short between two wires or
more can not be detected. In this project I
am only testing the 8 wires however just by
doing a little bit of modification you can test
all the 9 wires.

The sequential testing is done automatically

by multi-vibrator and a shift register. In
principle the circuit just is a running light
with the LAN cable in between. If one wire
is disconnected, the corresponding LED will
not light up. If two wires have a short-circuit
two LEDs light up and if wires are
interchanged the sequences of the LEDs
will be also interchanged.

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STEP 3:

The 555 Timer IC operates as a clock

oscillator. The output on pin 3 goes high
every second causing the shift.

We can also achieve this by adding an

Arduino instead of the 555 IC. Just send a
digital high followed by a digital low every
second using the blink example from the
Arduino IDE. However, adding an Arduino
will add to the cost but will also reduce the
complexity of soldering.

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STEP 4:

The signal from the 555 IC or Arduino

clocks the 4017 decade counter. As a
result, the outputs on the 4017 IC are
switched sequentially from low to high.

The clock pulses generated at the output of

IC 555 timer on PIN-3 is given as an input
to IC 4017 through PIN-14. Whenever a
pulse is received at the clock input of IC
4017, the counter increments the count and
activates the corresponding output PIN.
This IC can count upto 10. In our project we
only need to count upto 8 so the 9th output
from Pin-9 will be fed to the Reset Pin-15.
Sending a high signal to Pin-15 will reset
the counter and it will skip counting the rest
of the numbers and will start from the
beginning.

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STEP 5: Assembly Without Arduino

Lets start by connecting the pins of the 555

timer IC .

Connect Pin-1 to ground. Pin-2 to Pin-6.

Then connect the 10K resistor to the +ve
rail and the 150K resistor to the intersection
of Pin2 and Pin6. Connect the capacitor to
one end of the intersection and the other
end to the ground rail. Now, connect the
Pin-7 to the intersection of the 10K and
150K resistors creating a voltage divider.
Then, connect the output Pin-3 of 555IC to
clock pin of 4017IC. Next, connect the Pin4
to Pin8 and then connect them to the +ve
rail. Add the switch to the +ve rail followed
by the on/off indicator LED.

After connecting all the pins of 555 IC its

time for us to connect the pins of 4017 IC.
Connect Pin-8 and Pin-13 to ground. Short
Pin-9 to the Reset Pin-15 and Pin-16 to the
+ve rail. Once all the above pins are
connected its time for us to connect the
LEDs to the circuit. The LEDs will be
connected from pin 1 to 7 and then on pin
number 10 as shown in the diagram.

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STEP 6:

Each LED will be connected in series with a

220Ohm resistor and in parallel with a 4148
fast switching diode. If you want to test all
the 9 pins you just need to repeat this setup
9 times otherwise just use it 8 times.

On the terminal end connect all the pins

together.

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STEP 7:

Now the testing bit. Let's say the output 1 is

HIGH and all other pins are LOW. The
current flows through the series resistor
and LED 1, the diode parallel is in reverse
direction and has no influence. Because all
other outputs now have ground potential so
all other parallel diodes will be in forward
direction. As the pins of the termination
socket are connected to each other it will
complete the circuit and the LED will light-
up.

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STEP 8: Assembly With Arduino

Now if you want to do the same with

Arduino you just need to remove the 555 IC
and add the Arduino in place of it.

After connecting the VIN and GND of the

Arduino to the +ve and -ve rails
respectively, connect any one of the digital
pins to the Pin-14 of IC 4107. Thats it, easy.
I will not explain the code in here, but you
can find the link in the description below.

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STEP 9: Demo

Now, lets have a look at what I have made.

These 8 LEDs are to display the status of

the LAN cable. Then we have the two
Ethernet ports where we are going to plug-
in the LAN cable. If you want to test a
longer cable just have another one of these
ports with all its pins connected to each
other. One end of the cable plugs in to the
bottom port and the other end to the 3rd
port. I have attached the TP4056 battery
charging module to one end of the battery
holder to save some space. OK, let turn on
the device and do a quick test. As soon as
we turn on the device the on-of indicator
LED turns on. Now, lets plug in our cable
and see what happens. Tada, look at that.
You can 3d print a nice looking case for this
tester and give it a professional look.
However, I just left it as is.

Checkout My Other Projects At: http://diy-

projects4u.blogspot.com

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STEP 10: Conclusion

A cable tester is used to verify that all of the

intended connections exist and that there
are no unintended connections in the cable
being tested. When an intended connection
is missing it is said to be "open". When an
unintended connection exists it is said to be
a "short" (a short circuit). If a connection
"goes to the wrong place" it is said to be
"mis-wired".

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STEP 11: Thanks

DIY - LAN Cable Tester - Wit…

Thanks again for watching this video. I

hope it helps you.

If you want to support me you can

subscribe to my channel and watch my
other videos. Thanks ca again in my next
video, bye now.

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4 Comments
AKeddie 1 year ago
Hi and thank you. I made the non
Arduino version and it works great for
continuity. However, I cannot get the
short function to work. Please do you
have any ideas on how I might fix this
issue with my setup.

The-Doc 2 years ago

In step 2 it says that a cable short will be
indicated by two LED's lighting
simultaneously. In looking at the
schematic in step 7, I don't see how this
is possible for the following reasons: 1)
the terminal end shorts all of the cable
wires together all the time 2) the 4017
has only one output high at at time, so
only one LED can be lit at a time.
Would putting the cable between the
4017 and the LED's be a step in the right
direction? Perhaps with some more
diodes to keep a cable short away from
the outputs of the 4017?

The-Doc 2 years ago

The 555 IC should be the CMOS
version?

boutchicheamar13 2 years ago

perfect

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