Wireless LAN cable tester
Years ago I made a LAN cable tester using PBP and its served me very well. It displays on a 2x16 LCD if the cable is standard or crossover, and lets you know if there are broken wires, crossed wires or shorts.
But the main drawback is I have to plug in both ends of the cable to the same device meaning its difficult to test long cable runs in buildings and such.
So I've been thinking about making a "wireless" LAN cable tester where you have 2 units - one to plug into each end of the cable. I thought one device could send different frequency square waves down each wire and the device at the other end could pick them up and work out all the required info to make a diagnosis.
The main snag is where to get common ground from? I cant use just one of the wires as ground because that assumes that that wire is always going to be OK and wired correctly.
Does anyone have any ideas? Better yet, does anyone know how the commercial LAN cable testers solve this?
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