Detector of hidden wiring from a smartphone

If you are going to fulfill your manly duties: “drive in a nail,” then first you need to drill a hole in the wall for it. To avoid getting caught in the wiring and receiving a fatal electric shock, you need to make sure that there is no electrical wire running through this area.

If you do not have a special device for this, then your smart phone - a smartphone - will come to your aid.

Making a hidden wiring detector from a smartphone

It is necessary to take an unnecessary or broken headset. Take it apart and remove the microphone. Instead, solder a 1-10 nF capacitor.

Now this headset will play the role of a sensor and will pick up network interference with a frequency of 50 Hz.

Next, you need to install the “Spectroid” application on your smartphone - https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.intoorbit.spectrum&hl=ru

This is a real-time spectrum analyzer.

Install and launch. We stretch the scale in the 50 Hz band. The device is ready for use.

Search for wiring

First, let's go through the factory device and determine the location of the wire.

Then comes the smartphone.We bring the headset with a soldered capacitor and search it on the wall.

The smartphone clearly displays all levels and it is very easy to trace the direction of the cable.

In terms of sensations and visualization, this device, in my opinion, works even better than the factory device.

This detector has a very high sensitivity, which can be adjusted in the application. Also, the program itself has many different settings, which is very convenient and useful in work.

Watch the video

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Comments (15)

#1 Leonov Guests 3 December 2019 22:15
2

Did you just cut off the second part of the earphone? Is the capacitor polar? Thanks for the answer!
- Answer
1. #2 Well Guests December 4, 2019 08:48
  8
  
  Well, you don't see them, do you? - means cut off. If you find a polar capacitor of 1-10 nF, install it))
  
  Answer
#3 tomek Guests December 5, 2019 09:44
4

Hello
How can you do this because nothing is visible
- Answer
#4 Guest Andrey Guests December 13, 2019 11:20
3

If I understand correctly, the headphones were removed, and instead of the microphone there was a capacitor. Those. another way: we take the jack from the headset, solder two wires to the connectors where the microphone should be connected, and solder a capacitor to these wires.And it is this capacitor that is the sensor of electromagnetic radiation. So what?
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1. #5 Dima Guests 9 November 2020 15:53
  1
  
  Yes, that is exactly what is written in the text of the post.
  
  Answer
2. #6 Jürgen Guests 29 November 2021 16:46
  2
  
  Everything ingenious is simple! I spent 3 days thinking about how to unscrew the headset and remove the tiny microphone. And you suggested it was 1000 times simpler! I hadn't thought of that before. But it would be better to use a tape recorder head sensor instead of a condenser and a 0.1 capacitor in parallel and set it to 50 Hz. Someone already suggested this in the comments. I should try this
  
  Answer
#7 Anton Guests 14 January 2020 09:29
3

Stupid video, nothing is clear. How and where to solder a capacitor in a headset and what next? Do I need to connect the headset to my smartphone?
- Answer
1. #8 Peter Guests 24 February 2020 12:07
  6
  
  Anyone who is not familiar with electronics will not understand!
  
  Answer
#9 drey Guests 22 July 2020 21:59
3

I started playing from my phone headphones. True, there is a militia microphone... But everything is off-putting. Only he doesn’t take the wall (I’m in Germany, by the way), though he doesn’t want the drill either. How do they put the wiring here and where, idk... Maybe someone can enlighten me? 1. Did I mess up the microphone? 2. Maybe there is no wiring in Germany, do they practice Tesla? (I'm kind of joking)...
- Answer
#10 Guest Misha Guests 11 January 2021 09:25
6

Most likely, the radiation sensor is not a capacitor, but the microphone wire itself, or rather, its core, which picked up the signal from the microphone. How will Conder catch 50 Hz? No way. It simply suppresses interference at high frequencies.
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#11 Kolyan Guests 3 April 2021 16:09
1

I'm interested in setting up the analyzer step by step, do my scales constantly fluctuate, or will everything change after the condenser?
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#12 viktor Guests 27 April 2021 09:35
2

the microphone coil itself + condenser
- Answer
#13 Guest Sergey Guests August 14, 2021 11:21
3

Hello. Based on your recommendations, I found a 5 nanofarad working capacitor. I soldered it to the wire from the phone plug. I downloaded the program. And in the end what doesn’t work. Please advise what to do. How to contact you. Electronically it is possible.
- Answer
#14 bugs-bunny Guests 15 November 2021 06:13
5

Logically, this is some kind of nonsense. How can a capacitor be a sensor? Well, if only some kind of paper, ancient one, where the plates are made of foil with a paper layer, rolled into a roll, there may be some kind of parasitic inductance.
Inductance is needed to catch electromagnetic vibrations. And capacity, because microphones in headsets are capacitive - voltage is applied to the microphone for charging, and fluctuations in the capacitance from the sound change the voltage on the microphone plates.
I would take a ready-made inductor and connect the capacitor in series. You can also place a capacitor parallel to the inductor so that they form a circuit at 50 Hz, based on the Thomson formula for an oscillatory circuit 1/f = 2 * pi * sqrt(L*C).
It might even turn out to be too sensitive then. We need to experiment.
- Answer