Underground Cable Locator, VXSCAN F04 Underground Wire Locator with Earphone Cable Tester for Locating Breakage Cables, Irrigation Wires, Pet Fence

The instructions aren't entirely clear as some other reviewers have pointed out, but it's not overly complicated. First, turn on the Listener (the unit with the dangling antenna) and see if you pick up any noise when near your wire. It should be silent, otherwise there may be interference that affects the next steps. (Note, I could pick up some static from my lawnmowers base station... Unplugging the boundary wire eliminated that) Second, connect the red clip of the transmitter unit to the end of the wire, and the black clip to something metal you can stick in the ground (I used an 8" screwdriver, not sure if it has to be that long). Turn on the transmitter, then push the find button (magnifying glass icon). Now a signal is being sent along your wire, which you should be able to easily pick up with the receiver unit. It sounds like a toy police car ("wee-ooo-wee-ooo"). Very obvious. You should easily be able to trace the underground wire/metal/conductor by waving the antenna around to find the noise. This was definitely true for my lawnmower guide wire that was buried up to 3 inches. If at any point you lose the noise, your break is nearby (maybe not right there, but within a foot or two. Digging up the wire should be easy, since you know where it is (be safe if it's buried deep!) This worked for one of my wire breaks (when I dug up the wire it was clear there was a clean break), but not the other. But the second break was likely an incomplete break (I couldn't feel it or see it... But a multimeter confirmed a high resistance segment). I suspect the transmitter is a little too powerful for my use case, and overcame the partial break. Still, this device did a great job locating my wire and one break, so worth the cost!

Ok folks, this thing does work pretty well. Some key points to find a sprinkler valve, it took me a bit and my neighbor came over and helped and once we figured out the main points, found the valve relatively quickly. 1) make sure you hook up the ground. The instructions say to drip something in the ground and hook to that, in my case I just hooked it to a ground in the sprinkler control box and that worked fine. 2) unhook the wire to the sprinkler controller and hook the red clip. 3) "turn on" the sound on the transmitter. At first I didn't realize this was the procedure because when you turn it on the lights flash on the transmitter and it gets pretty loud. 4) there are no lights on the receiver, that is just a sticker.... 5) You don't need the earbuds unless it is really loud around. 6) drag the sensor on the ground "across" the wire you are hunting for. Listen for when the sound starts, peaks and ends. The middle should be roughly where the wire is located. Then move a few feet in the direction you think the wire is going and repeat. Keep doing this until you find the end of the wire. 7) with distance from the transmitter, and with distance from the wire, the strength does decline. You have to learn to interpret this. 8) My wiring was about 12" below the ground, and this thing had no issue picking it up. Bottom line: it does work, but it will take some time and some interpretation to find the valve.

It works exactly like it is supposed to. My challenge was in the electric dog fence, the break in the wire was where they were twisted together to cancel our the signal. This device helped narrow it down to that section but I still had to dig up quite a bit too find it. So even though it did not eliminate all the work it did narrow it down.

First let me start with how bad the directions are. They are written as if one xscan employee is chatting with another xscan employee who is completely familiar with the product. Let me provide some examples: "determine whether there is an interference sound" Ok , what is that and what should it sound like? How will i recognize a interference sound from any sound the first time I turn it on? My device makes this obnoxious reeroo reeeroo over and over again. Sounds like a police siren. Is that interference? Is that noise?? It sure doesn't sound normal but that is all it does. next example: "if there is interference change the place to test" - OK, I have no idea what interference sounds like but if I did, change it from what and to what?? You never told me where I should test in the first place nor did you provide criteria for a good or even bad place to test. So this instruction is completely useless to me. Next: "Under normal conditions without interference, the noise is very small" - OK, what are normal conditions?? I'm trying to find a broken electric fence line, is that normal conditions? Define normal conditions for cryibg out loud as its completely objective otherwise. How do I know if I have interference? Tell me what a valid sound is so I have some sort of reference rather than to simply GUESS. "the noise" - what noise? The obnoxious siren noise mine makes? The sound of snoring? what noise???? And this is just in ONE SINGLE STEP. I recently bought a chinese hot water heater off of amazon, it came with NO INSTRUCTIONS for operator use. I had to communicate with them through amazon. Talk about frustration. Not acceptable. This device came with instructions but they create more confusion than help, and I am an engineer who is very handy. Based just on the directions alone, I returned it but I could not get it to do anything useful either. My advice, go elsewhere, the frustration isn't worth it.

This was the second time my underground pet fence needed repair. The first time I looked into doing it myself, found videos describing how to do it using an AM radio and a lawnmower, and decided NOT to do that after talking to a neighbor who had tried that with no success. Instead, we paid the people who installed the fence > $100 to come out and repair it. Since it happened again, I concluded this might need to be done from time to time and decided it was worth investigating a DIY option again. This time, I found videos demonstrating the use of this device (or one nearly identical). I bought this particular unit because it was the cheapest of several well rated units that looked like the internals all rolled off the same assembly line with only some cosmetic differences in the housing. I was surprised not to be able to find any directions in the package (maybe that's where the cut the cost?), but armed with what I'd learned from YouTube, I headed out to my yard. At first, I was confused by the sounds and wasn't sure what the changes meant. However, within about five minutes I'd found a reasonably sized area where the sound changes convinced me I should look, and within another three or four minutes I'd found the break! If you buy this unit, I do recommend looking on YouTube for some directions. That said, I really found it pretty easy to use.

This product works but it's a bit fiddly and cheaply made. The unit I received did not seem to work at first but I finally found that by moving the signal strength potentiometers on both units back and forth I could find a spot where they worked, they didn't work at many spots throughout the range. If you get it working you will get the tone when you're within a couple of feet of the wire and there will be a small dead spot, no tone, directly over the wire. The included instructions are almost useless. Tips: If your valves are all located together this device should work without a problem because your wire signal will end near the valve box. If your valves are not located together, mine were not, then you may have a more difficult time depending on how the valves were wired. The wire bundle will most likely run from one valve to the next and if they terminated the wire at the corresponding valve, which I would think would be the correct way to install them, the signal will stop near each valve when you're connected to the corresponding wire. A little probing around the area should find the valve. For me, whoever installed my system did not terminate the wire at each corresponding valve. They tapped each valve into it's wire but let the signal continue on to the last valve box for every wire. This meant it was easy to find the last box but the signal did not stop on the corresponding wire at each valve in between. If you run into this situation then I would say to probe around anywhere the wire makes a turn or anywhere that the signal seems to be unusually large and confused, this is how I eventually found mine.

Bought this based on the fact that it was the least expensive with the best customer reviews. Our invisible fence started beeping at the control box which meant the fence wasnt working. We have a very large back yard (about 1.5 acres) with invisible fence wire buried along the perimeter. I knew there had to be a break somewhere. Instructions that came with scanner were ok but I used youtube videos to figure out how to use it. Connected clips to the two wires at the control panel, powered it on, powred on the scanner and started walking the perimeter of the yard. THe scanner did its job and was making the tone noise when the pendulum would swing over the fence. When the tone started to get weak, I knew I was getting close, then it would just stop although I knew I was right over where the line was. Problem was, it didnt start toning again until about 150ft or so away from where it stopped. I started to backtrack from this point and as soon as the scanner dropped its tone I found a trench that some rodent had dug and sure enough, there was my break - they chewed through the wire to make their trench. I repaired this and tried the fence again - still getting beeping noise which meant there was still another break somewhere, So I hooked the scanner back up and went to where I originally lost the signal. This time when I lost the signal, it came back after a few feet which allowed me to narrow down the area where the 2nd break was. Looks like I might have done this one myself digging up saplings that were growing so I could replant them elsewhere. Anyway, after fixing the second break everything is working as normal. Would have taken me forever to find these breaks if I didnt have the scanner - money well spent.

It did detect a buried wire that was several feet down and several hundred feet long, but the indication was very confusing. I knew there was a single wire but I got two indicated paths that were separated by several feet. Was the real path in between the indications?