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Sears Craftsman #82114 VDV Cable Tester Information
If
you have a Craftsman 82114 VDV cable tester and are wondering where to
get the additional remotes mentioned in the manual for coax and UTP
cable ID purposes, this page is your answer. You can skip right down to that part if it's all your interested in.
Sears is in a lot more trouble
than I think they realize. This observation comes after I went there to
purchase hand tools and made an impulse purchase of the
Craftsman 82114
voice/data/video cable tester. Originally priced at $100, they'd marked
it down and placed it on clearance for $40. When I got it home, the
included DieHard nine volt battery was stone dead (and yet it was still
well within its expiration date of 2019). Thankfully it hadn't leaked.
Okay, so it had been sitting on the shelf for a while. Popping the
cover to explore the unit's internals revealed just how long "a while"
really was. Date codes within revealed the unit to have been made in
2013. If we're charitable and assume it took a few months to a year
before the unit was shipped and placed on store shelves, it had been
sitting there for three years, waiting for someone to take it home. Three years.
And that's to say nothing of the fact that every time I've been to the
one remaining Sears store in this area, I've had the whole place to
myself. Nobody goes to Sears any more.
If you've come to this page, though, you probably already know these
things and maybe you don't even care. Your attention may have been
drawn to a passage in the manual indicating that extra cable remotes
are available, allowing you to identify up to nineteen cable
terminations in a set. But where do you get them? The manual does not
give a part number for these. Maybe you could call Sears and ask,
though I've got my doubts that they'd know. (You see, at risk of
braching off into irrelevancy again, it's my carefully considered
belief that this lack of knowledge on the part of Sears employees is a
huge part of the reason why they are tanking. It used to be that when
you went to Sears, that the people there knew the products and would
help you get what you needed. Now they either don't have an answer,
aren't sure of the answer or "parts are not available for that".)
Much to my surprise (and amazement), the 82114 is actually made in the United States! I didn't notice that until after I'd gotten it home.
It turns out the Craftsman 82114 is just a rebadged version of the
Klein Tools VDV Scout Pro cable tester. If you want the additional ID
remotes for your 82114 VDV tester, Klein's VDV526-055 LanMap kit works
just fine. If you're looking for the coax map expansion kit, I believe
(but have not personally verified) that you probably want Klein's
VDV512-056 kit. I bought the 82114 unit entirely for testing Ethernet
and telephone cables. The coax testing and ID functionality isn't
tremendously important to me. (If ever I do make more use of the
coaxial cable testing facility, and buy the extra remotes for that,
I'll update this page accordingly. Provided I don't forget.)
I don't think there is an ID remote/map kit offered that includes just
the remotes for 6-19. It's not like this is a big deal, when the remote
kit costs only $25-30 or so.
Klein makes a version of the VDV
Scout that contains a time-domain reflectometer (TDR) function. A TDR
is often used to find the break in a cable, or to determine the length
of a cable. Unfortunately, the Craftsman 82114 doesn't have this
feature.
You could make your own remotes as well. Each one merely contains a 1%
tolerance resistor placed across pins three and six of the RJ45
connector. One of these days, when I don't have enough to do,
I'll go through my remotes and figure out what the resistance values
are.
There is more to come! This page isn't quite finished yet. I won't guarantee when updates will appear, only that they will. Watch this space.
And as always, your thoughts and comments are welcome. Please don't hesitate to write.
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