The type of tester you need for electrical circuits is available at either Home Depot or Lowes. It doesn't talk but you plug one part into the outlet and the other part looks like a funky hair dryer. Turn the dryer or receiver part on and it will make a tone when there is power. Flip the breaker and the tone stops when you find the right breaker. That's about as one man an operation as you can get and still be reliable. You can continue to move it from one outlet to the next to see how many outlets are on one circuit and then have someone label them.
The good versions of this tester are around 35 dollars or so. ----- Original Message ----- From: WESLEY BURDEN To: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 11:15 AM Subject: RE: [BlindHandyMan] audible battery tester tom where do you get those talking meters from and can you use them when you do electrical wiring in a new house construction. I help build houses for habitat and it would be nice if we could use a talking tester when we check the outlets for current when we mark the circuits off in the circuit breaker box. _____ From: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Tom Fowle Sent: Monday, December 01, 2008 11:10 AM To: blindhandyman@yahoogroups.com Subject: Re: [BlindHandyMan] audible battery tester In my usual somewhat picky way, I must differ a bit with those using the multimeter as a battery tester. It will, of course, measure the voltage at battery terminals, but that does not really give a good test of a battery's remaining capacity. Good testers, and I must admit i havn't reviewed them recently, provide a load on the battery so that you're measuring it's voltage when it is actually providing power. With most types of cells this is necessary to get any real idea of how much power remains to be used. most cells will produce a higher voltage without load than with it, so you'll always think there is more left than there is. Of course if you can measure the voltage of batteries while they're doing there job, this is much more usefull. This can often be done with the probes of the aforementioned talking meter, it's relatively easy with 9 volt batteries, but how easy this is to do depends on the particular device holding the batteries. I'll try to get some currently available accessible testers and see which are best. Tom Fowle [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
