Electric Fence Tester

I have the forcefield fault finder.

I use it as a tester moreso than fault finding.

Would recommend it alright.

I think I paid the same price NOT on Black Friday.

Excuse my ignorance on these things. Say I rock up to the mid point of my fence and it’s not working. Do these point me in the direction of the fault or how do they work

Have both, got the forcefield a few years ago and only lasted approx 1 year. Just a cheap build and not able to last any roughing. Screen cover fell out, bit of super glue repair. Then the whole unit spilt. Also was very bulky in a pocket. Worked great in testing a fence and pointing direction of faults, but ergonomics and build quality is poor.

Got a Gallagher 3 years, build quality is super, fits perfect in a pocket. Nearly always in the pocket of the body warmer. The Gallagher is just light years ahead in quality and will last a lifetime.

A small thing is colour makes it easier to find if put down. The orange and black is great, compared to the single grey on the force field. Just my 2 cents

Is this the one?

@Dunedin That's the one. Will last and serious build quality

Gallagher fault finder all the way.

And a gsm plug or WiFi plug and any faults can be fixed immediately. I even found some pigtails shorting with it. They would be hard to spot otherwise.

🤣 my WiFi is savage unreliable at the shed (nanostations and high trees). Be some lottery handling the fence.

Not really. A sim might last a year or too from new but will eventually stop working if not topped. Strangely mine wouldn't accept a top up after about a year but kept on working for alot longer.

So I would check fence to make sure it was on. Then text Sn0000off to plug and check with tester before touching.

Repair fence then text Sn0000on and check again.

Saves alot of walking on a paddock system.

Yes one is a euro plug and one is an Irish one. The 48 network will send you out a sim free of charge, most others have a cost. You can buy those gsm switches on aliexpress cheaper but postage will be slower possibly.

An alternative to these switches is to set up your fencing so that if you unhook a gatebreaker it will knock off power to one section of the farm, and have a few of them located around the place.

Cattle are very smart, my fkrz always know when fence is off or cracked they be straight through it... But won't go near when it's on.

I wonder if cattle can get a slight sensation from the fence when they get near it, without actually touching it? I got a Gallagher fault finder, which I use for checking the fence daily. I noticed that it turns itself on and registers a low reading as I'm approaching the fence.

Mine were based on ESP32 microcontrollers that sent a signal back to a base station (Raspberry Pi Zero with 4G modem) and alerts sent to my phone so no physical indicators.

I built 3 versions:

1. Used a cheap flashing fence tester and a photodiode to monitor: If fence is above 3000V light flashes and it can measure pulses, overwise no signal.
2. Used a coil of wire connected to an analog pin as an antenna to measure EMF, worksish but hard to calibrate to measure power level.
3. Used a voltage divider to measure actual line voltage, it gave an accurate reading for a while before the resistors self combusted. Probably the best version but need higher quality components designed for 11,000V+

I was a lot more interested in getting it working when I was working full time, but I'm on farm more now so not as big a priority, now they sit on a shelf with other half finished projects.

Thanks Emaherx. Though it's all Greek to me! You probably have a PhD in electronics?