How Good is the Walabot® Visual Stud Finder?

Stud finders are great for locating studs in a wall, but what about wires, plumbing, ethernet, and even live animals? Now, you can “see” inside the wall BEFORE you drill, cut, or drive a nail!Show more

#walabot #studfinder #radar

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Remodeling, mounting items to our walls, and cutting into walls are all fairly common occurrences around here and I found there are situations where finding objects in the wall, other than wood or steel studs, is highly desirable.

The Walabot® fills that gap by “seeing” objects in the wall such as electrical wires, plumbing, conduit, and communication cables. It does this using a form of radar. The proprietary Walabot® device is a combination transmitter and receiver to find and assign identities to objects in the wall. That device is paired to your cell phone using the readily available Walabot® app.

The Walabot® works best with standard ½” gypsum board (aka “drywall).

You can use the Walabot® in two modes, images and expert. The images mode will produce pictures that represent the typical things found in a wall; wood and metal studs, wires, and pipes. For studs, lines appear indicating the center so you can mark the wall. The sensor is dynamic, so if you move the sensor, or the object being sensed in the wall is moved (such as a speaker cable), it will show on the display on your paired phone.

The images are “best guesstimates” of what the sensor is seeing, based on density and proximity to the back side of the gypsum board. It’s possible for the sensor to get what it is seeing as wrong, so double-check as you can.

The expert mode looks like an infrared image, but it is not. There is no heat or temperature change being sensed - only density. Even so, it can be used to find all of the above-mentioned items, and there will even be centering lines that will appear. This mode is handy for finding non-typical items in the wall, such as a rodent nest!

The unit is well-made and is available with an “authorized” carrying case. It is chargeable with the included USB-C cable. It’s not cheap gear, and neither is the price. At the time of filming of this episode, the unit was $189.95, and the kit that included the case was $239.95.

If you are doing a significant amount of remodeling, this may be a worthwhile investment for you. The same goes for remodelers and handy/repair people who need to be very careful in existing living spaces so as not to take a small project and turn it into a big one by drilling or nailing into something that causes big problems. Avoiding one such mishap would be cheaper than the price of the tool.

We don’t get commissions for Walabot® product sales. The product was supplied to us with the understanding that we would give our honest/authentic review, which we have. If this is a solution for you, we are glad to have brought this device to your attention.

You can check them out at https://walabot.com/#products.

JUST DO IT YOURSELF!

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