Coax Explorer 2 with Remote Kit

Very good product and works as advertised. Just moved to a new place and it help me to map the cables. However, watch for false positive. There was times when the tester turn the blue light out but the blue cap was not even plug anywhere.

see the pic - i didnt even use blue cap - in fact I am holding the blue cap right in my hand but it still lighted up blue.

I have worked as an SBCA Technician for over 13 years and these make the job easy! best one I've seen out of all of them!!

When I bought my condo I inherited an exceptionally sloppy coax installation in my utility room. This tool made it super easy to trace out the cables so I knew what went were. It includes a bullet so you can attach one of the remotes directly to a cable. Also, the battery is replaceable, unlike the Klein single-channel tool. With this tool I was able to trace out all 5 of these cables to determine that 2 were not connected, 1 went to a common utility box in the basement, and 2 led to outlets in my apartment. I used a Klein compression kit (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Klein-Tools-Coax-Installation-and-Testing-Kit-with-Connector-VDV002818/203799415), a 3-port cover plate (https://www.homedepot.com/p/Commercial-Electric-3-Port-Wall-Plate-White-5003-WH/206428210), and 3 F jacks (https://www.homedepot.com/p/NTW-F-Type-Silver-F-F-Feed-Through-Snap-In-Keystone-Jack-Insert-White-NKY-FF-F-WHT/206657288) then patched & painted the drywall. I didn't care too much about a good color match since it's in the utility room.

Klein has a wide array of VDV (voice, data, video) cabling tools that help diagnose and locate structured wiring termination points. This Coax Explorer 2 is an affordable and small tool that can help you check your coaxial cabling. I tested it out and it works as advertised. It can detect which color locator is on the other end of the cable run as well as detect an open or short cable. Only having 4 locating ends makes it a little cumbersome for larger installations but it’s a very affordable and easy to use tool. It’s helpful if you’re installing new cabling and need to check that it was installed properly and help identify the cables to label them. If you’re moving to a new location that has pre-installed wiring but it wasn’t labeled you can use this to help map out your coaxial jacks for your cable tv or over the air tv antenna. The kit comes with the Coax Explorer 2 tool, 4 locator ends in red, blue, green and black as well as a male to male barrel connector. Kit also included the battery but you’ll want to also have a small patch cord as well that didn’t come with the kit. The locators have slide-on type f-connectors. It would have been nice if the kit came with a small patch cord with slide-on connectors to make testing go faster. To understand how this works I’ll give you a run down of my coax cabling. Around the house I have up to 2 f-type connectors on a wall plate in each room. In my basement I have a wiring panel that includes a patch panel with f-type connectors. Between the two is coaxial cable that’s terminated and attached to the wall plate or panel. If I want to test and label my installation I would take the colored locators and put them on different f-connector jacks on the wall plates, making a note of where each colored locator was. Let’s say I put the red one in the master bedroom cable tv jack, the blue one on the master bedroom antenna jack, the green one on the guest room cable tv jack and the black one on the guestroom antenna jack. Then I can go into my basement where my coax patch panel is and use the Coax Explorer 2 to find which jacks on the patch panel are connected to those colored jacks. One by one I’d go through the different connected jacks on my patch panel and connect the Coax Explorer 2 using my patch cable, press the “Test” button and see if the LED lights up to indicate the red, blue, green or black locator. If the red locator LED lit up I’d know that jack was connected to the cable that goes to my master bedroom cable TV jack upstairs and can put a label over that jack on the patch panel for easy identification in the future. The tool can also detect if there the cable is open or shorted. If there is a problem with the cable you won’t know which color is on the other end. If there is no locator on the other end that will also show up as open which can be a little confusing on installations with more than 4 cables. I did a small test setup where I put 4 f-type connectors in a wall jack and installed short lengths of cables to my patch panel. On one of the cables I intentionally terminated the cable with a short and on another I intentionally terminated the cable so it was open. The Coax Explorer 2 was able to correctly identify all the different colors as well as both of the wiring issues. If this was a real installation I would reterminate each end of the cable and test again. In most cases that will fix the problem. It’s a nice, affordable tool to have around if you’re doing coaxial cabling. Very light and doesn’t take up much space in a toolbelt. All the locators are stored securely on the Coax Explorer 2 so you don’t lose them.

If you need to figure out what coax line go where than this is a very handy tool. What does make it so handy is that there are four caps that are each individually indicated on the tool. So if you disconnect the coax as best as you can (assuming you don't miss spliters buried in a wall or hidden in an attic/basement/crawl space) you can figure out where every cable starts and ends. You can also determine if there are splitters that you have missed if you get a signal from one cap on more than one cable. Also it's nice that the tool has a clip that holds all the caps and an adapter. Plus they are well secured so they should be hard to loose. it does not tell you the quality of the signal but usually those tools don't let you do what this one does or they are much pricier.

If you've ever had to deal with the situation I provided a photo of, you would realize the need for one of these. I had a mess of RG-6 coax cables that all met in my equipment room in the basement. The problem was that I didn't know what cable went to what room. This was a problem. After getting the cable explorer, I was able to figure out what cable went to what room, and label them accordingly. This device is so simple to use as well, just put one of the color coded remote plugs in the room on the connector, up to 4 rooms. With the handheld part, go to the mess of cables and plug it on to each one. With a push of a button, the color lights up to know which cable goes where. Uses 1 AAA battery, which is included.

Used in a residential setting to identify cable runs to multiple rooms and floors. The Good: This tool came ready to use out of the package. Included a battery, and all of the connectors to attach to already terminated coaxial lines. The use of the tool was very straight forward, plug in the unit at one end and one of the colored plugs on the other, press the test button. The Bad: There really wasn't any. If I had to find something wrong with the product it was that it only had 4 colors, meaning you can only test 4 lines at a time. This was overcome by the ease of use. Conclusion: Good tool, strongly recommend.

The Klein Tools Coax Explorer 2 with Remote Kit works perfectly. The tester has an integrated clip system to hold four male remotes and a female/female connector. The remotes have push on connectors for quick attachment. Operation is simple; attach each of the remotes to four different end points. Go to the main distribution panel and connect the tester then press the button. If it is a direct line to the remote, the appropriate color lights up on the tester. If there is a break in the line or no remote on the cable it will show the open light. If there is a short the short light will come on. With a splitter on the cable you may experience intermittent results. Typically a splitter will show open or short but when I added a DC passing splitter it confused the unit and it lit up each of the remote colors after a brief pause then went into a fault condition. This is common for these types of testers. Batteries are pre installed in the device. It also has a belt clip. The plastic clips for the remotes hold very well and it is unlikely the remotes would be bumped out in your tool bag or on the job site.

The Klein coax explorer 2 works very well , checking for open or shorts in a line does work . Testing is indicated by an open or short fault light . For a passing circuit it has 4 colored remotes and will illuminate the colored remote line connected . This tool works great for mapping with the 4 colored remotes your able to check 4 cables without going back and forth to change the remote. Nice clip that holds the 4 remotes to the tool . Batteries included very good simple instructions. Very simplistic took that work as promised. Lots of applications if you work with coax cable.