For DIYers, a device to use to see into walls

For DIYers, a device to use to see into walls

DIY home renovators, construction workers, plumbers: There is a product designed for you, and it is called Walabot DIY. It is a device with companion app that allows you to look inside your walls. You can detect things such as wires and pipes.

Walabot DIY can show you plastic and metal pipes, electrical wires and studs. They are offering it with special introductory pricing at $199.

The product has an easy form factor—it's a phone-sized block, said Popular Mechanics, attaching magnetically to its host-phone, and it will pull its power from the phone's MicroUSB port. It has an accompanying app.

What the app delivers: Gizmodo explained how "the WalabotDIY app gives you a more visual representation of what's been detected, its orientation, what it's made from, and how far away it is, to a depth of about four inches."

And so for handheld scanning, said Lee Mathews in Geek.com you "sandwich the Walabot to your phone—on which you've loaded their mobile app. If you want a bigger, more glorious display to visualize what's behind the wall you can hook it up to a laptop, too."

Elyse Betters in Pocket-lint further described getting started with this thing: Simply get your hands on the Walabot DIY then download the Walabot DIY app from Google Play Store, and connect the accessory to your phone's USB port, Android device, basically. Hold it against a wall, and it will let you see inside.

You can see up to 4 inches/10cm in concrete and drywall; makes for an easy snapshot for offline analysis; and needs Android phones running 5.0 (Lollipop) and above with OTG.

What technology is being used here? Geek.com said, "The Walabot DIY uses RF radar to create 3D images of what's going on beneath the surface."

Video notes said, "Walabot is a programmable 3d sensor perfect for DIY electronics projects. Whether you are a completely new, first time inventor, hobbyist or even an engineer and like Raspberry pi projects, and building with Arduino, Walabot will open up all new inventing possibilities!"

Walabot is a kind of 3D imaging sensor. "It uses radio frequency (RFID) and will reveal all kinds of things hidden in the world around you." It is programmable. A SDK (software development kit) contains some imaging capabilities; an API enables building custom applications.

Who can find this beneficial? Shane McGlaun in SlashGear thought about the diy-ers who want to do things around the house but are aware of and fear hitting something important under the surface of the wall and getting shocked, or of flooding the home. "A new device has landed called Walabot DIY that aims to take that fear out of DIY projects around the house."

Yes, and if you were thinking about less pleasant things like pests behind your wall, Geek.com said that "Switching from the simplified default view to the raw data display makes it easy to track moving pests."

All in all, worth looking into? Andrew Liszewski in Gizmodo remarked, "It's not as cheap as a basic stud sensor, but think of it as added insurance that a DIY project will be completed on time because you know what you're dealing with before demolition gets under way."

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Citation: For DIYers, a device to use to see into walls (2016, August 19) retrieved 28 March 2024 from https://techxplore.com/news/2016-08-diyers-device-walls.html
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