My 2-room addition was wired by an HT guy but he didn't identify which end goes with which and I need to figure that out. I have a multitester and was trying to figure a way to send current with a 9v battery. Any ideas without buying some expensive gizmo? The morass of wires includes RG-6,cat-6, and speaker cables. Appreciate any and all help!!

Make yourself a continuity tester. take a simple vehicle test light (essentially just a 12/6 volt light with a prong on one end and a clip on the other), a 6v lantern battery and a length of wire long enough to go between both ends of the wire you are testing. hook the length of wire to the neg post and the test light to the pos. Touch the test light to one end of the cable your testing and the neg wire to the other end of the cable. If the test light lights up you know both ends of the cable you are testing are the same.

I just did this to verify my in-wall speaker cabling. I'm not sure how well it would work with other wire like cat 6 or cable.

Hey Wibbman,

I'm going to assume your multimeter has an ohm setting on it? For the speaker wire...twist the + and - wires together at one end then go to the mass of wires at the other end and touch the leads of your meter to a + and - of one wire (on the ohm setting). Keep trying wires until you get continuity...that will be the other end of that wire. Make sure you label them at this point.

The rg6...if you have a couple of aligator clips and a small piece of wire (~6") you can put together a makeshift jumper wire by attaching an aligator clip to each end of the wire. Now attach one aligator clip to the ground of the rg6 (the part of the end that spins around) and the other aligator clip to the copper wire in the middle (be carefull to make sure that this clip is only touching the copper wire and not touching the ground of the rg6. Now you can go to the other end and ohm out each wire until you get continuity again (just like above).

Now for the cat 5 wire...that will be a little more difficult because there aren't any exposed wires that you can connect in order to "complete the circuit" for lack of a better term. I guess you can snip the end off and strip the insulation back on two of the wires and connect them together just like you did with the speaker wire. Now you can go to the other end and using the leads on your meter touch one to each pin corresponding to the colours you twisted together at the other end. Hopefully there isn't a lot of the cat 5 wire because you will have to replace the ends that you snipped off.

Hope this helps.

Later

hook a speaker up to the end of the wire and then use a aa battery and tap test the speaker wire, you'll be able to hear what your doing.

Thanks for the great advice! Zavs, your technique works super--used an 8 inch piece of speaker wire as a test. The aa tap test sounds interesting so will try that too. My cat6 wire has raw ends so nothing to replace. Google brought up all kinds of good tutorials on using a multimeter, eg:
http://www.acmehowto.com/howto/homemaintenance/electrical/continuitytest.php

My HT guy was way too expensive just to run wires, so I'll solo the rest of the project. With a great site like this, there's no reason not too!

With a great site like this, there's no reason not too!

Trudat! :cool: