Review on 🔌 IDEAL INDUSTRIES INC. Digital Circuit Breaker Finder - IDI61534, with Digital Receiver and GFCI Circuit Tester by Threlkeld Drauch

I read reviews on this unit and several others before buying it, for 3 reasons: 1: The unit was made by Ideal and I have used Ideal products for decades with no problems. I don't expect anything less from that. 2: The price was higher than some others, but being an Ideal I felt the extra money was well spent. 3: The features described will do exactly what I need if it works as promised: if it does then the price was worth it. I received it today and put it to use for testing. Back at the two-story house, I plugged in the power signal module and approached the panel within 40-50 feet. On my first try I thought there had been a misfire, but after careful testing and re-testing I found that it hadn't. Lock proper signal strength setting and circuit breaker as it should be. A NOTICE. It has NO manual functions other than on and off, that's all. So you MUST be willing to play around with it a bit to find out how it works. Example: At this point I have a main and a secondary panel almost next to each other. On the first test run, I went to the main panel first to find the signal, even though I knew that circuit breaker was on the secondary panel. First there were several false alarms. I then went to the subpanel and on the first pass over the switches it turned off two or three times. But then, as I approached a set of switches in the opposite direction, it latched onto a single switch and hasn't falsely tripped any of the others since. (It was the only real breaker.) I even took it back to the main panel where I started with 2 or 3 false alarms and it didn't respond properly. It just requires the operator to give it some time and time to fixate on the correct signal level required to select a single switch out of all. Note that there was no false positive between the panel's power rail and the opposite rail when the auto-adjustment was done: it stayed on target since I turned it off. After I turned it off, it reverted internally (automatically) to maximum sensitivity and had to go through the same steps to remove the over-sensitivity and set it to the correct setting. It's so easy to use! You can spend a LOT more on this type of device, but this one from Ideal is great for the money. (Too bad I didn't buy one of these about 15 years ago! ;-) It's well made, no frills, no carrying case and easy to use. It also comes with a 2-year warranty, so you know that even if it's just another Chinese-made product, Ideal has great confidence in their quality product and construction. Buy with confidence and enjoy. GaryPS: I bought an inexpensive Klein Tools case #68401 for this and it's just perfect without using a lot of extra space or clutter. ($7.99 from Revain.) Enjoy! gly