Walabot DIY 4+

With this device I have made amazing and disturbing discoveries about my own house. It is no wonder I was confused with my old standard stud finder that was telling me there were electric wires all over the place or why I couldn’t drill into some of the studs. With this device I found out I have a decent amount out metal studs! Who knew! I took a star off for the ridiculous amount of calibration it needs every time you use the device, for it not being it’s own fully integrated device with a screen, and last but not least it doesn’t have an integrated marking tool or pencil holder just a marking for where you should mark the wall. I’ll probably have to make a custom holding device to hold the scanner, the iPhone, and a pencil. When I am scanning a ceiling holding all those together and marking it with the pencil will be quite difficult otherwise. I’m sure they will eventually come out with better accessories or improved design models down the road their current ones do not appeal to me at all. But like I said in the title, it does as advertised and that is all I expected to begin with, it was only after using it I noticed the lack of design development given they have been in business for a couple years now.

Just got done setting up the device & it does as advertised, I can see the stuff inside my wall(s). It’s not that much smaller than my iPhone 11 Pro Max so its very user friendly as far as holding it securely. The 2 issues that I do have are that first & foremost, the speed with which the items are displayed on the screen needs to be slowed down-big time. I was scrolling along my wall as slow as the strips on the Walabot would allow & stuff would just flash on/off the screen so fast I had to go back across to try to find them. Also w/ this, I’m going to the right along my wall yet I had studs, wires that would pop onto the screen from the left-hand side. No clue there. The other issue is that some kind of holder/case needs to be developed that can mount the Walabot & the user’s smartphone together. Holding the devices in 2 seperate hands & trying to monitor both @ the same time was a giant pain-especially when an arm got tired & had to switch which hand was holding what. Personally, if I’m looking @ a x-ray view of my wall(s) & I’m doing it solo, it would make more sense to have everything visible in one self-contained unit, my phone over top of the Walabot. Since I suffer from “old-home syndrome” this will be super helpful finding studs while trying to fix it up

We got this hoping to explain confusing readings from inside a wall, but learned nothing new. This appears to be an expensive but common sensor pack that one uses with this ‘free’ app that uses the phones orientation sensors, processor, and screen to display the data more conveniently. While it does display what it believes to be wood studs, wiring, and metal, I’ve an old Black and Decker stud finder that’ll tell me that with a colored LED and I do not have to hook up a phone to.
It’s not junk, by any means, just an overly complicated and expensive device that doesn’t provide any new or more reliable data. I applaud the attempt to ‘build a better mousetrap’ but this is just the same ‘mousetrap’ you can now plug it into your phone.