Hello All,
In a box of stuff I bought there was a what I assume is a tester of some sort. It's 2" hollow metal ball with an xlr connector on it. I'm sure somebody here knows what it is. I just need to know if it's worth saving.
Thanks

 

Show Picture !!

 

It's 2" hollow metal ball with an xlr connector

"Hollow", there must be something inside that the connector attaches to.

XLR connector: Often used for audio, used on microphones, sometime used for power.

 

why don't you bring DMM to it and check resistance or continuity?

 

The ball appears to be made of copper. There are 2 small wires that go from the connector into the ball and the circuit is open. It makes a small tapping noise when you move it around so I'm thinking something has come loose inside.

 

Its a ball with broken bits !
Any pictures ?

 

The quick answer to your question is that, since you have no idea what it is, it is not worth saving. Especially since it isn't even worth the effort of taking a picture and posting it, like was asked less than ten minutes after your initial post.

 

The quick answer to your question is that, since you have no idea what it is, it is not worth saving. Especially since it isn't even worth the effort of taking a picture and posting it, like was asked less than ten minutes after your initial post.

A description of the weight would be very useful.
I also suggest extreme caution in the application of power to the ball device.
Some organizations have used a type of XLR connector to quickly attach wires to a

 

It might be a piezo transducer, sometimes used for acoustic testing. I think that I have seen a similar device in an audio technical book many years ago.
AND, just because at the moment do not know the use of an item is an incredibly poor reason to consider disposing of it.

 

AND, just because at the moment do not know the use of an item is an incredibly poor reason to consider disposing of it.

I used to be of that opinion -- but not so much any longer, since this is how I ended up with shelf after shelf of stuff that just sat there taking up room for literally decades. I peaked at over three hundred banker's boxes filled with stuff that might come in handy some day. Of course, even on the few occasions when I actually knew what I wanted (or thought I wanted, not always the same thing), I could never find it. Over the years I have had a few moments of sanity in which I aggressively got rid of things (giving them away or donating them, when possible, recycling/trashing otherwise) and in forty years I can't think of a single thing that I regretted parting with, no matter how hard parting with it was. I'm sure there were things that I got rid off that I actually could have used at some point, but had long since purged even the memory of it from my brain. I still have WAY too much crap. A quick count shows that I still have just over a hundred bankers boxes and, even though more than half them are the result of a fairly recent winnowing and organizing and each is labeled with the general category of crap in it, it is still too cumbersome to dig through them when I need/want something (though now it is at least doable). My goal is to get it winnowed down to no more that what I can fit into the closets in the three basement bedrooms in such a way that each box (or equivalent) is directly accessible without having to move anything else. I'm estimating that this is about thirty boxes worth of stuff.

I'm a shining example of any place you live quickly becoming stuffed to overflowing with crap and then moving to a bigger place because you "need" more room and then quickly filling that place up. For me, it started with a single 140 sf sleeping room, then to a 200 sf room, then to a 426 sf apartment, then to a 1800 sf townhome, then to a 2400 sf house, then to a 3500 sf house, and now a 4300 sf house, each time quickly getting packed with box after box of stuff, many of which had literally not been opened through many moves and a couple that had been unopened since that first sleeping room. The first house I lived in as a child was 902 sf with a family of four. I've sometimes thought that that's what I really need to do -- move into a sub-thousand square foot home to force me to deal with this crap once and for (hopefully) all. Without that sort of pressure, it's too easy to take the out-of-sight, out-of-mind approach (though, in my case, they are anything by out-of-sight since they are stacked up along the walls in the basement where I spend most of my day. I know, from experience, that if I can get the area decluttered and organized, that I will feel much better and be much more productive. If the price for that is having to occasionally replace something that I purged, it's a bargain. Especially given how many times I have had to buy something that I needed and knew that I had, but just couldn't find.

 

oh , @WBahn
Im having to hide that post from the wife, number of times Ive gone a bought szy a few screws cause I cant find the box I know ive got.

 

oh , @WBahn
Im having to hide that post from the wife, number of times Ive gone a bought szy a few screws cause I cant find the box I know ive got.

My wife is bad in her own way, but the amount of crap she has pales in comparison to my horde. I've long-since realized that I have to be in the right mindset to make progress, otherwise I rationalize all of the ways that something might come in handy some day. Even when I'm in the right mood, I often have to go through the sorted box multiple times before I finally let go of something. I've got to keep telling myself that if I've had something that might come in handy for thirty or forty years, the chances of it actually coming in handy in the next ten or twenty are pretty slim. Or when I open a box that hasn't been opened for twenty years that if I managed to get along without for the last twenty years, how much can I possibly actually need it.

And the screws, tape, and tools is a whole take unto itself! As I've been working my way through boxes, I've been setting those aside on a card table (now two overflowing card tables) so that I can put them in a single place (bin for hardware, bin for adhesives, tools in the tool chest) where I can actually have a chance of finding them when I need them, instead of buying more of what I already have. It's already been paying off as I have been able to go there and get screws that I almost certainly would have ended up getting yet another box of.

What perplexes me most is that I know how liberating being organized and decluttered is -- yet it is so at odds with my intrinsic personality that it is virtually impossible for me to do, not matter how good it makes me feel.

 

My wife is bad in her own way, but the amount of crap she has pales in comparison to my horde. I've long-since realized that I have to be in the right mindset to make progress, otherwise I rationalize all of the ways that something might come in handy some day. Even when I'm in the right mood, I often have to go through the sorted box multiple times before I finally let go of something. I've got to keep telling myself that if I've had something that might come in handy for thirty or forty years, the chances of it actually coming in handy in the next ten or twenty are pretty slim. Or when I open a box that hasn't been opened for twenty years that if I managed to get along without for the last twenty years, how much can I possibly actually need it.

And the screws, tape, and tools is a whole take unto itself! As I've been working my way through boxes, I've been setting those aside on a card table (now two overflowing card tables) so that I can put them in a single place (bin for hardware, bin for adhesives, tools in the tool chest) where I can actually have a chance of finding them when I need them, instead of buying more of what I already have. It's already been paying off as I have been able to go there and get screws that I almost certainly would have ended up getting yet another box of.

What perplexes me most is that I know how liberating being organized and decluttered is -- yet it is so at odds with my intrinsic personality that it is virtually impossible for me to do, not matter how good it makes me feel.

hording , is sign of a good engineer .
Im always amazed the number of pen and pencils I find at back of my top draw !

 

hording , is sign of a good engineer .
Im always amazed the number of pen and pencils I find at back of my top draw !

At one point I had a shoe box that was completely full. I had even taped cardboard dividers to partition it into sections for black pens, wooden pencils, mechanical pencils, and markers. I finally donated to my daughter's middle school and, even so, I still have a few hundred. The big thing now that I have an excess of are dry-erase markers. I've been gathering them up into one place and plan to donate a big box of them and other office supplies to a school. Now that I have parted with over a thousand of my textbooks, I have empty bookshelf space and I have one three-shelf unit that is going to be for office supplies. That's my limit -- if I can't put it into that unit neatly, it goes bye-bye. Office supplies are another thing that I have multiple bankers boxes of and that do me no good because it's more hassle to dig through them looking for something that think I might have than to either do without or buy more. So my supplies will be sitting out in the open on those shelves where they can actually get used.

 

hording , is sign of a good engineer .
Im always amazed the number of pen and pencils I find at back of my top draw !

In addition, the ability to understand what an item is and what it's application would be is quite valuable. For those folks gifted with good vision ability, "a lack of ability to understand what things are and how they would be used indicates an inadequate technical education" (Dilbert, 1987) YES, some comments stick in my mind.

 

In addition, the ability to understand what an item is and what it's application would be is quite valuable. For those folks gifted with good vision ability, "a lack of ability to understand what things are and how they would be used indicates an inadequate technical education" (Dilbert, 1987) YES, some comments stick in my mind.

No matter how well you understand what something is and all the various ways in which it could be used, there is little, if any, value in keeping it if the likelihood that it will ever be used for any of them, or any other purpose, is essentially zero.

Another way to look at it is every object has a value, albeit that value is very subjective, hard to quantify, highly specific to the individual, and a constantly shifting target. None-the-less, we make decisions based on the value we assign to objects (as well as a long list of other things, such as time, comfort, health, etc.), usually subconsciously, all the time. I've reached the point were I realize that not only does everything have a value associated with having it, there is also a value associated with not having it -- you might think of it as the space that it is taking up having it's own value and when the value of having that space empty exceeds the value associated with having the object, it's time to maximize the overall value of my environment by making the object go away.

 

It must be nice to be in a position where you can buy whatever you decide you need when ever you want, and then discard it the next day when it is no longer what you want.
If I were in such a position I would be using some of my resources to help other folks. It seems that there are quite a few folks not in such fortunate positions.

That's an absurd response and you know it.

Parting with something that has sat, unused, in a box for multiple decades (among three hundred other boxes of similarly unused items), hardly qualifies as buying something and discarding it the next day.

And why doesn't giving things to other people that can use them, or donating them to Goodwill or other suitable places, not constitute using resources to help other folks?

If you want to keep every scrap of metal and every loose screw you stumble across until your heirs (or whomever ends up with it upon your demise) have to deal with it, then you are absolutely free to do so.

 

Evidently I offended somebody. THAT WAS NOT MY INTENT!!!