Walabot DIY

Unless you built your house yourself and know what’s behind the walls and where, then the Walabot DIY 2 is a must have. I live in a nice track home about 15 years old. Logically you would think everything behind the walls is uniform and neat. I quickly found that to not be the case! I bought this to hang a bunch of expensive TV’s (75” plus in size) and artwork around the house. A traditional stud finder obviously can find the studs but knowing I was hanging expensive and large/heavy tv’s, I wanted to ensure I was getting the middle of the studs as those lag bolts are thick for the tv mounts. The Walabot clearly shows you visually the stud and takes the guess work out. I compared it to my old stud finder with the beeps and light up. I, in general, found the studs but was not in the middle on quite a few (again even in a track home thinking studs are evenly spaced at 16”…well some were, some were half inch+ off). We’ve all had issues with the beeps and false readings and questioning if you’re in the right spot. Not anymore! I felt great about my purchase already. Hanging art work, I wasn’t worried about finding the stud per se, but got this cool new toy so used it there too. Sure enough I found several wires, water lines, a gas line near fire place all running diaganol not following any uniform path and a return air duct I was not expecting. I definitely would have nicked a few of them. For me well worth it and what guy doesn’t like cool tools and tech, both wrapped up in one. It’s a winner for me!

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