Anyone have any suggestions on a cost effective fiber tester? Been looking to get one but don't want to spend over $1k for a tester. Was wondering if anyone had any experience with any that were in the more economical range.

We always used a Fluke tester over the years with the different modules for Fiber/UTP...

If you don't need one very often you might want to think about renting one and put the cost into the bid.

Do you want an otdr or loss/rfl?

Exfo axs 100 is a very reasonable otdr. Exfo 930 is its brother for doing end to end testing, but you will need another 930 or at least a light source. You could probably get them in tested good condition off Ebay in your price range.

What are you looking to test

Viavi hst 3000 has a pretty good ethernet module I am told. That's also recently discontinued so you might be able to get one cheap

What we are looking to do is to be able to test a fiber and make sure there is a good connection from end to end. Essentially see how much light is passing through and see how much loss there is if any. Same concept as a Ethernet cable certifies.

If you're splicing fibers together you should bite the bullet and get an otdr with source and power meter. It's available on the axs 100 as an option but i couldn't find one easily on ebay. You can also get their fastreport 2/otdr software package for $500 or so and build bidirectional otdr files on a windows pc.

If you're running jumpers and cleaning connectors and proving something isnt your fault any power meter and microscope (with a screen, dont bother getting a microscope you actually look through with your eyeball, it's not worth it) should be fine.be fine. Viavi has microscope and power meters and a phone all that attach to your usb otg on your phone. You can use whatever equipment you got as your light source, like the light from your provider and the light from your media converter will give you a baseline and you could make judgements on your jumpers based on that.

Oh, and dont mention certifying fibers. To me that's fiber characterization and that starts at like $15k for a machine pair

That would be for releasing a 10 or 100gig circuit to a customer. I heard that some require it to manually configure the pulse mode dispersion and other characteristics of their equipment.

It shouldnt be necessary if you're not running miles of cable.

And a phone (android) application

Good info.
Thanks!