I love hardware hacking, and when I saw what you were doing I had to check it out.

Man, what excellent results too!
A more even and “floody” kind of light really is much more useful in more generalized outdoor situations and this does the trick!

Add to that perfectly logical reasons to own more meters and this whole thing is just absolute WIN!

As always you rock, Dave!

Another example of misrepresentation is when they let everyone think ALL their products are Made in the USA, because they all USED to be YEARS ago.

But more n more Flukes are made in China and Thailand. I call those the Frukes. their big recall last year was for amp-clamps that were, drum roll please, made in China!

I agree they’re among the hi-quality chinese products that i mentioned above. But, maybe they shouldnt go around and misrepresent to all the union workers who buy that brand cuz they think it’s made in the usa. just like everyone else, it’s all about cutting costs to them… stockholders vs. customers (& employees!)

Like the man says, don’t support liars. maybe americans deceiving americans is even worse.

Check the label, your fluke may be more yellow than you think. OMG! ROFLMAO.

Maybe it’s a Fruke instead. LOL.

I couldn’t resist, i googled it: http://www.tinyurl.com/fruke

The point of this blog entry is to share a thought or two on consumer products, personal choice and how to enhance them should you need to, theres no holy grail — you’re expecting too much from a blog, clearly you need to get out more and live — theres a world out there, experience it for once.

Jeez…

A year ago I didn’t even know what a resistor was! and I found the Arduino platform and started to play. Heck I didn’t even know what processor it had! (and i didn’t/don’t care).

As a major newbie in all things EE the Arduino was a great platform to learn. I’ve had successes, failures and the occasional smouldering component! But its been bloody good fun.

As a newbie I had no idea what a PIC was and how it was different from the atmel, this post has really helped to demystify what a PIC is and I’m glad you didn’t go into a deep technical comparison.

Thanks for the great advice.

Douglas Adams spotted it wonderfully in HHGTTG: we should build two giant spaceships, fill the first one with politicians, middlemen, lawyers, accountants and bureaucrats because they’re the cream of our society and send it to colonise another distant planet, leaving the second ship for the rest of us.
Then we simply forget to send the second spaceship.

BTW, if this is just a naming issue, how about renaming the device Flux Supercapacitor?

As a PIC guy (though I’m open to try the AVRs some day) I completely gave up trying to develop anything microcontroller-ish under Linux. This hurts me as I use Linux nearly for everything, but one day I simply got so frustrated that I ordered a mikroe.com compiler+dev board and when it arrived I got it running in seconds on a spare machine. It requires Windows and doesn’t run under WINE, but frankly couldn’t care less about that since it works.

later on i was just begging you in my mind you to stop. enough. it can’t survive this. but each time it did survived.
i feel pity for it, and designers. no one would ever predict dropping multimeter from car or dam.

i thought it will just explode on the pieces when you drop it from 3 meters.

it was way over the limits and rational thinking, you just wanted to destroy it. thats way beyond daily basis use.

im prety sure if you would drop a hammer from this dam it would brake. and this is a multimeter

please dont do that again, thats just wrong. if you want you can destroy everything. its just not fair.
and i feel pity for those devices.
i guess, i like happy endings

Too many Chinese exaggerate (exceedingly and unethically) about the quality and performance of their products.

They could say their product is limited but they are affordable. But they choose to say their products are “accurate”, “durable”, “high performance”, etc.

Too many of them default to misrepresentation. Or in other words, too many of them choose to be LIARS.

It causes others to form certain generalizations and opinions towards them and their products.

To me, this video perfectly demonstrates the consequence of their (unethical) actions. And I agree with everything said in the video.

WE SHOULD NOT SUPPORT LIARS.

Like your blogs and watch all of them even though I have to download them at work or home first as my wireless “broadband” is not fast enough. Very interesting but I think getting it more to the point and keeping within 7 – 15 minutes long would make them more more fun to watch.

Don’t stop!

Tom

The hackaday article links back to EEVblog…

Something a little more technical would be nice as well.

This is something I thought you would be interested in… I also would like to know if it really would work. Perhaps you should try it! http://hackaday.com/2010/03/10/50mhz-to-100mhz-scope-conversion/

Regards,
pghpete

Also keen to hear if there is a response from Fluke.

See for example http://www.tutorialsweb.com/smt/smd-components/chip-on-board.htm

Google “Chip on Board” for more information.

Jim

I did some digging around and found there are actually some quality meters coming out of China these days as well, like it or not.

I’ll prove it: Go ask your Fluke salesman to show you the “Made in…” label of all his meters. You’ll be surprised to find how many are made in China. Probably 80% nowadays and increasing. And Fluke’s little brother brand, Amprobe is all Chinese, coming from the same factories as other brands that are easier to knock.

They, and a few other brands, use standards like ISO, TUV inspections, and US quality inspections to make sure they don’t fall in the _cheap_ Chinese category.

Bottom line I guess is, not everything from China is crap, and Fluke (maybe it’s Fruke in China?) themselves prove that. So what’s their excuse for the high prices?

Most people would spill a little bit from a 40Oz bottle of malt liquor for all the dead homies, dave would just pull the leds out his bug box and stick them in a block of cheddar cheese.

I have a question thought, I’ve always wondered about these on chip ICs that looks like they are melted onto the board.

Are they “normal” surface mounted ICs under there? Do they use a standard PIC,AVR,MSP430 under there or is that some ASIC?

Great vid! It’s always exciting to see a product reverse engineered.

i love it when you get your aussie freakouts…keep ‘em coming !

Although more details on the actual mod would’ve been great it was an enjoyable watch and I hope to see more like this in the future.

Thanks Dave keep up the good work

In mixed company of lamen, I tell people Im an electronics architect. It works.

They understand that an architect does not actually build it or fix it, but they are the creative element, and it garnishes the respect I think it deserves.

Thanks dave for all the work in the review. I hope you sell a lot of meters through your ads.

You have some brass balls for letting someone publicly do that to one of your meters. I’m in the market for my first “pro” meter, and I had scratched you off my list.

I’m re-writing my list.

George Graves

I did cringe though every time you threw it and I heard the smack against concrete, I’ve lost a laptop that way (good thing it wasn’t new!).

And if you put a new inductor and LCD into it, did it still meet spec? I know it’s not analog, but after those drops, it’d have to be knocked out of calibration!

Having said that, if there is a reasonable way to test it, it might as well be done for comparison.

However, there are a few design problems which someone noticed: The switching power supply is opened, there is no shield. Imagine an electrolytic blowing inside, spreading on the CPLD, FPGA and what ever Blackfin is inside…

However $400 sound incredible. Still have limited trust in chinese products. Even my tektronis MSO4104 since is manufactured in China looks worse than it’s real predecesors manufactured in the US back in 1980.

I still have my original fluke 82, the first version. Dropped it many times from a few feet to roof tops, still working to this day. The only thing is the wafer switch is wearing out, but almost 20 years of everyday use I have no complaints.

That’s one hell of a meter!

I especially liked that you let the Fluke 28-II live another day.

Good to see that the meter would have probably been just fine if I was even more clumsy.

incredible…

it’s like bruce willis in die hard…

jajajaja…

Meter face up
Cover with water
Place in freezer

Will water -> ice expansion in the test lead plugs cause the plastic to crack and compromise the environmental integrity of the case?

The Architect and brickie analogy is a good one. Would they get a consultant doctor mixed up with a nurse? A lawyer with a clerk? I think not. Same industry, but quite different roles. Why so in engineering?!

In Germany, it’s illegal to call yourself an Engineer if you’re a technician or tradesman.

Here in the UK, we get heating “engineers” (plumbers) and automotive “engineers” (car mechanics).

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/7343483/When-is-an-engineer-not-an-engineer.html

I think the other problem is that often people have no idea that products are created; they know that they are made in factories, but have no concept of “design” outside the scope of the creative industries such as fashion and graphics. Since engineering is technical, it can’t possibly be creative…!

I think Fluke should start making mobile phone and laptop cases too. I’d like a laptop that’d survive six metre drops.

What video camera did you record the canyoneering stuff with, and would that survive a 6m drop off a bridge?

At least, please don’t do that with the Agilent Oled, be so kind and “only” fuck up the lcd version.

It was interesting to see the USPS Priority Mail box in the background.
Is that a common shipping method down under?

Thank You

He drove past my house…

gg

Great rant!

Ah, and before I forget it:
Dave, can you fix my computer?

Daniel

Surely rule one is “did the id10t plug it in?”

Neil

Now at work I have to explain to people what the difference is between Electronic and Electrical Engineering on a regular basis.

I like to listen to podcasts in my car and radio obviously doesn’t play video files. Can you also make the audio file availible as MP3 or OGG? Right now I convert these drivetime blogs myselft, but there might be some other people who like the idea

My radio has an SD-card slot so I can easily download audio files and play them.

Thanks,

Tom

Thanks for the response. One more question, you mentioned something in your agilent review about getting the B variant for review. Do you know what the difference is between the A and B variants of the agilent meters?

Thanks again.

PS
Maybe you can do a blog on including testability in design.
Test is usually the last thing on the designers mind until just before going into production then its ‘testing what testing! my design will work perfectly!’
It would make my life a lot easier.

The thing is, I can… I used to be a software engineer, and I used to be an IT technician in previous work so I can do all that stuff too.

Only, it’s not my job, we have IT technicians in school to do all that stuff. I don’t want to do their job for them, and anyway I don’t have administrator privileges on the network to fix their problems even if I tried.

Try telling that to a stressed English teacher who can’t make her laptop play DVDs on the projector

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=csR8q5QttDw&feature=related

Could you comment it?

Everyone’s needs are different, so I can’t say which one is best. Any lab needs two meters, so ideally you’d have one of each – one for everyday use, and another more complex one for data logging if you ever need it.

Dave.

Thanks again, for the lesson of Graphical LCD display development.

BR,
Cheng-Chih

Nice review. I need to purchase a DMM I’m stuck between the Fluke 289, 87 and the Agilent U1252A. I do electronic design, I’m looking for an accurate and fast meter. What do you recommend? Any chance you can do a comparison between the 3?

Thanks