| Electronics > Beginners |
| Budget multimeter |
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| tooki:
--- Quote from: Menara on November 07, 2019, 05:04:40 pm ---Hi, Of course I did a long search on the forum but most reviews are around 2017's, I think many updates had occurred to meters market. A good recommendation of a meter around 25USD would be great ! Thanks ! --- End quote --- No, not many changes really, and even some of those changes are trivial. (If the differences were massive, there’d be tons of discussion.) These aren’t smartphones or gaming PCs, after all. |
| Shock:
I think an Aneng gets you into a meter the cheapest. In the secondhand market you might be able to pick up a cheap secondhand Fluke 70 series meter if you go a little higher but you need to obviously make sure it's been tested. It won't be amazing feature wise or measuring resolution but Flukes have great build quality. Multimeters in the lower end of town for most people is more about AC/DC voltage and current measurements, then continuity/diode/resistance checking, capacitance checking falls somewhere after that. But for proper inductance, capacitance/ESR and resistance measurements you want to work your way into an LCR meter. The best bang for buck is a DE5000 at around $100. Seeking inductance in a multimeter would be limiting your options considerably and as you are doubling up functionality wise chasing capacitance in a low end multimeter is not that important in the long run. |
| rsjsouza:
--- Quote from: Shock on November 08, 2019, 04:24:01 pm ---I think an Aneng gets you into a meter the cheapest. --- End quote --- Yes, Aneng and brands that have identical models (Richmeters, Zoyi, Zotek, etc.) are among the cheapest to get into the advanced ( =featured ) meter market. One model that is quite reasonable for the upper end of your budget is the AN870, which also goes as Richmeters ZT219 (some markets have it as Zotek ZT219). A very thorough review from the resident expert HKJ is here. An EEVBlog discussion is here |
| rstofer:
--- Quote from: tooki on November 08, 2019, 01:47:57 am ---A properly designed meter will not suffer damage from changing modes while connected to voltage. --- End quote --- So, I can connect to 480VAC on a 600V scale and switch to Rx1 with no damage? You are placing a lot of faith in those fuses and not every meter has fuses. Early Simpson 260s didn't and I have seen the results of attaching to 480V with the switch in the wrong position. The meter literally exploded. That's the fun thing about working on 480V, arcs turn to plasma at low current but substantial heating. Entire swithboards burn to the ground from a simple phase to phase fault. The plasma current is too low to trip the protective devices but high enough to melt aluminum or copper. I bought the ZT-X meter just for giggles and it has a little sticker in the lower right corner that says --- Quote ---STOP TESTING VOLTGAGE IN CURRENT MODE TEAR OFF BEFORE USE --- End quote --- The sticker is covering the A/mA and uA input jacks. In the instruction manual, they caution about measuring voltage on non-voltage scales. Over and over! I don't think they trust the fuses either. At least they are ceramic fuses. I was playing with the meter yesterday. The display is terrific! The accuracy is just mediocre (1/2% on most scales) but around here, mediocre is outstanding. |
| tooki:
--- Quote from: rstofer on November 09, 2019, 04:02:42 pm --- --- Quote from: tooki on November 08, 2019, 01:47:57 am ---A properly designed meter will not suffer damage from changing modes while connected to voltage. --- End quote --- So, I can connect to 480VAC on a 600V scale and switch to Rx1 with no damage? You are placing a lot of faith in those fuses and not every meter has fuses. Early Simpson 260s didn't and I have seen the results of attaching to 480V with the switch in the wrong position. The meter literally exploded. That's the fun thing about working on 480V, arcs turn to plasma at low current but substantial heating. Entire swithboards burn to the ground from a simple phase to phase fault. The plasma current is too low to trip the protective devices but high enough to melt aluminum or copper. --- End quote --- Not only can you do that, it won’t even pop a fuse (they’re across the current inputs, not volts), and the meter will still be in-spec afterwards. Remember my qualifier: in a properly designed meter. And this isn’t a hypothetical — people who test meters do just this to them, and expect them to survive without damage. Note that I did not say that the current jacks could be used; that would pop the fuse. I only talked about switching from V to any other range, not moving the inputs. Comparing an old analog meter is kinda pointless, since it wouldn’t meet today’s safety standards. A modern industrial meter like a Fluke 87V is expected to not only not explode when within spec but in the wrong mode, but to handle transient spikes many, many times higher than its maximum range. (Literally 8000V for Cat IV.) Now, the meter will not survive that degree of abuse, but it will remain safe. I don’t know whether it’s feasible to design an analog multimeter that can tolerate that kind of abuse, but for sure it’s expected of any halfway decent DMM. The Zotek meters are great value for money for electronics use, but they wouldn’t survive the abuse we are talking about. Wrong mode on the volts jacks, maaaybe. (I don’t remember the test results for them.) But an 8KV transient? Not a chance. |
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