| Electronics > Beginners |
| Why do I need more than 1 multimeter? |
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| soldar:
I have a whole range of meters. I have a couple old analog meters that I got decades ago when I was starting. I hardly use them any more but they are like old friends and they keep me company at my work bench. I have a bunch of cheap meters which I got because they were cheap and they are good enough for basic work with batteries or mains where I do not need precision. And I have some better ones, including a massive bench meter which is more useful for precision work. I find it useful to have a cheap meter at hand rather than have to go up or down two floors to get a meter just to test a battery or other simple task. A couple of months ago I was doing some mains work and I forgot to change ranges and I blew up a cheap meter. Thank goodness for that. Yes, I could get by with fewer meters but I find it convenient to have a bunch of them with different qualities and capabilities. I find it amazing that there are households with no tools. I feel I should have a basic tool kit in every room of the house. |
| chris_leyson:
In truth you only need one multi-meter. All you have to do is move the probes around to measure voltage differences. Same is true for current, just use appropriate shunt resistors and measure the voltage across the shunt resistor. Granted it takes a bit longer but it still takes time to read voltages and currents from several multi-meters and you can always get a ball park measurement with a scope. |
| Nominal Animal:
The reason you need two multimeters, is that with three multimeters you can verify (to some measure of reliability) that all four of them show consistent values for the same measurement, and that the fifth and sixth are not too far off. To be honest (and I'm not TEA yet!), I need two because I'm likely to break one by doing something dumb, and because I occasionally want to measure two voltages or a voltage and current at the same time. Plus, a third, cheapie one, would be nice to take with me, when I go meet friends about electronics, so I can keep my good ones at home. |
| CatalinaWOW:
One for the lab. One "safe" one for the work on mains voltages. One to keep in the car. One in the kitchen drawer to check batteries. One for the wife to destroy. Another for the kids to destroy. It just goes on and on. Fortunately most of these "needs" can be met with the free or nearly free low end meters. |
| Wimberleytech:
--- Quote from: wintech on July 22, 2019, 08:15:35 pm ---Why do I need more than 1 multimeter? --- End quote --- Because I can“t remember where I left the other one. :-DD |
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