General > General Technical Chat
Seriously, anyone know the story and meaning of "OL" on multimeters?
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magic:

--- Quote from: tom66 on April 24, 2021, 01:39:18 pm ---I want to know why budget multimeters show a single "1" when in over-range.  If the concern is over logic complexity, I can understand not wanting to implement text characters, but a single or double hyphen would probably be more understandable.  So many times I've worked someone unfamiliar with multimeters through a problem and they've said things like, it reads "1 Volt"  and then only do you realise that they had it on the mV range and that's the overload indication.

--- End quote ---
The answer is "because ICL7106" ;)
Now, what Intersil was smoking, ask them...
hans:

--- Quote from: macboy on November 03, 2018, 02:00:27 pm ---I can't believe overload is leading the poll. A meter is decidedly not overloaded with an open circuit on resistance mode. The measurement however is certainly over limit. Over limit works for all modes.

--- End quote ---

Well, if you consider an Ohms measurement using a CC, then overload could be applied (somewhat reciprocally) that the open circuit voltage is being exceeded.
I agree over limit makes more sense, but my first intuition was that this terminology (among other generic terms) by chinglish translations.
Nonetheless, there are more conventions that we carry over by tradition rather than common sense. Otherwise the whole world would be using metric by now, and we certainly wouldn't have 0.635mm SOP packages that look like 0.65mm :horse:
KE5FX:

--- Quote from: TimFox on April 24, 2021, 07:58:42 pm ---I repeat the important bit mentioned above:  "OL" works nicely on 7-segment displays, but "OR" is perhaps harder to read.

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But it's used even when 7-segment displays aren't.  In addition to the Fluke above, the mainstream HPAK DMMs also display "Overload" with open probes in the resistance mode.



It's especially weird because in continuity test mode, the default display is simply "OPEN."  Why didn't they do that for resistance as well?   :-//
SpecialK:
∞ infinity


Coming from an analogue multimeter to an autoranging DMM I only ever really saw the OL in ohms mode.  Luckily I've never measured voltage greater than the DMM could handle and I much less often measure current, usually I measure that from the bench power supply.   
Cerebus:

--- Quote from: Mr. Scram on November 03, 2018, 08:09:54 pm ---It's obviously "Out of Luck".

--- End quote ---

Na, can't be that. The seven segment abbreviation of that would be 5.0.0.L. and they just put 0.L.   :)
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