ESR meter : ELV ESR-1 documentation translated to English, for anyone interested

[JeanF]

Hello,

these days I was doing a bit of googling about ESR meters, they seem to be quite popular everywhere. There are plenty of options, many interesting designs and discussions here on the forum, and also quite a few options for commercial units or kits to buy...

By the way, many thanks to Kripton2035 for his repository, not only about ESR meters ; many cool projects to browse. 

Anyway, I was looking at the model ESR-1 from ELV (here), they provide a user manual (here) but it is only in German, and I don't speak German. The schematic and BOM are probably enough for many people on this forum, but I was curious to see what they had to say about this circuit. There are PDF translators out there, but the ones I tried gave bad results due to PDF page layout ; somes blocks of text were missing and the text was scrambled.

After a bit of effort I put together a quick translation of it. You can find it here

Nothing revolutionary, but it may be interesting for someone ; and it includes assembly instructions so that could be useful if anyone wants to buy and build this kit.

I know there have already been many discussions about ESR meters, and I've read many different opinions ; some people swear by them, others hate them, others prefer proper LCR meters, others prefer capacitance bridges... So in order to leave this post open to discussion, what are your favourite tools or techniques, about finding faulty capacitors in consumer electronic devices ? Feel free to comment.

Thanks,
JF

[hugo]

Hi,

Another ESR meter/component tester, that they sell is (KT200).
Does ELV ship internationally?

Thanks

[JeanF]

They ship at least to other european countries, as listed here, but as you will see, shipping is quite cheap for Germany, OK-ish for zones 1 and 2, but gets reeeeaaaally expensive for zones 3, 4 and 5. (I bet they don't ship many orders to Croatia...)

Canada is not mentioned but it might be worth it to ask them by email... or maybe use a reshipper from Germany if you really need to

[kripton2035]

Hi,

Another ESR meter/component tester, that they sell is (KT200).
Does ELV ship internationally?

Thanks

I've already shipped elv esr meter to the US for some eevblog member. shipped to me and then to the US.
elv does not ship outside europe (at least they did not at the time)

[kripton2035]

JeanF, are you OK to put your english translation on my repository ?

[JeanF]

Yes, of course 
thank you again for all the effort you put in maintaining this repository, it is a very useful resource