Another Chinese LCR meter?

[reagle]

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Handheld-LCR-L-C-R-Meter-Tester-Touch-Screen-LCD-mini-USB-100-120Hz-1K-Hz-0-20-/140736697888?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item20c48f9620

Any idea of the quality or even who makes them? No name on the unit is telling though

[notsob]

over to frankie

[iloveelectronics]

Funny you mentioned this. I was just doing some searching and found this company yesterday. I believe this is the manufacturer's website:

www.applent.com

They seem to make some nice (looking) instruments.

Judging from the fact that it's 1kHz, I think this is the AT824 model. I don't understand why the seller has erased the maker's mark and model number on the picture though.

[reagle]

Now we need somebody to do a teardown!

[reagle]

In the process of fiddling with measuring impedance of batteries for something I am working on, it occurred to me that I already have an ESR meter. It's called SM8124 Battery impedance Meter.  It's just a 1Khz impedance meter, that works just fine with caps. And the 20Ohm limit is perfectly fine for  most caps we care of ESR for. So that plus a DMM that measures capacitance, and I am almost there. Sure I don't get all the other measurements an LCR meter would give me, but it also is dirt cheap ($50) and all-over ebay.  http://xn--tnq722av6lsjo.xn--fiqs8s/Digital-Multimeter/SM8124.htm

[kripton2035]

they are not that cheap. the 100KHz model is more than 400 euros, so quite more expensive than the IET DE5000 that seems a reference here on eevblog ...

[The Electrician]

In the process of fiddling with measuring impedance of batteries for something I am working on, it occurred to me that I already have an ESR meter. It's called SM8124 Battery impedance Meter.  It's just a 1Khz impedance meter, that works just fine with caps. And the 20Ohm limit is perfectly fine for  most caps we care of ESR for. So that plus a DMM that measures capacitance, and I am almost there. Sure I don't get all the other measurements an LCR meter would give me, but it also is dirt cheap ($50) and all-over ebay.  http://xn--tnq722av6lsjo.xn--fiqs8s/Digital-Multimeter/SM8124.htm

Have a look at this thread:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/projects/capacitor-measurements-on-an-impedance-analyzer/

The attachments in the first few posts show plots of impedance and ESR versus frequency.  The green curves are impedance and the yellow curves are ESR.  Impedance is not the same as ESR.  Your battery impedance meter is measuring impedance (apparently), not ESR. For a battery, those two things may be the same, or nearly so (depending on the battery type and condition, I suspect), but for a capacitor they are generally not the same, unless the capacitor is quite lossy, or the measurement is made at the capacitor's series resonance frequency.

[reagle]

My thinking was - sure you measure impedance, and not the ESR with these meters. But it may be enough to see that the formerly low ESR car ain't anymore

[The Electrician]

My thinking was - sure you measure impedance, and not the ESR with these meters. But it may be enough to see that the formerly low ESR car ain't anymore

You have a point when it comes to detecting capacitors that have become defective due to large increase in ESR, but the measurement is made at 1 kHz, not the more common 100 kHz.  A capacitor with relatively low capacitance may have a 1 kHz reactance that is high enough to mask its increased ESR.

Also, if you want to measure the ESR of a non-defective capacitor, the battery impedance meter won't do the job, so it's not generally an ESR meter substitute.

[Hydrawerk]

I would never buy a LCR meter with color graphic LCD with underlight... It just consumes too much energy.

[mikeselectricstuff]

I got one of these recently - build quality pretty good, UI a bit untidy, Mains adapter borderline. Will do  a review sometime.

[reagle]

I got one of these recently - build quality pretty good, UI a bit untidy, Mains adapter borderline. Will do  a review sometime.

Battery life measured in seconds?

[mikeselectricstuff]

I got one of these recently - build quality pretty good, UI a bit untidy, Mains adapter borderline. Will do  a review sometime.

Battery life measured in seconds?

It has 2 medium-sized lipos - not measured but probably a few hours

[Hydrawerk]

Well, does it really work only up to 1 kHz? Is there any advantage of the color LCD?? Does it have any graph statistics, or anything similar?

[mikeselectricstuff]

Well, does it really work only up to 1 kHz? Is there any advantage of the color LCD?? Does it have any graph statistics, or anything similar?

There are 3 models - 1, 1+110, 1+10+100

Display colour/resolution isn't used particularly well

[PA4TIM]

OT, about battery meaurement http://www.pa4tim.nl/?p=3550
The real complex impedance of a battery is very interesting.
You can measure the Rs by pulse loading it. But if you measure Rs + jX you notice a good battery is neutral to inductive, a bad battery is capacitive ( like >10 nF) Rs increases if the battery gets discharged but does not tell about the health, The reactance seems to be more usefull.

But to be honnest, i think I'm the onley nut who did this experiment ( even used a vna)