Products > Test Equipment
Fluke 185 Review
mimi123:
I have about the same results as yours with square waves.
I measure it with a sine wave and seems that the meter is BW limited with a filter at 25Khz -3dbs.
This is at 1Khz:
And this at 25Khz:
My other multimeters are worse than the Tek but for this type of waveforms I only use the oscilloscope.
I think that this multimeter is designed to measure the normal AC 220 50Hz and their harmonics or AC 110 60 Hz of course but not much more. :-//
shakalnokturn:
Recently bought a used Fluke 183 and thought I'd bring this topic back from the dead.
Thanks to Wytnucls for the good review.
I'm already considering the possibilities of up-hacking this 183 to a 185 plus maybe adding Bluetooth.
PCB and CPU seem identical including the function selector contacts.
Accessing the extra position for temperature range isn't hard.
Don't know the size of the SPI EEPROM on the 185 on the 183 it's a 2kB 25LC160
Expect the accuracy differences between 183 and 185 to be based on factory sorting and not on manufacturing differences.
Expect the only other differences (other than accuracy) to be stored in EEPROM.
Expect the key and function selector mapping also to be in EEPROM, considering that the 185 has temperature position in place of Amps position on the 183. (Remapping the function selector would allow to leave the Amps position as-is and have temperature in next CW position.)
I've dumped my EEPROM with following default settings:
POFF: 021
LOFF: 016
Beep: OFF
HiRes: ON
Pol: OFF
Edge: POS
delta AC:1.31mV
delta DC:0.08mV
delta AC+DC:0.1mV
Cal date: 12-2014
FW version: 1.01 (I suppose this is in the CPU only.)
Serial number seems to stand out in the dump although I cant confirm, the back label is missing on my DMM.
Details and dumps from Fluke 185 EEPROM's welcome, I'll fool around with them.
shakalnokturn:
Someone on the TekScopes@groups.io group was nice enough to send me a copy of the command set. There isn't much regarding calibration in it unfortunately.
Could anyone with a Fluke 185 or Tektronix TX3 run the key test by holding F2 while powering on (press F2 twice to pass the LCD and beeper test), turn selector to "temperature" and check what code that returns, same when turning to "Amps"?
The 183 returns "06 00" on "Amps" but the previous position (capacitor) is "04 00" so I'm expecting the 185 to return "05 00" on "temperature", just trying to confirm that the key positions are software defined.
Now I have the commands I suppose the next step will be setting up a RS-232 interface and throwing them at my DMM while capturing the SPI communication to the EEPROM to try and map as much of that memory as possible.
If anyone has a copy of the Tek WSTRM software (WaveStar for Meters) I'd be pleased to have a copy of that!
msquared:
Hello shakalnokturn,
I've got a TX3, here's the codes returned for each switch position and button.
Rotary Switch positions:
V = 01 00
Hz = 02 00
Ω/->|- = 03 00
-|(- = 04 00
°C = 05 00
A = 06 00
Buttons (Rotary in V position)
F1 = 01 07
F2 = 01 08
F3 = 01 09
F4 = 01 10
blue = 01 03
Light = 01 04
Range = 01 02
M/M/A = 01 01
Hold = 01 05
delta = 01 06
Hope this helps.
btw.
Thanks for the programming manual. :)
shakalnokturn:
Thanks for going to the trouble msquared.
The switch test returns a code corresponding to the function selected and not the physical position of the switch.
Either the switch functions are individually defined in EEPROM or only DMM model is stored in EEPROM and the layout is defined in CPU ROM.
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