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SOLVED: “LCR-T7” tester - reliable?
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eti:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/ARCELI-LCR-T7-Transistor-Tester-Capacitance/dp/B07V688CJP/ref=mp_s_a_1_2?crid=22E68KA5ZFP63&keywords=tc7+tester&qid=1672036747&sprefix=tc7+tester%2Caps%2C73&sr=8-2

I recently saw some info where folk have bought this tester (and the “LCR-T1” variant) and had issues with them failing after a short time - something to do with caps going short.

Any feedback would be helpful before I dive in and get one. Many thanks. Happy Christmas to you! 😃

Update: got me an “Arcelli” LCR-T4 (My favourite version of the tester) for a mere £7.99 with next day Shipping on Amazon Prime, so went for that instead.
tooki:
All of these testers share the same core design. If it were inherently unreliable we wouldn’t have this insanely long thread about them:
--- Code: ---eevblog.com/forum/testgear/$20-lcr-esr-transistor-checker-project/
--- End code ---
(Sorry, the dollar sign in the URL makes it impossible to link to)
Swainster:
In my experience (of a single T7 version), it has been fine, surviving the last 15 months of light use and a couple of incompletely discharged capacitor accidents without any failures. Of the 3 chinese component testers that I've got, it's still the favourite.
bffargo:
Beware, with the lack of cheap authentic ATMEL ATMEGA328 chips, in the last 6 months or so more of these clone testers have started putting in clone chips and changing firmware. They may no longer have the same accuracy or even support from the various open source project that started the entire series of these.  See the last many pages of the massive thread: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/$20-lcr-esr-transistor-checker-project/8025/
elecdonia:

--- Quote from: bffargo on December 26, 2022, 08:46:22 pm ---Beware, with the lack of cheap authentic ATMEL ATMEGA328 chips, in the last 6 months or so more of these clone testers have started putting in clone chips and changing firmware. They may no longer have the same accuracy or even support from the various open source project that started the entire series of these.  See the last many pages of the massive thread: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/$20-lcr-esr-transistor-checker-project/

--- End quote ---
I agree. I’ve purchased several transistor tester units over the past 5 years. Until about 1 year ago nearly all of them contained Atmel MCU chips, usually the ATmega328.

However, due to price increases and the current scarcity of raw IC chips, a single Atmel ATmega-series MCU chip is now priced higher than a complete transistor tester. Therefore the transistor tester manufacturers have substituted non-Atmel MCU chips which cannot run any of the existing open source software.

The only way to assess “which MCU” is if the vendor provides a photo of the PC board. But few (if any) vendors of these LCR units enclosed in plastic cases show photos of the PC board. Many vendors may not know which MCU is inside the unit they are selling.

For the LCR-TCx and LCR-Tx units I don’t think the TC1, TC2… or the T4, T7… numbering scheme is as meaningful today as it used to be. Several manufacturers now make these units. Their model numbers are often inconsistent with each other.
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