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| Multimeters with (Color) Graphic Display - Summary & Comparison |
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| luma:
lol, that's the reaction that I expected coming into this. The model you link above is essentially the same thing as an 80s vintage LCD - fixed digit display made to a price point. I'll just say this: not everyone has the same use case. If you're happy with that, great sounds good glad you have a solution you like. I'm looking for something different. So, how about something closer in line with what the OP was talking about 3 years back? edit: in regards to replacing the rechargeable battery after 3 years: yeah sounds great! Make it replacable, then I can keep it charged and then only replace when the battery is actually worn out instead of every time it drains. |
| Fungus:
--- Quote from: luma on January 23, 2022, 03:42:54 pm ---lol, that's the reaction that I expected coming into this. --- End quote --- So why ask? --- Quote from: luma on January 23, 2022, 03:42:54 pm ---The model you link above is essentially the same thing as an 80s vintage LCD - fixed digit display made to a price point. --- End quote --- I know. That's why I said "caters to the imagination of..." instead of "has a hires screen". Maybe you can get a Uni-T UT181a, it sounds perfect for you. --- Quote from: luma on January 23, 2022, 03:42:54 pm ---edit: in regards to replacing the rechargeable battery after 3 years: yeah sounds great! Make it replacable, then I can keep it charged and then only replace when the battery is actually worn out instead of every time it drains. --- End quote --- It's not just the battery, it's the screens, too: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/replacing-oled-screen-on-an-agilent-u1253a-multimeter/ |
| Markus2801A:
--- Quote from: luma on January 23, 2022, 02:23:09 pm ---Here we are in 2022 and I'm still looking around for something much like the meter described in the OP. High DPI color screens are now cheap as chips, microcontrollers to run them are even cheaper, and the UI toolsets to develop nice looking solutions have had a few years to bake. An initial search around the forum and the internet suggests... not much has changed :( Anyone have any thoughts on the state of the market today? Here's what I think I'd enjoy in a meter in 2022: * Bigass display with clear font rendering. It's not 1986 anymore, we should be able to do something a bit more readable than fixed-digit LCDs. * Let's have it be color while we're at it. Why not have a different color scheme when I'm in VDC mode than when I'm in VAC, etc. Screens are big and high res and color and cheap, let's put them to use! * I don't have time in my life to wait around for my meter to boot up. You should be able to fire up a UI and start taking readings in a second. * Let's throw in USB charge and data in the same port while we're at it. --- End quote --- I totally agree! We have 2022 and almost nothing changed since years regarding Multimeters of almost every kind (regardless if they are Benchtop or even worse when looking at handheld units!) Okay keithley has one with touch screen, that's great! :-) a right step forward! It should be possible to produce good quality handheld units with maybe also with touch display! I really like the "different color scheme..." thing you mentioned. Why not give e.g. amperage measurements red color, Voltage maybe Blue, AC Voltage orange or whatever the user wants to. You can get cheap Mobile phones and customize almost everything and the cameras and screens are relative great, especially if compared to the LOW res used it todays DMM`s!!! Why do those companies not even try to progress in those above mentioned categories? |
| Kleinstein:
--- Quote from: Markus2801A on January 24, 2022, 01:39:01 pm --- I totally agree! We have 2022 and almost nothing changed since years regarding Multimeters of almost every kind (regardless if they are Benchtop or even worse when looking at handheld units!) Okay keithley has one with touch screen, that's great! :-) a right step forward! It should be possible to produce good quality handheld units with maybe also with touch display! I really like the "different color scheme..." thing you mentioned. Why not give e.g. amperage measurements red color, Voltage maybe Blue, AC Voltage orange or whatever the user wants to. You can get cheap Mobile phones and customize almost everything and the cameras and screens are relative great, especially if compared to the LOW res used it todays DMM`s!!! Why do those companies not even try to progress in those above mentioned categories? --- End quote --- Things have changes in the last 10-20 years: lower cost (e.g. $20 range) hand held meter start to have more than 2000 counts, like 6000 counts. The ADC in the handheld DMMs is changing from classic dual slope ADC of the 1990s to sigma delta ADCs. Auto scaling becomes standard. Some Handhelp DMMs use digital RMS (though not often noted and often advertised and with limited BW, but fast reaction). Increasingly more of the cheap meters get at least some protection worth the name, though still not good. Bench DMMs with graphical display. For most uses a 3.5 digit resolution is perfectly fine - the important points are often more if the protection is OK and the continuity test / auto scale Ohms speed. A touch display is error prone and may need internal relays or more seprate switching. The mechanical range switching can provide quite some internal . switching. I don't think you would like tough screeen operation and than constant plugging the test leasd to different terminals for the current ranges, Ohms and voltage functions. The usual DMM runs on normal batteries and one would not like a daily recharge cycle like with modern mobile phones. So low power use is still an important factor. |
| luma:
--- Quote from: Fungus on January 23, 2022, 04:14:44 pm ---Maybe you can get a Uni-T UT181a, it sounds perfect for you. --- End quote --- After a few days of searching around, I think this is the right answer for me, thanks for the suggestion! --- Quote from: Fungus on January 23, 2022, 04:14:44 pm ---It's not just the battery, it's the screens, too: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/replacing-oled-screen-on-an-agilent-u1253a-multimeter/ --- End quote --- That's actually kind of where I'm going with this. Thanks to cell phones, high resolution displays with MTBF in the 10s of thousands of hours are available for a dollar or two. Early experiments with things like mono OLED from 10 years ago didn't go well, but.... 10 years have passed and the economics of mobile devices has pushed display technology a LONG way in that time. Open a supplier catalog for evidence. Others here are pointing out problems with touchscreens, and I get that and agree for a lot of use cases but... "high-res color screen" doesn't necessarily mean it also has to be a touchscreen. No reason not to use existing control surfaces (big dial wheel primarily) with a nicer display. 7 segment displays are low power but that's about the end of the advantages they offer. Visibility on a reflective LCD 7 seg display is hot garbage compared to even crappy modern LCDs. With a backlight they can be a little more readable, but then you stop being low power and might as well have used a color LCD. Just because we are all holding multimeters that were created with technology from a few decades ago doesn't mean that it always has to be this way, and that no improvements could possibly be made. Uni-T seems content to wait around for Fluke et al to make a thing and to then make a clone of that thing. Fluke's product cycle is glacial for their own (good) reasons, but not everyone out there needs the value that Fluke brings to the table (which are often unrelated to the actual performance of the device). One can hope that product managers from other companies can identify the pretty huge gap here and maybe develop something to fill it. Until then, the UT181a suggestion seems to be a reasonable tradeoff of visibility, performance, and price for me. Teardowns of that unit show a date of 2013 on the PCB, and devices seem to have hit the market in 2015. It seems like the DMM market just stone stopped trying new ideas in the 7 years since... |
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