Products > Test Equipment
Poll: Handheld meters with minimally-annoying auto power off (APO)
Fungus:
--- Quote from: joeqsmith on April 01, 2023, 06:31:01 pm ---The free meters from HF have the highest battery life I have measured and a mechanical switch to turn them on and off. Plus the added benefit of each position of the selector switch has only one function. It's the perfect meter if this is the only metric used. And... did I mentioned these are free with purchase....
--- End quote ---
Added.
The metric is "not annoying on the bench" so I guess they count. :)
joeqsmith:
They are in many ways better than my first Fluke DMM which was a bench meter. The free meter has longer battery life, smaller, lighter, lower cost. My guess is it just about as electrically robust as the Fluke was too.
Fungus:
--- Quote from: joeqsmith on April 01, 2023, 06:57:08 pm ---They are in many ways better than my first Fluke DMM which was a bench meter. The free meter has longer battery life, smaller, lighter, lower cost. My guess is it just about as electrically robust as the Fluke was too.
--- End quote ---
They definitely have something going for them in terms of being simple to use and not-annoying. I'm tempted to get some of Big Clive's favorite trashy meter with the Fluke-like holster.
https://youtu.be/-QDW0LRQVrY?t=1280
floobydust:
I'll never buy a multimeter with an "APO" icon on the LCD, that is beyond stupid.
Are alkaline batteries made of gold-pressed latinum in china, why does the meter spazz out and beep and then beep and then long beeeeeep it's off, pressing a button to wake up and it BEEPS, and then function/range back to what it was and it's BEEP BEEP BEEP again. Imagine the factory people dying beeped to death from all the noise.
Aneng AN8008 defaults: APO time in minutes 15 0xFB: 0x0F, Backlight time in seconds 15 0xFC: 0x0F beep beep beeeeeep beeep beep ahhhh left in the dark where's the buttonz can't see anything LOL. A multimeter that seems to do standup comedy.
I have old DMM's with 2,000hr and another with 12,000hr battery life. I can leave them on for days.
APO should be smarter - reset the APO timer if there's activity in the readings. Just reading OL or 0.000V etc. then, like a PC screen saver with no mouse movement, turn it off after XX minutes. Look for say a 20% change in readings to reset the timer?
Fungus:
--- Quote from: floobydust on April 01, 2023, 08:03:17 pm ---APO should be smarter - reset the APO timer if there's activity in the readings.
--- End quote ---
Some meters do that.
eg. My Brymen does. My Fluke 187 doesn't.
I guess the best way to use a 187/189 is to disable auto-power-off completely (or set it to many hours) and use Eneloops.
The 187's 72 hours total isn't much lifetime but swapping the 4xAA batteries is quite fast/easy - no rubber boot to remove and just two thumbscrews to get the back off.
(I leave mine unscrewed - it's rubbery and stays on just fine by itself).
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