Products > Test Equipment

SM8124 Battery Impedance Meter

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Terabyte2007:
I was poking around eBay a couple weeks ago, looking for a battery impedance meter. I came across some extremely expensive ones, that I could not justify the cost. I then I saw this one, directly out of China for around 40 US dollars. The specifications seemed pretty good as far as chinese specs go, but I was willing to give it a try. I placed the order and received the unit about 2 weeks later. To my surprise, the unit is built fairly well, it has an outer soft rubber protective boot, and it uses a 4-wire lead kelvin type probe. Instead of clips, it uses a pinned tip which appears to be gold plated and fairly thick, around 6-8 mm. The leads are solid and heavy, they seem to be nice quality. The unit runs off a 9-Volt battery and can measure battery voltage from 0 to 100V and impedances 0-20 Ohms. Here are the documented specifications:

Voltage Measurement Range:

0 - 1.9V - Resolution 1mV
2V - 19.9V - Resolution 10mV
20V - 100V - Resolution 100mV

Power +/- (1%+1)

Internal Resistance Measurement Range:

0 - 199.9 mOhm - Resolution .1 mOhm
200 mOhm - 1999.9 mOhm - 1 mOhm
2 Ohm - 20 Ohm - 10 mOhm

Power +/- (3%+1)

Testing batteries which have known resistance, the unit seemed bang on. I don’t think the meter has any real over voltage protection if you were to measure over 100V because in the manual they warn several times about over-voltage damage and the need to place the lead polarity correctly. I also did notice that the lead tips are made with a quad spiked top arrangement which means that you need to place the tips flat to get the 4-wire kelvin reading which is not very hard to do on most batteries.

I must say, this is not a bad unit for the cost, It performs well, seems pretty accurate and appears to have a decent build quality. I think it’s a great addition to my bench and allows me to not only check battery voltages accurately but also test the internal health (Meaning Impedance) of the said battery.

eBay Link: http://www.ebay.com/itm/220588452030?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

The Electrician:
Hook it up to a resistor of several ohms and have a look across the probes with a scope to see what it's doing.  Is it applying a sine wave?  If so, what frequency?

HighVoltage:
$ 39 including free shipping to the USA
Euro 63 ($ 87) including free shipping to Germany
You have to wonder, how they come up with these prices
But the unit looks interesting

kripton2035:
I bought the same for $30 + $12 shipping to france a year ago.
make some search in ebay and be patient you will find one around $40 shipped to europe.

Terabyte2007:

--- Quote from: The Electrician on March 15, 2014, 06:32:54 am ---Hook it up to a resistor of several ohms and have a look across the probes with a scope to see what it's doing.  Is it applying a sine wave?  If so, what frequency?

--- End quote ---

I believe in the specs they quoted 1kHz +/-10%. I'll test that today and see what the waveform looks like and the frequency.

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