Products > Test Equipment
Big Clive's "Trashy" meter, unboxed ( Duratool D03047 multimeter )
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Nikola Tesla Junior IV:

--- Quote from: NoisyBoy on April 13, 2023, 12:36:46 am ---I will share my use case for my Harbor Freight meters.

When I work on electrical problems on my cars or tractors, I don’t need accuracy and precision, often all I need to see is whether it is receiving power, or rough voltage.  While working in the engine compartment, my gloves are covered with grime, oil, smudges, hydraulic fluid, etc…. It leaves a greasy black smudge on everything I touch.  While I have nice Fluke and Brymen handhelds, the black oil and smudge will never come off the case, and it will fill every cracks.  Since I am working on low voltage with no need for accuracy, I can care less about what happens to the HF meters, if they get trashed, into the trash they go.  I view them as disposable meters for truly dirty work.

DMM is like dishes at home, there is fine China, there is everyday dishes, they is plastic and paper disposable dishes. There is nothing wrong to have more than one type of dishes.

--- End quote ---

Though I strongly agree in "Buy once, Cry once", and I tend to despise waste so I understand where some posters are coming from, the description quoted above couldn't have been said better. There is a time and a place for disposable equipment. Gloves would be another good example. I don't use my deerskin gloves to change the oil. If you intend to not treat it like the disposable meter it is, then I suggest you do yourself a favor.

Fungus:

--- Quote from: NoisyBoy on April 13, 2023, 12:36:46 am ---DMM is like dishes at home, there is fine China, there is everyday dishes, they is plastic and paper disposable dishes. There is nothing wrong to have more than one type of dishes.

--- End quote ---

Yep. I wouldn't eat off disposable dishes at home but if I'm just grabbing something to eat there's my favorite chipped plate...

It's not the whole picture though. Refusing to touch anything but Flukes seems to me like a certain person sitting at a roped off table in a gold plated country club: I'm sure it's a fine dining experience and all but last night I sat on a hard metal chair on a noisy street corner, eating a kebab and drinking straight out of a can. Donald will never experience that, so all he'll never have a reference point to truly appreciate the finer stuff.

I'm a bit of a Clive at heart, I'll sit on noisy street corners for fun and I will use this meter. It's cute, it's clicky and it amuses me to do so.


--- Quote from: Nikola Tesla Junior IV on April 13, 2023, 02:14:45 am ---Though I strongly agree in "Buy once, Cry once", and I tend to despise waste so I understand where some posters are coming from, the description quoted above couldn't have been said better. There is a time and a place for disposable equipment. Gloves would be another good example. I don't use my deerskin gloves to change the oil. If you intend to not treat it like the disposable meter it is, then I suggest you do yourself a favor.

--- End quote ---

Here's another curveball...

I also own one of these: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004478400063.html

On paper it's completely useless - can't even measure voltages below 0.8V(!), but I find myself using it a lot lately.


As Clive notes: Manual ranging multimeters spend most of their time in either the 20V or continuity-test ranges and I'm sure we can all relate to that.

My little Zoyi switches between those two ranges on the fly. Hold the black probe on GND and poke around: If you touch a ground pin it beeps, if you touch a power pin it shows the voltage there. High impedance? It shows a resistance.

To switch to current measurement you just move the cable to the mA input. That's it. No need to touch a dial or do anything else, it senses the probe in the input jack and switches over to current measurement all by itself.

(it also tuts at you disapprovingly if you leave the probe there and there's no current flowing, which is cool)

It also reads voltages unbelievably fast. You know the game where you bang your probes together in continuity mode to see if you can beat the beeper? With this meter you can play that game with voltage measurements and the meter will win most of the time.

I'd never have known any of this if I hadn't spent my "fun money" on one a few months ago.


--- Quote from: NoisyBoy on April 13, 2023, 12:36:46 am ---I will share my use case for my Harbor Freight meters.

When I work on electrical problems on my cars or tractors, I don’t need accuracy and precision, often all I need to see is whether it is receiving power, or rough voltage.  While working in the engine compartment, my gloves are covered with grime, oil, smudges, hydraulic fluid, etc…. It leaves a greasy black smudge on everything I touch.  While I have nice Fluke and Brymen handhelds, the black oil and smudge will never come off the case, and it will fill every cracks.  Since I am working on low voltage with no need for accuracy, I can care less about what happens to the HF meters, if they get trashed, into the trash they go.  I view them as disposable meters for truly dirty work.

--- End quote ---

You need one of those ^^

It's one of the physically toughest meters ever made. Run over it with your tractor and it won't care (remember to upload the video).

There's also no dial to turn, just a single button to use it.
Fungus:

--- Quote from: David Aurora on April 12, 2023, 11:39:59 pm ---I guess though I've got a very different take on the trust thing too, maybe partly because I'm generally working at higher voltages. If I'm sticking my fingers in a 600V circuit I feel confident that my good meters are telling me the truth about what's there.

--- End quote ---

That's a whole other scenario, nothing to do with what's being discussed here.

PS: Clive says he uses Flukes at work.
David Aurora:

--- Quote from: Fungus on April 13, 2023, 08:44:33 am ---
--- Quote from: David Aurora on April 12, 2023, 11:39:59 pm ---I guess though I've got a very different take on the trust thing too, maybe partly because I'm generally working at higher voltages. If I'm sticking my fingers in a 600V circuit I feel confident that my good meters are telling me the truth about what's there.

--- End quote ---

That's a whole other scenario, nothing to do with what's being discussed here.

PS: Clive says he uses Flukes at work.

--- End quote ---

It isn't really clear what's being discussed here other than cheap meters. Is there a specific voltage or accuracy spec I missed in your post?

That'd make sense about Clive, I was always puzzled seeing those meters in his vids.

I don't really get the thing in your other post either about refusing to use cheap tools being like "sitting at a roped off table in a gold plated country club". It's not at all like a kebabs vs fine dining thing. Good tools aren't about elitism or being "finer stuff", the point is for them to help get the job done properly and quickly. It's also relative- if you're a hobbyist you might think a $500 or whatever meter is overkill, but if that's how you make your living the goalpost of what a tool is worth shifts pretty quickly. I'm a very low level hobbyist/shithouse machinist so it's hard for me to justify hundreds of bucks on a set of calipers for myself, but I'm not about to suggest that any machinist insisting on proper Mitutoyos over bargain bin ones is being too precious about their tools.

Case in point- 45 minutes ago I was on a callout where I needed to make a couple power supply adjustments on a pretty damn expensive bit of gear that I'd rather not stuff up and have to fix for free. The client isn't just paying for expertise, they're also paying for the peace of mind that if your meter says it's XYZ volts, then it's XYZ volts, no ifs or buts about it, their gear (read:livelihood) is in safe hands. They don't wanna see me whip out 3 meters to see if they all agree (and god knows what you're supposed to do if they don't when the clock is ticking), they wanna see the good stuff and the right reading.

I also used a proper screwdriver for the trimpot. I'm sure we could have gone kebab style and used a fingernail or sharpened stick or something instead, but I don't think they'd feel too great calling me back for the next job if I did that.

With all this said, I 100% get what NoisyBoy said about a good purpose of these things. Or simply just the budgetary thing- if all I have is a $5 meter then that's what I have to use, but from experience you can be damn sure that the first bit of money I make with it is getting dumped into a better one rather than buying another crap one. Hell, "Fuck you I like them" is a perfectly good reason too. I was just trying to understand the attraction.
EEVblog:
Ceramic fuses?  :o

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/trashy-meters-redux/?action=dlattach;attach=1759493;image
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