[Noisebridge-discuss] New Multimeter needed....

[Dr. Jesus]

On Mon, Jan 24, 2011 at 11:06 AM, jim <jim at well.com> wrote:
>
>
>    Holy Moly! Thanks for the link to the $6 MPJA meter!
>
>    For me, el cheapos work great, but i do power supply
> and audio work where most of the measurements are
> discovering catastrophic failures and continuity.
>    I'd love to know detailed criteria for assessing a
> multimeter. One approach might be to point to the specs
> of a good model (fluke 17{5,7,9}, which i looked up).
>    But it'd be really helpful to understand the why of
> each criterion: in measuring capacitance, what are the
> use cases and acceptable tolerances? For me, if the RC
> figure allows, I can look to see if the "needle" moves
> to know if it's working (can't do that with pfs, of
> course); cap tolerances for me are +-50%, give or take....
>    Is there a need for a does-all meter or is it
> acceptably useful to have a reasonably good VOA meter
> along with separate cap and L measurement tools (maybe
> a frequency generator and scope...)?
>
>    As to "Why We Can't Have Nice Things at Noisebridge",
> that issue makes me furious!
>    It's horribly inconsiderate to take things away: I'm
> guessing mainly it's a sloppy, selfish mentality to the
> effect that "I'll just use it and bring it back after
> I'm done", which very often fails to "I'll just use it
> and let it sit around unused and forgotten somewhere at
> my house forever more after I'm done."

Sometimes people break meters at NB because they don't know how
current sensing works.  Then they get thrown away.  Noisebridge's
mission is more about education than running a multimeter farm, so
this doesn't bother me that much.

I guess I'll make another poster showing how to use a multimeter
without breaking something.  That might help.