What an excellent bit of kit Nick and at such as keen price!
It does blow my little homebrew ESR meter based on the VE7IT design clean out of the water as it would cost as much to make as does this ready-built device with a backlit digital display! And whereas an ESR meter is a 'one trick pony', the one that you mention also tests transistors (including P and N channel MOSFETS) and measures capacitance, inductance and resistance too. It has some similarities in layout to the capacitance meter kit that Alan Beckett and I built (albeit that kit has 7-seg LED displays).
http://proto-pic.co.uk/capacitance-meter-diy-kit/
I've attached a couple of pics, though they're also elsewhere in the hombrew section.
They come unboxed and I imagine that many users will keep them that way, but Alan and I put the meter in a little box with a front panel. The one at the link you gave would seem to lend itself to that arrangement. I think I'd be inclined to fit 'header pins' in the test sockets and fit test leads with croc clips as Alan and I did with the cap meter, rather than just poke the wire ends of components into the sockets.
Even though I'm well set up three times over for all the facilities it offers I'm very tempted and I'm dithering on clicking on 'But it Now'!! I have had a Peak DCA50 meter for many years. It claims to test MOSFETs as well as bipolar transistors and diodes, but whenever I've tried to test Mosfets - even brand new ones, it only ever says that they're diodes. It works well enough with bipolar transistors and is useful to sort out the higher gain ones in a batch.
It does blow my little homebrew ESR meter based on the VE7IT design clean out of the water as it would cost as much to make as does this ready-built device with a backlit digital display! And whereas an ESR meter is a 'one trick pony', the one that you mention also tests transistors (including P and N channel MOSFETS) and measures capacitance, inductance and resistance too. It has some similarities in layout to the capacitance meter kit that Alan Beckett and I built (albeit that kit has 7-seg LED displays).
http://proto-pic.co.uk/capacitance-meter-diy-kit/
I've attached a couple of pics, though they're also elsewhere in the hombrew section.
They come unboxed and I imagine that many users will keep them that way, but Alan and I put the meter in a little box with a front panel. The one at the link you gave would seem to lend itself to that arrangement. I think I'd be inclined to fit 'header pins' in the test sockets and fit test leads with croc clips as Alan and I did with the cap meter, rather than just poke the wire ends of components into the sockets.
Even though I'm well set up three times over for all the facilities it offers I'm very tempted and I'm dithering on clicking on 'But it Now'!! I have had a Peak DCA50 meter for many years. It claims to test MOSFETs as well as bipolar transistors and diodes, but whenever I've tried to test Mosfets - even brand new ones, it only ever says that they're diodes. It works well enough with bipolar transistors and is useful to sort out the higher gain ones in a batch.
Regards, David.
BVWS Member.
G-QRP Club Member 1339.
'I'm in my own little world, but I'm happy, and they know me here'
BVWS Member.
G-QRP Club Member 1339.
'I'm in my own little world, but I'm happy, and they know me here'
