Smart Tweezers: Automatic RCL meter: Is it any good?

Does anybody know about this: Smart Tweezers: Automatic RCL meter offered at

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Does it really do what they claim?

Michael michael snipped-for-privacy@yahoo.ca

Reply to
Michael
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You work for them or have any relationship to the company?

Jon

Reply to
Jonathan Kirwan

There is no reason to think that it doesn't work.

Maybe it can be difficult to understand how such an instrument could work. Then consider this:

If the unknown component was a simple resistor it would be easy to find out its value by putting a voltage over it and measure the current, or sending a current through it and measure the voltage. These methods are used in Ohm-meters.

If we instead send an AC voltage through it we can measure the current, and how it changes, and we can draw conclusions about the component, if it is capacitive or reactive.

This instrument contains a small computer which can analyse the resonse to an AC signal, a fast pulse, and analyze its response.

So it can tell how much resistance, capacitance or reactance it shows, because the current will be in or out of phase with the voltage.

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Roger J.
Reply to
Roger Johansson

It should do. Inspecting the Jpeg of their PCB, it looks like they're using a couple of AD9833's DDS chips and some CMOS switches to make the quadrature phase measurements. With the advent of cheap DDS chips and micros with built in ADCs it looks like all the component testing makers have/must, move in this direction. G.P. AC component bridges now looking more and more like the Victorian artefacts that indeed they are. The clever bit is the amount of programming they've been able to stuff inside that micro. Looks a really nicely designed bit of kit, at a decent price. (their max capacitance of '900mF' looks out of place. More in keeping if '9mF') regards john

Reply to
john jardine

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