Best Cheap Capacitance Meter?

I suggest you wait a while before taking the plunge. I ordered a few of them and awaiting delivery. However, I decided that the built in charger was a bit much, so I opted for just the LiIon battery with an external charger: $14.47 for 4 batteries and a charger. There are cheaper ones available but the one above is from a Calif source.

I'll order some later with the cell phone micro-USB charger for the few instruments where battery access is tricky and the connection terminals require a pry bar to disconnect.

The ads claim 8.3V initial voltage but which I expect to drop to 7.2V for most of the operating time. That may not be enough voltage to run some of my devices. Notice how the typical alkaline 9v battery craps out at about 6.8v at 100ma draw: What would be nice is a built in boost regulator to keep the voltage at perhaps 8.5V. Overtemp fuse? Whazzat?

It will also be interesting to see how the capacity compares to the advertised 600 or 800 ma-hr. If it's like the capacity claims for the various "fire" brand 18650 LiIon cells, divide by at least two.

Incidentally, the reason I'm interested in a LiIon 9V battery is not the alleged increased capacity or recharge feature. It's that I'm getting sick-n-tired of crap alkaline batteries leaking all over my instruments and toys. I didn't take photos of my 9V Duracell leaking batteries, but I do have some exploding 9v batteries: and some leak-in-the-box AAA Kirkland batteries (which admittedly are

Could you please clarify the 'quirks'?

Let us know your opinion on its performance. Thanks,

-Kevin

I will report on it. Delivery might take 2-3 weeks. It's probably on one of those chinese slow boats, so stay tuned.

Dave M

They don't come with any instructions so you really have to experiment with them, but there are web sites where collaborators have got together and compared notes, thereby de-mystifying them. The issues I had with mine were the inability to turn it off quickly without negotiating a menu system, thereby wasting battery power, and the dut insertion clamps. I kept getting 'device error/device not recognised' errors until I discovered you can't just insert the dut anywhere you please; you have to use up the slots from right to left whereupon it suddenly works flawlessly every time identifying all sorts of exotic components. I could probably have sorted both issues without all the fiddling around simply by reading one of the users' forums but I quite like to mess around. They're dirt cheap so why not buy one and have a play?

There's similar looking gizmos from different vendors, some have the ZIF socket labeled 123222 etc on both rows so you can more easily pick the apropriate contacts. As far as I know there's two versions with the graphical display, having slightly different component values and firmware.

I think the design comes out of some open-source hardware project.

yeah, I have one. It seems to give good answers but I haven't got anything to test accuracy beyond maybe 5% (I have a 1% meter but it needed repair and is now so old and hasn't been calibrated so I would only count that as

On Sat, 15 Oct 2016 03:37:35 -0700 (PDT), speff

Jim-in case you're supressing goog*le which I have used on the road, what happened to the LCR meter I sent you? It doesn't measure ESR but seems to do a good job on ordinary L and C parts.

--sp

I just found what seems like the best deal yet, for a 100 kHz hand-held LCR meter, for about $125 including delivery:

It is from Kyoto, Japan. The price does not include taxes, tariffs, duties, or other charges.

Paul

I have the same one and find it to be very nice. Accurate and plus it lets you choose the test frequency at 60, 120, 1k, 10k and 100k Hz. Reads out D and ESR as needed.

Worth the money, I think. I recommended it up thread and qualified it noting it cost more than the

I had constant problems with a B&K capacitance meter, So I bought the AADE kit, it worked for about a year and then started acting up with the capacitor range constantly changing. Then the final straw, I was measuring an inductor and it started swinging* through values. Three days ago I ordered the DE5000 from,

Mikek

• if I put it in the freezer, it will act properly for an hour afterwards. I tried freeze mist but could not isolate it.

Mikek

Did you try reflowing all the solder joints?

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Oh ya, every single one, checked the regulator. Moved everything, tightened, banged, swore, sometimes it even works. But then the next time it starts swinging up and down with no relation to the the value being measured.

Mikek