Cheapy Capacitance Meter?

Ebay

This one looks like it could be decent:

Some of the even cheaper meters only go up to 200uF, and are +-7% on the highest range! It also doesn't take a weird sized battery.

-- Dave Platt AE6EO Friends of Jade Warrior home page:

I do _not_ wish to receive unsolicited commercial email, and I will boycott any company which has the gall to send me such ads!

Capacitor labeled...

VAX 334J 50V

0.33uF / 50V ?? ...Jim Thompson

-- | James E.Thompson, CTO | mens | | Analog Innovations, Inc. | et | | Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems | manus | | Phoenix, Arizona 85048 Skype: Contacts Only | | | Voice:(480)460-2350 Fax: Available upon request | Brass Rat | | E-mail Icon at

| 1962 | I love to cook with wine. Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Do you want to only measure the low frequency capacitance? At what frequency(s)?

Do you want to also measure the ESR?

What accuracy do you want?

How cheap is cheap?

"Jim Thompson" wrote in message news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

would be my guess. Looks similar in notation to silver mica caps. eg: J

Cheers

I've had these for at least 24 years :-) ...Jim Thompson

--
| James E.Thompson, CTO                            |    mens     |
| Analog Innovations, Inc.                         |     et      |
| Analog/Mixed-Signal ASIC's and Discrete Systems  |    manus    |
| Phoenix, Arizona  85048    Skype: Contacts Only  |             |
| Voice:(480)460-2350  Fax: Available upon request |  Brass Rat  |
| E-mail Icon at http://www.analog-innovations.com |    1962     |
             
I love to cook with wine.     Sometimes I even put it in the food.

Yup 'J' = +- 5% tolerance would be my guess.

Some multimeters have a built in capacitor meter.

--Winston

Jim Thompson wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com:

there's a schematic for one in the ARRL handbook,plugs into a DMM. won't handle electrolytics,large capacitances.

Some DMMs have a built-in cap meter.

--
Jim Yanik
jyanik
at
localnet
dot com

That's what I bought years ago - on Winfield Hill's recommendation.

I've been very happy with it.

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Go with a cheapy multimeter. I assume that if you cared what characteristics of the cap interested you or if you cared whether it had enough resolution for small caps or enough range for power supply caps, or ...or... you'd have said so.

Many cap meters and dmms with cap functions don't range high enough or low enough for MY general use. YMMV.

Hey, this is Thompson. Very, very cheap.

John

Harbor freight, $12.95 DMM.

On a sunny day (Wed, 29 Jun 2011 15:01:25 -0700) it happened Jim Thompson wrote in :

Make your own:

Way to expensive for Thompson.

John

A 555 coupled via Cx to a diode pump & moving coil meter.

"Jim Thompson" schreef in bericht news: snipped-for-privacy@4ax.com...

Build one yourself using a PIC, for instance:

Which seem to be derived from the mentioned by Bill Sloman already.

If your analog mind cannot digest this digital stuff, dig up some 555s and use an analog meter for the display:

The latter is an old one I ever build myself. Even seem to have a PCB design somewhere.

A real cheap one is described here:

said to be a poptronics design.

petrus bitbyter

Actually, an oscilloscope and a function generator will measure capacitance. Or just an oscilloscope.

John

I put one of these together yesterday. $11 + shipping. I did not pay for shipping because the total invoice qualified for free shipping.

Actually I bought 2 in error. I intend to make the second one into an AVR development board. I may need a new chip ($1.60) If this one is code protected...

It is a very quick build.