Multimeter

Jul 30, 2007 1 Replies

Hi I want to buy a new Multimeter and there are a few features that currently I have no idea what they mean. Obviously I currently have no idea for those features but I wondered if somebody can explain to me what they are/do so maybe in the future I will need them.



  1. Conductance
  2. Motor Drive Measurement
  3. Smoothing
  4. Duty Cycle

Sadly (and surprisingly) none of the four were on the Common DMM Terminology link from that page.

Conductance is the multiplicative inverse of resistance, G = 1/R, in units of siemens (sadly, no longer mhos). Not terribly useful most of the time but easy to derive for a digital meter and makes another "range" that Marketing can flog. G not C since C was already taken.

Motor drive may go along with smoothing. It's a feature mostly useful for voltage/frequency measurements of large electric motors (duh ;-) because they tend to be electrically very noisy critters and "normal" meters may give false readings.

Duty cycle is the fraction of the period of a when a signal is (selectable) high or low, usually expressed as a percentage. A symmetrical square wave has a 50% duty cycle. Useful in checking an PWM circuit, for example.

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