Geekzone: technology news, blogs, forums
Guest
Welcome Guest.
You haven't logged in yet. If you don't have an account you can register now.


View this topic in a long page with up to 500 replies per page Create new topic
Prev1 | 2 
13 posts

Geek


  Reply # 738680 30-Dec-2012 19:15 Send private message

http://www.supercheapauto.co.nz/online-store/products/SCA-Multimeter-Digital-Palm-Size.aspx?pid=156453#Description

This appears to be the one you purchased.
It should have come with one black and one red test lead. Haven't ever seen a meter with two probes supplied the same colour. If you don't want to complain to SCA then you will have to identify one of the leads as black or red by colouring the appropriate lead with insulation tape or whatever. Com is black, amp or volt/ ohm socket is red. Amps is used only very occasionally. To cover metal probe so only tip is showing involves getting a piece of spare electrical wire, removing its plastic covering from the internal metal wire and then sliding it onto the metal probe. Think of it as a plastic tube. At worst you could use Sellotape to achieve the same result. Or you may not bother and just make sure your hands are steady when taking measurements.



4729 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted
Subscriber

  Reply # 738681 30-Dec-2012 19:17 Send private message

Oops sorry I wasn't clear enough. I have different coloured probes, just the connector on the MM isn't colour coded.



4729 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted
Subscriber

  Reply # 739407 2-Jan-2013 15:58 Send private message

Wow talk about a run of bad luck! Now my soldering iron died on me. No indication, just won't work this morning. Odd.

Is anything 40W of bigger going to do the job? I see Mitre 10 has some for $18.

1195 posts

Uber Geek


  Reply # 739426 2-Jan-2013 17:19 Send private message

networkn: Wow talk about a run of bad luck! Now my soldering iron died on me. No indication, just won't work this morning. Odd.

Is anything 40W of bigger going to do the job? I see Mitre 10 has some for $18.


What do you use it for?  You don't need a lot of grunt for electronic work and a fine tip is generally better than a coarse tip for this work.

It it's this one http://www.mitre10mega.co.nz/shop/handtools/soldering/fuller_soldering_iron_40w_112491/ then I'd say it'd be quite OK for electronic work.  40 watt should be plenty.  Not much good for soldering flashings or spouting though. Laughing





HTC One
Nokia N9
Nokia E7
HP Touchpad
Dell Inspiron 14z i5

4239 posts

Uber Geek


  Reply # 739440 2-Jan-2013 17:44 Send private message

Technofreak:  Not much good for soldering flashings or spouting though. Laughing



Roofers don't actually solder them anyway these days onsite. The just rivot then and use silicon. Seen so many leaking metal gutters as a result, as it fails pretty quickly. 



gzt

3196 posts

Uber Geek

Subscriber

  Reply # 739442 2-Jan-2013 17:50 Send private message

40W is ok. Quality of the iron and tip make a huge difference.

1195 posts

Uber Geek


  Reply # 739451 2-Jan-2013 18:09 Send private message

mattwnz:
Technofreak:  Not much good for soldering flashings or spouting though. Laughing



Roofers don't actually solder them anyway these days onsite. The just rivot then and use silicon. Seen so many leaking metal gutters as a result, as it fails pretty quickly. 




Yeah I know, silicon is seen as the answer to everything these days, with some very poor weathering as a consequence.  It was a tongue in cheek comment to some extent.  More to make the point of getting the right iron for the job in hand.




HTC One
Nokia N9
Nokia E7
HP Touchpad
Dell Inspiron 14z i5

2457 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted

  Reply # 740130 4-Jan-2013 12:42 Send private message

Jaycar has a mini pocket multimeter for $6.50 stock code QM1502. Rated to 250V (but read on).

I've worked with a number of DMM's over the past 30 years, the last 17 as a electronic design engineer (started off with military products, now agricultural technology). The best purchase I've ever made was a Fluke DMM, it is still running after 25+ years and I think it is now on the second or third battery. The number 1 issue with cheap ones is safety/reliability, and I refuse to use them anything higher than 100V. Anything over 100V starts becoming dangerous and I do not risk my life with a cheap toy.




You can never have enough Volvos!




4729 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted
Subscriber

  Reply # 741322 7-Jan-2013 22:28 Send private message

Hmm well it stood up to Voltage and Resistance checks without any issues, decent spend of $40 I think.

Now I have to find out why two terminals which are supposed to be reading 0v are reading 90v and the other moving constantly between 40-60v.
Both are connected to a headphone jack which has a resistors connected to them.



4729 posts

Uber Geek

Trusted
Subscriber

  Reply # 742113 9-Jan-2013 11:03 Send private message


126 posts

Master Geek


  Reply # 743215 11-Jan-2013 11:17 Send private message

I was looking at this last week
http://www.jaycar.co.nz/productView.asp?ID=QM1524&keywords=multimeter&form=KEYWORD

Wonder how well the auto-ranging works on it, or am I asking for trouble?

899 posts

Ultimate Geek


  Reply # 743356 11-Jan-2013 15:28 Send private message

@hangon

I have one of those meters (amongst others), it works just fine for my purposes.

You can also manually range it with the button. A nice simple multimeter to do the job if you ask me.

NB: I mostly only do DC low voltage (0-50v DC) low current (0-5A) tinkering, where I really don't care too much about accuracy as long as it's "in the ballpark".






---
James Sleeman

My hobby - listing small amounts of interesting/useful hobby electronic components hardware and stuff on Trademe for cheap, all good geek stuff for the "maker" revolution ;-)

Tip for Trademe addicts: install an addon for your browser to get thumbs for all listings.  

126 posts

Master Geek


  Reply # 743368 11-Jan-2013 15:40 Send private message

Thanks sleemanj sounds it would work for me just fine as well (mostly batteries n USB gadgets).

Prev1 | 2 
View this topic in a long page with up to 500 replies per page Create new topic



Twitter »
Follow us to receive Twitter updates when new discussions are posted in our forums:



Follow us to receive Twitter updates when news items and blogs are posted in our frontpage:



Follow us to receive Twitter updates when new jobs are posted to our jobs board:



Follow us to receive Twitter updates when tech item prices are listed in our price comparison site:




News »

Trending now »
Hot discussions in our forums right now:

A reason not to shop at dick smith
Created by dsnz1, last reply by AKLWestie on 17-May-2013 22:45 (82 replies)
Pages... 4 5 6


Chorus is cutting the cost of VDSL to service providers from June 7
Created by maxzzz, last reply by Ragnor on 16-May-2013 02:57 (40 replies)
Pages... 2 3


A new project coming to Geekzone
Created by freitasm, last reply by CapBBeard on 18-May-2013 20:20 (194 replies)
Pages... 11 12 13


HTC One (2013) owners' discussion
Created by Dingbatt, last reply by bradstewart on 19-May-2013 02:22 (1409 replies)
Pages... 92 93 94


Galaxy S4 to run stock Android, by Google
Created by kiwitrc, last reply by Lambchop on 17-May-2013 02:54 (30 replies)
Pages... 2


Sitting on a boring conference call
Created by SaltyNZ, last reply by SepticSceptic on 17-May-2013 16:52 (14 replies)

Office 365 service outage 2013-05-18
Created by freitasm, last reply by networkn on 18-May-2013 22:31 (12 replies)

Samsung Galaxy SIII Discussion and Owners Thread
Created by networkn, last reply by Johnk on 18-May-2013 14:50 (5522 replies)
Pages... 367 368 369



Geekzone Jobs »
Most recent NZ jobs in technology:

IT Technician
Posted 18-May-2013 22:27

IT Technician
Posted 18-May-2013 22:27

Office Girl
Posted 18-May-2013 13:27

CRM Lead/ Senior MS CRM Consultant
Posted 18-May-2013 09:27

Business Analyst - Technical Web Focus
Posted 18-May-2013 09:27

Senior Front End Developer
Posted 18-May-2013 09:27

Client Support Analyst
Posted 17-May-2013 23:26


Geekzone Live »
Try automatic live updates from Geekzone directly in your browser, without refreshing the page, with Geekzone Live now.

Are you subscribed to our RSS feed? You can download the latest headlines and summaries from our stories directly to your computer or smartphone by using a feed reader.

Alternatively, you can receive a daily email with Geekzone updates.