Thursday, March 30, 2017

Boxing the LC meter

Got one of those "cheap" LC meters from the usual online shopping site:
The unit reference as advertized is:
"LC100-A High Precision Digital inductance Capacitance L/C power Meter module"
I might add: just doesn't make toasts but better than sliced bread...






Quality of the meter is not bad and looks quite accurate, at least I measured some marked capacitors and inductors and was in the specified values/range.
The only lower construction quality part was the alligator cable that was delivered with the meter, it was not soldered, just crimped, that's been fixed already:



So far it has helped me to identify some cap's that lost marking and confirming inductors for filters.

The box used is a box for housing electrical stuf with water projection protection (not needed) and was used mainly because it's plastic, relatively cheap and I could make all the holes with a knife.

It ended up like this:

I used very short cabling for the leads so it does not influenciate much the measure.

Before every measure or changing ranges a calibration/zeroing is needed, here's the procedure:

* Inductance: Short the terminals, press the reset (red button), insert the inductor and then measure

* Capacitance: Open the terminals, press the reset (red button), insert the component and measure

Inside:

Power is provided by an usb cable directly to the board. The power switch was set to always on.

Another view:


In the mean time I wrote the knobs function directly on the plastic cover since I kept forgetting.
After the multimeter this is probably the second most used test equipment here, really handy.

Have a nice day!