I need a Digital Multimeter! electronics newbie - Page 1
Forum section: electronics / beginners

author: giolicious
author_rank: Newbie
timestamp: November 11, 2011, 04:36:55 am
content: I'm trying to look for a cheap digital multimeter but pretty accurate enough for testing. I found a $38 Mastech MS8268 on ebay but is it good enough for beginners like me? Obviously, flukes are too expensive for me.

author: IanB
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2011, 04:44:56 am
content: Price is no guarantee of accuracy in a meter.When choosing a meter you first need to decide what you want to use it for. Is it for electronics or electrical maintenance? Is it for low voltages like batteries, or dangerous voltages like mains? What things do you want to measure: voltage, current, resistance, capacitance, temperature, ...?Once you have your needs mapped out, then you can shortlist meters with appropriate features.

author: ablacon64
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2011, 04:53:17 am
content: IanB is right. Define what you want and it's gonna be easy (as in "less complicated") to choose.When I started I bought an all-in-one multimeter (voltage, current, temperature, frequency, whatever), I ended up discovering that it would not do well any of its functions.If you want to learn I recommend you to avoid auto range, but you need more care on measuring. Today I'm a fan of the analog.

author: Simon
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 11, 2011, 06:35:33 am
content: standard question, and standard answer is amprobe AM220 or 240. unless you have a very specific requirement in which case please explain.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 11, 2011, 06:47:00 am
content: Why not have a look at Dave's $50 & $100 Meter Shootout videos, lots of material to help you evaluate your decision and some short lists of meters worth considering. You be pushed to find any better comparisons.

author: ablacon64
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 11, 2011, 05:16:16 pm
content: Well remembered, this is a good place to start:http://www.eevblog.com/2011/04/30/eevblog-168-how-to-set-up-an-electronics-lab/

author: EEVblog
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 12, 2011, 12:31:38 am
content: I have 52 minutes worth of advice on the topic:Dave.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 12, 2011, 03:39:16 pm
content: I've often seen these kind of questions about a topic Dave devoted an entire (or multiple) episode to. Are posters just too lazy to search or is it that it's hard to find the correct episode if you don't know what you're looking for and could it be made more accessible somehow?

author: Kiriakos-GR
author_rank: Super Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2011, 04:19:10 pm
content: Probably if the " Episodes List "button in the front page haves another color, it could possibly track down more attention.http://www.eevblog.com/episodes/

author: McMonster
author_rank: Frequent Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2011, 04:20:03 pm
content: Sometimes it's hard to find the episode even if you know what you are looking for, happened to me quite a few times. I think this is mostly due to crap search on the blog's side. The search field is nearly on the bottom of the site and it doesn't work properly. You can go directly to Google and usesite:eevblog.com <keywords>, but not all the people know and can use it.Also I think Dave could consider using more detailed tags, that shouldn't be needed with fixed search, but would be nice. Just my 0.03€.

author: Flavour Flave
author_rank: Regular Contributor
timestamp: November 12, 2011, 04:32:13 pm
content: Maybe have a sticky in the beginners section titled something like "noobs look here before posting first time" and have the collated Q&A's posted in there.

author: Unknown
author_rank: Unknown
timestamp: November 12, 2011, 05:48:50 pm
content: Yes, the eevblog.com search is useless. The episode list is fairly usable, but is getting kind of long. More tags and linking to something like Google site search instead of the Wordpress search might help.