I hate multimeters now

suicidal.banana wrote 12/06/2017 at 19:26 3 points

Just because i need to vent somewhere, if somebody wants to share their multimeter pain then feel free too, if nobody replies thats fine too.

So today i was working on a little rgb led lamp project (im only a beginner so yea, no jetpacks or hoverbikes just yet) and i needed power, so after a little looking around online i noticed half the ppl making a similar project these days just cut the charging plug of a phone charger and use that, and i happen to have like 3 drawers full of old random chargers etc.

So i cut one, make a nice split with heat shrink tubes (whats with all chargers of the past years using some teeny tiny coax? wish they'd still have plain ol' usb cables) and then figure i should test it before soldering it in, i hook up the multimeter, nothing.

So i shrug, pick another charger, cut it, heat shrink, blabla, test, and its giving me random outputs between 10-16volts, while its a 5v charger

Shrug again, cut another, clean it up, test it, this one does absolutely nothing again.

This goes on for like 7 chargers until i literally lost it, stomped on the multimeter till it started beeping, and pull a oscilloscope out of a cabinet.

I pretty much already gave it away in the title, but yea, to my amazement, 'suddenly' all chargers deliver a steady 5v too the oscilloscope, and it turns out the problem this whole time was the damned multimeter...

So there, i hate multimeters now, spent like 4h going back and forth between a load of chargers, pulling my hear, and re-reading every tut on multimeters i could find because i was convinced i must be measuring wrong or something.

Lesson learned: 'Normal price' multimeters (€30-40 range) are terrible, and its much better to just take the extra few mins to set up a scope, or even just shell out €150ish for a real proper multimeter.

Venting complete ;D one last tip for any reader, avoid the Velleman DVM850BL, it looks alright and the brand is actually pretty good from what i've heard, but yea, fml and this thing.