Hi,
I studied electronics and even wrote articles for electronics magazines in the UK in late 70s early 80s, but I never worked in the field professionally (ended up working in software).
So I'm rusty as hell and have some questions, how things have changed. I've just started setting up a new workshop at home and I'm kitting out piece by piece as I go shelving, cabinets, scopes, sig gens etc etc, will be repairing some old 1930s tube radios as well as putting some hew stuff together, I also dabble with STM32 devices from time to time.
The last multimeter I worked with for actual bench electronics was an Avo 8 - so you'll appreciate I have some catching up to do.
OK so I do have a small utility multimeter, a small portable inexpensive thing - Southwire - 10040N - I bought a few years ago as a utility for doing very basic stuff around the house, I fully appreciate this has severe limitations for serious electronic circuit development.
I was playing around last night and needed to use this meter to measure the DC current through an Infred LED, the (very simple) circuit was powered by a reasonable bench PSU but it's current readout is crude, very low resolution.
With the meter on the mA range it was say 1.987 mA, but when I switched the meter to the μA range it read like 1,654 μA. (and yes, it does have a brand new battery in it).
So I have no idea which of those readings is closer to reality, and I was doing some rudimentary calculations too, so having uncertainty about the current obviously impacts what I'm trying to do.
Anyway I realize I need a better meter and I like Siglent a lot (I have their 4 channel 200 MHz scope and one of their signal gens) so I looked at some of these.
The SDM3045 and the more expensive SDM3055 are in the right price range and clearly blow that utility meter out of the water.
But something else came up as I was fiddling around, I wanted to be able to measure the current through one part of a circuit and the voltage in some other part of the circuit, so I wondered if in this day and age there are multi channel bench meters, like we have multi channel scopes and so on.
To my surprise I'm not seeing any, it seems they don't exist (except as very expensive serious professional units - like 7 grand).
Is this really true? if so I wonder why? surely its easy to make a multi channel bench meter, we have 4 channel scopes after all.
It seems the only way people do this is to have two meters - very costly.
Thought?
I studied electronics and even wrote articles for electronics magazines in the UK in late 70s early 80s, but I never worked in the field professionally (ended up working in software).
So I'm rusty as hell and have some questions, how things have changed. I've just started setting up a new workshop at home and I'm kitting out piece by piece as I go shelving, cabinets, scopes, sig gens etc etc, will be repairing some old 1930s tube radios as well as putting some hew stuff together, I also dabble with STM32 devices from time to time.
The last multimeter I worked with for actual bench electronics was an Avo 8 - so you'll appreciate I have some catching up to do.
OK so I do have a small utility multimeter, a small portable inexpensive thing - Southwire - 10040N - I bought a few years ago as a utility for doing very basic stuff around the house, I fully appreciate this has severe limitations for serious electronic circuit development.
I was playing around last night and needed to use this meter to measure the DC current through an Infred LED, the (very simple) circuit was powered by a reasonable bench PSU but it's current readout is crude, very low resolution.
With the meter on the mA range it was say 1.987 mA, but when I switched the meter to the μA range it read like 1,654 μA. (and yes, it does have a brand new battery in it).
So I have no idea which of those readings is closer to reality, and I was doing some rudimentary calculations too, so having uncertainty about the current obviously impacts what I'm trying to do.
Anyway I realize I need a better meter and I like Siglent a lot (I have their 4 channel 200 MHz scope and one of their signal gens) so I looked at some of these.
The SDM3045 and the more expensive SDM3055 are in the right price range and clearly blow that utility meter out of the water.
But something else came up as I was fiddling around, I wanted to be able to measure the current through one part of a circuit and the voltage in some other part of the circuit, so I wondered if in this day and age there are multi channel bench meters, like we have multi channel scopes and so on.
To my surprise I'm not seeing any, it seems they don't exist (except as very expensive serious professional units - like 7 grand).
Is this really true? if so I wonder why? surely its easy to make a multi channel bench meter, we have 4 channel scopes after all.
It seems the only way people do this is to have two meters - very costly.
Thought?