You want something accurate enough to be of use.

You want it cheaper than anyone can offer it to you(outside of someone selling stolen goods from his car trunk)

Do you really think you will find 'good, useable' meters for less than $3 each?

I want a reliable car for $100, but I doubt that my sincerest desire, no matter HOW MUCH I want it will deliver me a useable car for such a ridiculously low price.

Perhaps now is a time to re-evaluate your needs and separate them from your wants. Reality bites and nobody wants to wait, but getting some super cheap junk meters will only serve to teach you the valuable lesson of waiting AND it will cost you some money too.

My next thought is those cheap multimeters that Harbor freight and other places sometimes sell for 2 or 3 bucks at special sales times. I have used several and found them to be more than acceptably accurate. Some of them match my Fluke on low DC scales. Could you make up a panel and cannibalize the meters? Run them all off of one 9volt adapter. Again it would require you to wait till they run a special...

Wait, or wait, or waste some money. Hmmm, decisions decisions.

I'm sure you will do what is right for you after some more thought

You can get a decent car for $100, assuming you're content with an old beater. Or a go kart.

I'm not expecting these to be pinpoint accurate, ±.2 amps/volts is good enough for me, I was thinking marks every quarter amp/volt would be good enough.

Just FYI: the LED and LCD panel meters usually require an isolated power supply; and you can't measure the voltage that the meter is being powered by.

That actually makes that route look better to me...

[eta]
Also, you would need separate isolated or "floating" supplies for each LED or LCD meter; you couldn't power them all using one isolated supply.

nevermind, back to analog

 

+/- 0.2v out of 110 is 0.2%

You would be lucky to find this kind of meter for $30.00 much less $3.00

Good luck!

 

I meant +- .2 out of every volt

 

Read chapter 8:

http://rawfire.torche.com/~opcom/tbe/the_boy_electrician.pdf

Search for DIY Galvanometer, lots of hits, some with DealExtreme cheap laser pointers.

 

I don't think there is a less expensive meter available anywhere:

http://www.allelectronics.com/make-a-store/item/PM-375/WATT-METER-3750W-FS-125-VAC/1.html

I doubt that this is a direct reading wattmeter for that price. It's probably a DC micro/miliammeter that could be used for anything if you had the circuitry to back it up and changed the scale. I looked at the manufacturers web site, their technical specs for this meter aren't technical at all.

 

Get 15 harbor freight meters.. I have seen them for $3 on sale.

Here they are for $4.99
http://www.harborfreight.com/7-function-digital-multimeter-90899.html

Call and see about a price break on 15.
1(800) 423-2567

 

Awesome, my 15 little meters just arrived, now I need to do some resistor swapping...
anyone know the best way to determine the new resistor values needed?