19-05-2016, 04:35 PM
I actually have one of the black ones in my drawer here...
The build quality is superb - absolutely top-notch. Honest! That's because I built it!
Some years back, we used to buy them in kit form and give them to students to build on a course. They came from CPC and cost nearly £15 IIRC. CPC also carried the pre-built ones for between £5 and £10 IIRC. This was long before them being available on eBay for less than a fiver.
Generally, they went together well enough, and providing people fitted the resistors in the right places, they worked OK. In all but the earliest examples, the IC was already mounted on the PCB as a COB (obviously, they use the 7106).
They didn't have a battery door, and I bet the PCB has changed a bit since then. I'll take some photos one day...
We dropped them out of fears for safety. They are fine for low-energy electronics stuff, but I wouldn't put them across the mains or a car battery! Certainly not with the provided test leads...
On one of the forums recently, I saw that someone had built a couple into a box with a variac. That's actually not a bad use for them, providing you've provided external fusing. Probably cheaper than those super-cheap meter modules you can get on eBay, and no worries about providing power, etc...
As I've said before, the transistor tester (when working!) is useless, and it an indication of a meter that has paid scant regard to electrical safety.
I still don't understand why anyone would buy these when the Bside ADM01 offers so much more for just a tenner. Having said that, don't buy the ADM01 - get the ADM02 instead. The price is the same. The '02 drops the woefully inaccurate and limited frequency function and replaces it with a thermocouple for temperature reading - much more useful. I will update that thread in due course - just need to take a few photos... Also, now that it's in stock, I'm about to buy the £15 RS meter that was linked to previously - how similar will it be to the Bside meters?
The build quality is superb - absolutely top-notch. Honest! That's because I built it!
Some years back, we used to buy them in kit form and give them to students to build on a course. They came from CPC and cost nearly £15 IIRC. CPC also carried the pre-built ones for between £5 and £10 IIRC. This was long before them being available on eBay for less than a fiver.
Generally, they went together well enough, and providing people fitted the resistors in the right places, they worked OK. In all but the earliest examples, the IC was already mounted on the PCB as a COB (obviously, they use the 7106).
They didn't have a battery door, and I bet the PCB has changed a bit since then. I'll take some photos one day...
We dropped them out of fears for safety. They are fine for low-energy electronics stuff, but I wouldn't put them across the mains or a car battery! Certainly not with the provided test leads...
On one of the forums recently, I saw that someone had built a couple into a box with a variac. That's actually not a bad use for them, providing you've provided external fusing. Probably cheaper than those super-cheap meter modules you can get on eBay, and no worries about providing power, etc...
As I've said before, the transistor tester (when working!) is useless, and it an indication of a meter that has paid scant regard to electrical safety.
I still don't understand why anyone would buy these when the Bside ADM01 offers so much more for just a tenner. Having said that, don't buy the ADM01 - get the ADM02 instead. The price is the same. The '02 drops the woefully inaccurate and limited frequency function and replaces it with a thermocouple for temperature reading - much more useful. I will update that thread in due course - just need to take a few photos... Also, now that it's in stock, I'm about to buy the £15 RS meter that was linked to previously - how similar will it be to the Bside meters?
