RE: Advice on buying a Digital Multimeter needed

["Ian Lowe" <ianlowe@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I would previously have suggested the UT70 meter from UNI-T (Maplin sell
them).

I have had one for a couple of years now, and it's been absolutley
brilliant
- including what I thought was a little gimmicky to start with, but now use
a lot: it has an IR link to the PC's serial port (cable supplied with the
meter) and can stream readings to the bundled PC software.

*very* useful.

The reason I say "previously"... Mine developed a fault that
could have been
fatal - it stopped reading AC voltage, whilst still happily reading DC.

As the more electronics minded ukha'ers will recognise straight away, this
means that the meter will happily "work" reading DC voltages from
batteries,
PIC chips etc... But when you use it to check if a mains circuit is live -
it will give you a zero reading (well, a couple of microvolts DC as you
always get when you measure voltage on a big loop of copper).

In my case, I had the wall socket unscrewed and the live feed disconnected
and was folding the cable back out of the way when I accidentally touched
the (grounded) metal backbox, which thankfully tripped the MCB for the
house. I'm always skittish around mains (a very sensible paranoia to have,
I
feel) but it was pretty clear that things could have been a lot nastier.

So, when Neil says:

>Like most things, you get what you pay for.

That would be a "hell yeah!" from this corner!!

Ian.