How to use a voltage meter ideal manual#

ItвЂ™s important to pay attention to which is lit up. MAXMINAVG:В This is telling you whether your maximum, minimum, or average reading is being displayed.Hold: This indicates whether or not your display is frozen to show the last reading you took.Here are some of the terms you may see on your display: (There are some Greek characters on there, actually.) Once itвЂ™s explained, however, itвЂ™s easy to read. If youвЂ™re not familiar with digital clamp meters, the display can look like itвЂ™s in Greek. Your accuracy will usually be expressed as a percent, kind of like the margin of error you see in surveys. Even though clamp meters are super reliable, they arenвЂ™t as accurate as DMMs. If you have a meter with a 0.2 amp resolution, donвЂ™t expect to be able to see changes of. Hint - the resolution lets you see if there are any changes in the signal that youвЂ™re measuring. For example, resolutions differ by meter. Safe and convenient.Д«efore you start using your clamp meter, know what youвЂ™re looking for. No shutting off circuits, no cutting into wires - just clamp the meter around a wire and get your reading. HereвЂ™s the best part - unlike old-fashioned test probes, you can use a clamp meter to get a current reading without breaking a circuit. If thatвЂ™s the case, you can plug test leads into your clamp meter to analyze things like voltage. Your purchase may have includedВ extra sensors to make the tool even more versatile. However, digital clamp meters arenвЂ™t limited to just AC/DC current measurements. So can you still use a digital clamp meter to measure a DC current?Д¬lamp meters that can measure DC current use the Hall EffectВ to give you a correct measurement. If youвЂ™re familiar with how direct currents work, you might wonder how a clamp meter would help you in a situation when you need to measure DC currents instead of AC.ДC currents flow in a fixed polarity, AKA the magnetic field doesnвЂ™t change. Clamp meters are great for high AC currents, which make them an ideal tool to have around. This is what measures the magnetic field of a current as it flows through a conductor.ДЄ current transformer senses the fluctuations in the magnetic field and converts the value to an AC reading, which shows up on your display. But I needed one in an emergency and it was only $24.95 at Radio Shack.Inside theВ hard jaws of your new digital clamp meter is ferrite iron. And the required battery is one of those stubby 9V's that don't come in rechargeable form. It remained on until I manually turn it off. The DVM I mentioned in feature one was a fail on all three points. The required battery or batteries should be the kind that are rechargeable. If you don't have this your batteries will need recharging or replacing much, much sooner because we all forget to turn these things off.ДЄctually, there is a third feature that relates to the second one. I just bought a DVM that has a back that folds out from the top so it would have been ideal in this respect if they had only put a stop on it to prevent it from falling over. If the meter has a light-emitting display this isn't so important but most don't in my experience. This is so you can read it when it is impossible to have it directly beneath your eyes. There are two other features of a multi-meter that are indispensable in my opinion.ДЇirst is a built-in support on the back so that you can tip the thing up to almost vertical. Lastly, always check the multimeter maximum voltage and current ratings to be sure that it can handle what you want to use it for. Can't decide? Here's a kit that has four different types! Second-to-lastly, there are a ton of different types of probe leads, including alligator clips, IC hooks, and test probes. continuity, capacitance, frequency, etc.). There are a variety of other 'extra' features depending on manufacturer and cost (e.g. Next comes the fun part: features! All multimeters have voltage and current meters (otherwise they'd just be called voltmeters and ammeters!), and most also measure resistance. Other than those two main differences, you'll want a multimeter that has separate ports for current and voltage measurements (this is a safety issue, both for the meter and for yourself).

How to use a voltage meter ideal manual#

There are also auto-ranging multimeters, that automatically detect the measurement range, and manual ranging multimeters where you have to choose a range yourself (or start with the highest setting and work down). There are a few key differences between multimeters, the main one being analog versus digital:ДЄnalog multimeters show real-time changes in voltage and current, but can be difficult to read and log data.Дigital Multimeters are easier to read, but may take some time to stabilize.