Hi welcome to Teardown! Tuesday Let's take a look at an interesting meter. I've actually had this one for a long time. You've probably seen me use it in the odd video here and there, but I haven't got around to doing a teardown of it. Let's have a look.

Thank you very much! Key side for us sending this one in it is the rather interesting you 1461 A. It looks like a regular multimeter and it is a regular multimeter, but it's also a mega tester hence the big test button here and anywhere from 50 volts up to a thousand volts. So it's got that mega functionality built in which not many meters on the market do. So fantastic.

It's got a an OLED display. there are other models in this series which have an LCD display and I won't turn it on to show you because that'll violate my rule of turning on before taking it apart. But suffice it to say that yeah, the OLED is really nice indoors, but you try and use them outdoors and they're pretty crap and they chew battery and things like that. Not as bad as some of their our previous series meters that have actually done this, but yes still.

they've got an LCD version, but it does not have the full multimeter functionality like this one has and it's actually a very impressive multimeter. like 0.09 percent and it goes down to it's got a it's a 60,000 not count display or 66,000 I think and it goes down to a 6 micro amp range on the current. So it really is quite a nice meter. And it is.

Here it is. Where is it? IP 67 So it's waterproof, its drop proof, super rugged meter, and well, it's a real nice bit of kit. about 900, just a smidgen over 900 US dollars a street price for this puppy. but I believe it does come with the hard case and it comes with the bluetooth adapter as well.

Why they can't build this into their meters? I don't know. Comes with the infrared USB Cable comes with all sorts of probe accessories and and all. Yeah, regular cow stuff. but it also comes with a remote probe as well.

hence why you notice that it's got a little extra interface like that that you can actually get a switch and see there's actually a switch on top of that and you can actually take samples or whatever with that. and that goes into actually plugs into here and you'll see there's an extra connector down inside there. I'm not necessarily a big fan of that. Well, on a general-purpose meter, if you have a need for that, then that's you know, an awesome function.

Of course you can. Basically, you don't have to touch the meter, you've got the button right there on the end of the probe to sample that. But yeah, for a general purpose meetup night. and I just don't like the look of having connectors in there.

But anyway, this is a beast of a meter. so you know what we say, you're on the Eevblog, don't turn it on, take it apart. I Don't have my screwdriver right to hand so I'm gonna give it a thumb. Let's go and it's just like the one I've looked at before, the UI 1282, a Keysight's new white rugged multimeter and I've beat the crap out of one of these.

Clicky. If you haven't seen the video of beating the crap out of this thing, it's basically exactly looks like exactly the same thing. And it wouldn't surprise me if all the housing and everything else is exactly the same. but these aren't like real big meters.

Take a look that's compared to the eevblog meter. I mean that's like yeah, these things are not great for just general purpose. You know you surround the bench. In my opinion, they're just like really big and just take up a lot of room I Much prefer a real small compact with me that like the BM 2, 3, 5 just for you know, general purpose meter on your bench just for you know, measuring your basic stuff and things like that.

This this puppy is designed for industrial field use. You know it's big, its rugged, and it's going to do the business just like this one. I Have no doubt it's going to be just as rugged, just as waterproof as this baby. Wow Check out this serial number like one with the digits in front I Wonder if I got the first unit I don't know I probably had it for that long I may have, but yeah, it's exactly like the other one.

It's got the absolute winning case design if I can get that off there. Fantastic for the fuses and the battery's down here. Uses that for doublea's and they've got these rubber surrounds on here which are just absolutely brilliant. So they've definitely used the same case because look, they haven't got the extra fuse in here for the 10 amp range like they did on the other one.

and well, it's a dead giveaway because they don't actually have a 10 amp jack on here. They've only got microwaves and milliamps, so if you're into high current stuff, then it's going to be no good. which is a bit unusual for a big industrial meter like this. If you buy this as a 1 meter does everything, then yeah, that could be a showstopper.

But anyway, let's go. You can see some diodes down in there and I'm not sure if ordinary comes with the Lithium batteries, but if it does, aha, we know we're chicken dinner. I mean these things are just awesome. They're not cheap, but jeez, if you want the ultimate performance from any double-a or triple-a battery power product, then that's definitely the way to go.

All right, let's lift the lid and Tada, we're in like Flynn We're gonna go to our one cable here and I Do believe it's exactly the same as the previous one in terms of as I said, like same housing and everything you'd have to review the video to see. I've got some shielding up there, but whoa here we go. Oh there is our magic transformer that generates the high voltage. Bingo! I wonder why the top of the common Jack there is purple? what's going on there? I'm not sure what that is weird.

Hmmm. Anyway, the front end is a yeah. Apart from the 10 amp power jack which was in here at all you know standard fare, this is 600 volts cat 4. it's going to do the business.

This key site would have designed this and it looks very nice. We've got two thermistors here with the heat shrink on there to stop them, you know, exploding violently. I've got a couple of guests discharge tubes down here neat And we've got our requisite ceramic input resistor down here shielded or ceramic input divider whatever it is our main input cap. We've got our diode protection not a huge amount extra on the input and we saw this contact arrangement on the U 1282 A.

so I won't go through details on that one again. Okay, it's - Garneau microscope time. Let's check this puppy out and we can zoom in on various things were seen the front end. there was no a 1k input protection resistors like we saw on the 1280 to A.

but yeah, I guess they don't need it for whatever requirements they've got. Looks like we've got ourselves a Poly switch down in there. That's nice. Let's have a look at the main chipset.

it'll be no surprises for guessing. Now it's exactly the same and yep, it's the Hai Kaun Hy 31 31 I'm very intimately familiar with this puppy and you might see why in the future. And it's a nice chipset. By the way, it's worth looking at the data sheet for this thing if I haven't mentioned it before.

It does have lots of info on not how all the input switching and configuration and stuff like that works. It's really a good datasheet anyway. Well, we're missing a little 5 pin stop 23 there and melt. Gotta love the milk.

Just throw it in for good measure. No worries whatsoever. Soldering looks sorry, looks good. no issues at all that I can see and what else we got Oh 5 - that'll be at elo 5 to Op amp would be my guess.

it's not. doesn't have to do anything critical so cells that'll be a low dropout regulator. triple 1, 7 or something like that Oh Fire three that would be a four, four oh five three analog switch Really old-school 4000 series I See my vintage got ourselves a bunch of tents another rat TLO five or itla five two MUX And here we've got ourselves a max 4583 that's a analog switch. And once again, like a better, probably better performance specs than just your four.

Oh Fire your 4000 series CMOS maxes and things like that and bingo, we have ourselves the Analog Devices 8436 putting it nah, don't have it upside down. All the electrons will fall out there. We go. that's your true RMS converter.

Of course. if I put a straight down as I said hard to see. You know, depending on the angle of the lights and things like that, it can be hard to read the code, but you get them at the right angle and Leo that sticks out like a dog. Finally, but here's what we want to see.

We want to see how they're generating the high voltage because all the other stuff is just, you know, multimeter stuff we've seen in the U 1280 280 now. So check that out if you want to see more details of that you can clearly see. look at analog ground Split here. Complete Ground split.

It only joins. Looks like it only joins through there. but apart from that, that looks like there's a clear lid in there. So yep, they've only joined it at one point so you don't want any.

Okay, you want all your current flowing back to the one star point effectively so they know what they're doing and the main process is going to be on under here. Nine Point, Eight, Three Main I Can't remember if that's what the other meter was running it or not. don't even remember what processor. Jeez, I don't know I don't do any prep work for these I don't watch my own tear downs.

Anyway, we've got ourselves the isolation transformer. That's our custom high-voltage isolation transformer and it looks fairly typical of what you'd find in hey, mega turnout. In fact, I've done a unity I think it is a unity mega tear down I'll have to I probably linked that video in at the end of this actually for those who are in neuro, so that's very substantially different on this whole. different construction and everything else.

But yeah, I'm surprised that that's all she wrote there when I was about to say like, where's our voltage multiplier but ah ha I thought these were resistors here. these are actually diodes So bingo there we go. Look at the Cascade and configuration like that. that is our high voltage multiplier right there and that would be a Cockroft Walton voltage multiplier I've done a fundamentals Friday video on that so click here to actually watch that.

I've done a tutorial and demo on how these voltage multipliers work so that's just interesting I Expected to see like huge clearances and everything else but note and although this would be at the same level so they don't need it so I'm interesting to see if there's anything else on the other side and what we've got there is would just be a switching controller 28-135 Ah, the game changes when you I get it out of the case here. There we go. There's our input protection resistors that we are I think they were on the top side in the previous board. Anyway, for another big leaf, he died in there.

Check that out. Another one. Beautiful. and yeah, very similar to the 1292 A I think I've been a residue left there.

They've hand soldered somebody's hand soldered that one. So anyway, there's our OLED display brass standoffs. Thank you very much for playing awesome and that that's of course its own module. It's got all the tone driver stuff on there, the main processor under there.

but let's have a look at the micro that we've got here. I might have to give that a tilt. There we go. Seventy-eight F 1168 A that is different to what's used in the 1282 A that was I think a lower model one that.

so this is an NEC 16-bit micro. Not very common in an instrument like this, but nonetheless a popular enough chipset. There's the external wire a squared problem, so maybe they need to do more stuff. They needed a big one in there.

We're going to Header for our own lead module and that's about all she wrote. Bob's your uncle once again, we've got some hand soldiering residue here, but aha. I Was talking about the lack of clearance on the topside here. Well, here's all our clearances.

This is where our high voltage stuff pops out. and you have massive, you know, millimeters and millimeters of clearance here. Looks like we've got ourselves a UTC MOSFET down there - that'd be - what? Switch the output off and on. Of course, that'll be going up with switching.

MOSFETs So when you press that test button, that's what dumps it in. So there you go. That's all she wrote. They didn't need a huge amount for the high voltage section I Thought maybe they might have put it on a separate PCB an isolator block or whatever, but they've actually done the engineering to put it onto the main.

PCB so hats off to that. That makes it cheaper and easier to implement. But yeah, potentially have more spins to get it right. perhaps at the engineering stage.

but once you once you've done that, then no worries whatsoever. So that's how they do it. It's nothing special. It's exactly what I expected.

actually on the high voltage side, just the physical implementation was maybe a bit different I Wasn't expecting it to be integrated onto the main board there, but I Guess it makes sense in the case. Now they had to reuse the existing case, so that would have driven their desired decision to choose to put on the one board because they like physically mounting it. I Guess they could have mount it like headers, but then you've got the OLED module on there and OH That's a bit messy. What's going on there? Hi, that's messy business.

It's designed to be there like a that's a slither of our ground plane gone through there. but that's a bit. how are you doing? Not that. not that impressed with that at all.

Anyway, mine a little thing apart from an otherwise very nicely assembled unit. So anyway, did I finish my sentence there before I was rudely interrupted by C 79 down there. Yeah, this would have driven their design decisions to mount it. You know to design it all onto the one board and not have a separate thing Because you know, physically mounting it could have been a real pain in the butt.

So if they got some sort of sensing happening on there looks like it. If you only bought your wife and boys there, it is nothing special. It's just got its own voltage driving circuitry. and we've got as is common chip on flex down there that is actually the silicon may flip it over and you can see all of the traces.

That's not just one fat trace. There we go, we zoom right in. Let's go. No, these are all the different.

These are the tracers coming in. You know, the flat flex is soldered onto board there. but these are all the output traces room around there. Count them all.

go for it. and you can probably count how many rows and columns we got. What What What more agile --nt technologies notice. Keysight? rubbish.

And I do like the nice little header that they've got there and the top half of the case. Exactly the same as the other one. Look at the previous video if you want some more commentary on that. All right, let's see if this puppy still work, shall we? Hopefully it does.

Yep, Key saw it. doesn't say Agilent had to be old firmware. Mm. Anyway, Yep, uh.

well. let's yeah. V generate 50 volts. Now let's go all the way up to 1000.

No worries. Elope. There we go. That's better.

Thousand volts and 2 are greater than 260 gig. That's what you'd expect. the flicker on the display. You can't see that in real life.

that's only visible on the camera. That's a function of the frame rate of the camera. In fact, I can play around the frame rate. and that's one two thousandth of a second frame rate.

on my camera. You don't see it do well. That's one one thousandth of a second. and that's one five hundredth of a second.

Getting there. One 250th of a second. That's one one twentieth of a second and we're slowly getting there. And yes, by the way, it kind of does look at that doll.

But because I've got like all my studio lights turned on here, it's going to start to wash it out. and one fiftieth of a second, we're almost there. 125th of a second, you can still see I Sure, you can still see it pulsating at one twelfth of a second and you'll see my finger here. Yeah, that's at one twelfth of a second.

The frame rate. It's not high enough for my finger not to be a blur. So I've really got to get down to my lowest frame rate on this camera. one sixth of a second to let's see this.

And if I Bring my finger in here. Slow motion. That's hilarious. But yeah, that's the annoying thing about filming only.

And CRT displays and things like that. and I can show you this test probe. it's still got Agilent on it. Check it out! Brilliant, well done marketing.

Um I Guess they can toss them all out. And yeah, it's got the switch on here and that activates the test functionality. so it's got the extra Jack on there. Plug that in and watch this.

Hello helps him I plug it in properly. Don't There we go and it goes into test mode and generates the thousand volts. No worries whatsoever. And this is one of the adapters that comes with it that's a shrouded our banana plug so you plug it straight in.

so that's actually rather neat. And it comes with of course, all the other stuff. So actually you can I need to do that. And then we can plug in the big alligator clip.

Look at her, Look at that fantastic crocodile clip. whatever you want to call it, probably should call crocodile click. Consider: I'm a bloody. Aussie We've got a standard multimeter probe and looks like we have another one which is shrouded all the way right down to the tip.

so that'd be a no cat for compatible. So yeah, we can just plug that straight into there like that. What do you mean the probe need Oh Thousand volts now? No touchy. So there you have it.

That's a Keysight u 1461 a multimeter slash insulation test up. Mega. Whatever you want to call it. Mega is actually a brand name.

Who owns that? Now as a debtor who owns Mega I'm not sure Anyway, Um, it is quite neat because you can go from 50 right down to 50 volts different. sending it all the way up to a thousand volts. Omega It's got the probe interface, which could be, you know, wouldn't it be really nice for us? stuff like that? and what does it do there? That's just the hold functionality on there. So there you go.

And as I said, it can go down to us. it's got a six micro amp range on the thing - very impressive. The only thing it lacks from a multimeter point of view is Amps range capability, so it can only go up to 600 odd milliamps on the milliamp range. I Believe! So I believe there's only one other meter in the same category as this and what it's designed to completely and completely compete against is the Fluke 1587 FC the new A Fluke Connect model with all their you know, their standardized all the wireless functionality across all their meters and that one's actually cheaper than this.

though the fluke ones about I think it's even seven hundred and twenty bucks street price. although like eight eight hundred bucks. this one's just over 900 bucks us of course, but it depends on where you get it from. But yeah, the only display no I don't know, you know it's the like.

they're nice, only displays are very nice but they chew more power and outdoors and as you can see like viewing that is pretty terrible. like I can't see that for me I'm standing behind the camera and I'm probably getting maybe as good a view as you are on that. LCD I mean it is not great at all. and yeah, I don't know they have the same model with the LCD display, but it doesn't have a lot of the multimeter functionality.

so I don't get it. I Don't get what they're doing there. There must be some build reason behind I don't I haven't done a teardown on the other one. Anyway, it is very nice.

It is very nicely built and designed and built as you'd expect. You know it's a keysight, so you wouldn't expect any issues, but it really is quite a versatile instrument if you're in the market for something like that. So anyway I hope you like that. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up.

As always, links down below: high-res tear down photos link down below as well as I do most of my tear downs and take high-res photos as I go along so you can read chip details and things like that and click here as I said if you want to see the tear down for the 1282 ie. multimeter and also I've done a Unity teardown I Think it is of a mega and that is a totally different construction because it goes up to like five thousand volts I Think it is. So it's it's much different in its design and construction in terms of clearances and things like that. Very substantially different.

Well worth checking out that for what it takes to design a mega that goes up to five thousand volts instead of a thousand volts like this way. and get away with it on the one board and you can't do that in the other one anyway. I Hope you liked that. Catch you next time! Hi! What happens when you apply five thousand volts across the range switch of a cheap-ass multimeter I'm glad you asked.

Bit of fun and frivolity came from this puppy which is a Unity Ut5 one three insulation tester Maxima Range five thousand volts here.