Hi. One of the most important bits of kit that you can have apart from your multimeter and your oscilloscope in any good electronics lab is an Lcr meter. And Lcr of course stands for Ls for inductor, C for capacitance, r for resistance. Sure, your regular multimeter can measure resistance, but you know, and it can kind of sort of do capacitance.

It's okay, rarely will you get a multimeter that'll measure inductance. Multimeters are a fairly crude tool for the job, so an Lcr meter does this better with more capability. In terms of uh, like, all the different parameters you can measure can measure over different frequencies, it can measure different parameters like capacitor, your quality factor, your dissipation factor, your equivalent series resistance, and all this sort of stuff. and uh, they're really handy.

Often they come with uh, terminals like this and they're great for you know, you just whack your component in there like that. and often they'll have like automatic measurement ranges. So if you don't know whether it's an inductor, resistor or capacitor that you're actually measuring, the Lcr meter can actually tell you as well as give you other parameters. So they're really handy bits of kit.

Um, and of course, like a big Lcr meter like this, relatively expensive, you know, many hundreds of dollars, but you can actually get, you know, pretty decent ones for under a hundred bucks now. So there's really no excuse for having one in your lab. But the problem is, they're big like this. It's yet another big instrument.

Unless you're using it every day, it's just going to get in the way. and it's really only suitable for like a through-hole parts like this because if you want to measure uh, surface mount stuff, you can get like an adapter that actually it plugs in here and you can kind of get your tweezers and put your little surface mount part on there and try and hold it down and things like that. Or you can plug in some probes and bloody auto pair off. you can plug in some probes and you can measure your surface mount parts like you've got down here.

And even with really fine probes like this, it can be a little bit tricky. You've got to use both hands like this, you've got to get in there and of course you know if you're having a bad day with Murphy, the part will just flip and it'll just vanish and ah like it'll ruin your day if you don't apply like equal pressure on either side. and these are ultra miniature probes are you know, very expensive from fluke and we can get in there this resistor down here for example. but if I accidentally put the wrong pressure, my hand slips or whatever, I don't have my tongue at the right angle, that part can just flip off and land on the carpet and ah, you'll never see the damn thing again and there's an easier way to do this.

It's with one of these uh, tweezer type Lcr meters and you've seen this on the blog before. This is the smart Tweezers uh, from a Canadian company and it works really well. The form factor: With the tweezers like this, it just you know. It's just really nice and it can give you all the other parameters and stuff like that.

There's a resistor, but if we measure our capacitor here, it'll tell us our equivalent series resistance. Uh, it'll tell us the frequency we're measuring at one Kilohertz. Just really nice. And just the form factor usability like this.

There's no leads going around because if you have leads on your bench, then they'll just like flick off parts and things like that. Just really annoying. Get in the way, lose all your surface mount parts, ruin your day. So these surface mount tweezers are much better.

So these ones I've reviewed before and they have released a more advanced model, but these are actually quite expensive. They're like, even on special, they're like 270 bucks or something. So we've now got a much more reasonably priced solution for you. Ta-da Here it is.

This is the mini ware. Um, E-design Dt 71. Look at this little bad boy and it's uh, priced at under 80 us dollars delivered from Aliexpress. I'll link it in down below and it's a really nice bit of kitten.

Watch this. Oh beautiful. Fantastic. It's this is the measurement head with a little um, 90 by 16 Oled display, little uh, 3.5 millimeter Trs jack and there's a little battery inside the these smart tweezers like this, It's got replaceable tips all for 80 bucks.

Unbelievable. And you'll notice that the screen will automatically flip like this. If you go from your right hand over to left hand, it'll automatically sense that and flip. Absolutely fantastic.

I love it and the design and build quality of this thing is really quite remarkable. One of the neat things is that inside here, there's actually magnets there and there. and also inside here, there's a magnet in here that actually is supposed to attract these two together and these ones actually are repel apart So it actually gives a a really gorgeous feel on these and there's almost no effort required. Absolutely fantastic.

They were really thinking, um, these ones here are just like sprung at metal and it's like, you know, look at the width they can get on these compared to these ones here and the feel is just absolutely gorgeous. I wish this was Feeler Vision. Now you've no doubt heard of mini Wear because they're the uh company behind the Ts 100 and Ts80 portable soldering irons along with, uh, they've got like portable power supplies and lots of other like, you know, portable oscilloscope thing and stuff like that that they've got these days and this is their latest product. It's just been released and for under eighty dollars delivered for a pair of Lcr tweezers like this.

especially with like a really nice, uh design refinements in it. It's really remarkable. So this measurement head here. It just plugs in there like that and switches on.

I've updated the latest firmware i might talk about that later and it's automatically gone into resistance mode there, but you'll notice that there's no switch on this thing. It's just got a touch on the end, so if you touch it, it changes modes. d is diode mode. So resistance mode, diode mode, a capacitance mode, inductance mode, and uh, a frequency mode as well.

It'll actually output um, signals as well, which I, uh, possibly a bit gimmicky. I don't know why you'd want to use, but anyway, it does actually have an arbitrary function generator, which we might look at and it can. Actually, it's got a volt meter as well. It can measure in two ranges up to 40 volts.

Anyway, let's switch it to capacitance mode and there we have it. 19.7 nanofarads and then if we just hold down that button for a bit, it goes into identify mode, which will then auto identify our parts so that'll know that's a capacitor. That'll know that's a resistor. and I should have had an inductor here.

Handy, but it will do inductors too. There we go, one Micro Henry, no worries. So this is really a very essential tool for in working with any Smd components, especially in Uh production. or your uh, you know, select on tests before you put in and things like that.

Although if you go in for like, select on tests and absolute accuracy, a more expensive and uh, more accurate one like the um, smart tweezers from advanced devices comes with a calibration, uh certificate. it's you know it's going to be more accurate. It's going to have wider measurement ranges and stuff like that, so you know. But this is like vastly more expensive than this little bad boy at 80 bucks delivered.

just so handy to have. There's probably no excuse for not having an Lcr uh tweezer? Yes, you can of course get uh, tweezer attachments that are plug into your big bench Lcr meter like this. But as I said, like you know, just having the like cables go across the bench. you can just brush off all of your parts and you just cannot beat the convenience of these little tweezer Lcr meters.

And this one is and just the design of it is absolutely brilliant. But it's not all roses. So let's talk about the pros and cons. So to switch this on, you don't actually use the button at the back here.

You actually just touch the tweezers like that and it turns on very nice. It just goes into a deep sleep mode. I'm not sure how long the battery is going to last in like that standby mode. I can't get in there to actually.

uh well, maybe I could measure, but I'd have to budge up like a lead and stuff like that. Anyway, I did actually have this go flat on me. Uh, just. I've actually had this for quite some time.

I was waiting for it to be released uh before I did this video and it did actually charge. So I'm not sure how long it lasts in standby, but in operation supposed to do 10 hours or operation, it's supposed to take out two hours to recharge. I'll show you the recharging system in a minute and uh yeah, it's turned on. Just hit that.

Very nice. And to go into settings. Uh, you can just hold down. uh the touch button at the back of it.

Now one of the downsides of this is it doesn't really have the resolution of the advanced devices up here. Look at this short this out when we're talking like you know, 20 milliohms with like 10 micro ohms resolution. I don't think it quite has that, but resolution is absolutely phenomenal. Do the same with the Dt71 and you're talking 0.1 ohm resolution so it's not terrific so the ranges just aren't as good.

uh as this one. Here we're talking uh for resistance point one ohms to two meg at plus minus point uh, five percent plus two digits. Uh, and capacitance. You can see there it's only got a 0.1 puff resolution there up to 400 microfarads, so not good if you want to measure big caps.

Can't go and do any more than 400 microfarads. It'll do all capacitors at Uh 2 plus 2 digits. that's you know, good enough for Australia. Uh, and then inductance.

You're talking one Micro Henry to uh, 50 millihenries at five percent plus three digits and resolution. There, I'm measuring a one Micro Henry inductor and well, yeah, you can't get really any lower than that. But the mini wear job here. It'll go to a Nano Henry range.

Look at that. Absolutely remarkable. And of course it gives you the extra information. It gives you the equivalent series resistance.

There you go. 96 milliohms there. so it'll do that for capacitors as well. If we go into auto set mode there, of course we can measure our capacitor and it'll give you the equivalent series resistance.

There you go, Uh, 200 ohms at one Kilohertz And that's the thing. Uh, with the mini wear, you're only going to get this tiny little one screen with the mini where it literally is just an Lcr meter. It won't give you any of the extra parameters uh, that you'll get on a proper uh, like handheld Lcr meter or the smart tweezers here. Um, so you can't get equivalent series resistance and all that sort of jazz.

It just. it's not designed for that. it's just basic Lc or an R measurement, plus some extra features like doing diodes and it's got signal generation, can measure voltages and stuff like that. But yeah, it's just not as flexible.

But hey, for the price, still awesome. So yeah, that's one of my criticisms is that uh, the display is just like too small. Yeah, like you can still read it. The oled's quite, uh, readable, but it is a pretty small display.

and the other thing is, I'm not sure if I'll be able to get this, but look, it flips if I use the in tweezers like that and I don't and I have it tilted there. it's flipped like I think the positional sensor is just not calibrated well enough. Yes, it works left to right hand, but just using it like that if you're if I'm standing directly over my bench like this and it just it just it flips at the wrong inconvenient point. Yeah, it just needs a bit of refinement in the um sensing of the angle there.

Now unfortunately are the readings have been a bit over the shop Here this is reading 33.1 This is bang on 33 k resistor as measured with a accurate multimeter and but I've seen like uh, you know, 32.5 and things like that. I aha check it out. I put into automatic mode same resistor measuring 32.5 k so something's wrong. So if I actually put that back into manual mode, it's kind of annoying.

To get into manual mode you've got to like go through a few things and bingo we're back in manual mode. Resistance 33.1 Watch this I'll put, I'll put, it into automatic mode or I identify mode as a squat at 32.5 K. Why the difference? That is a massive difference in readings between automatic and manual mode. Why? Um, that doesn't instill a lot of confidence in me.

So yeah, this doesn't seem to be like a real, uh, precision measurement bitter kit. It's not a go no-go tester, but um, yeah, it's It's accuracy. Uh, repeatability seems to leave a bit to be desired, so I wouldn't recommend this as your only Lcr meter after the lab. You know, get a good handheld one with, you know, decent accuracy.

And in automatic mode? Uh, Hook Got it hooked up to my decade resistance box with a one Meg and it says, well, it's a nine picofarad capacitor with a one Meg. It is giving us the secondary parameter now. but um, yeah, that's clearly a resistor instead of a capacitor. So yeah, maybe the detection algorithm leaves a bit to be desired.

So that's two Meg, three, four, five. Oh, and it's vanished. There, It's vanished at uh, Eight Meg. there.

Ah, there we go. It thinks that is now 100k. Okay, with a seven puff. Okay, oh, and you go to 200k And it then it thinks it's uh, a primarily a capacitor.

Yeah, 100 and 200k. There you go. I can get that to switch, so that's interesting. 10k.

Of course it's not going to give us any secondary parameter because the the resistance is uh, swapping any capacitance. Well, why did that reboot? didn't want that to reboot and 100 Ohm 99.4 Let's put it in automatic mode 99.4 It's the same, so we're not seeing any discrepancy there. But yeah, there's probably like some non-linearity between automatic and measurement mode because we saw the error before. And if you put on a larger thousand mic cap which is over its Uh recommended spec of 400.

This is in auto detection mode jumping between Diode and 1.3 k. That would be based on the test frequency of course. Now if we put in manual capacitance mode, hook it up to a scope. We can actually see the uh, the scope probe capacitance.

That's times 10 range. and that's of course times one range. extra capacitance. done.

a whole video on that of why you get a lower bandwidth in times one. Anyway, you can see there that's a hundred milliseconds per division. Like 150 millisecond. Uh, burst at one frequency and well at one level and then another one.

So if we single shot capture that, we should be able to zoom in. Oh no, doesn't have the resolution there. Move that across. We're talking 838 Kilohertz.

Why would you measure capacitance at 838 Kilohertz? Like 100 kilohertz is standard? Why? And that's 530.. So it goes from this. uh, sort of like triangular. Well, you can see it charging, sort of charge and then discharge.

And this section over here is a different wave shape again, so I'm not sure what the deal is. Are they? Basically, I'm not sure if they're basing this architecture on that. Uh, you know that five ten dollar Lcr meter? I've done that. Cheap one? Um, using the isn't like an Atmel processor or something like that.

Whether or not they've actually based it, uh, on that, I'm not sure. Oh, it's switched off. So anyway, this is the resistance mode there. You can see a little wiggle, wiggle, wiggle.

Yeah, once again, this is like with no load. It's just like the again this is the diode mode. It's just got the probe capacitance on there. So diode mode and resistance look the same.

And then we've got our capacitance mode with our two different levels and I'm going to switch to inductance mode. We don't get the two levels, but it looks like there's two different frequencies in there. No, it's just pulsating There you go. Look at that, that's in inductance mode between a square wave and then its charge discharge kind of thing.

Hmm. and this is in auto identify mode. Jumping through a whole bunch of different modes, there isn't it? So we saw that. Yeah, it's basically that's just a combination of all the modes that we saw there.

Uh, we saw that for like, the uh, resistance and diode modes. We saw this one for the the different amplitudes for the capacitance And then we saw uh, well, potentially in there for the inductance. so it is like cycling through it's uh, it's different modes like that. you know, 100 milliseconds per division.

so you can you know calculate a couple hundred milliseconds uh, for each mode, that it's uh, testing there 150 milliseconds something like that. and there's uh. noise generation mode. uh, 0.1 megahertz that's just generating some random noise.

Look, I don't care about the signal generation capability of this, even though it's got a little mini hundred point Arb gen. I don't know why you'd really need it. Maybe there's a niche use and it might be useful for you. And as for uh, diode mode for lighten up leads, I wouldn't get that excited.

it's two milliamps. It's going to be enough to light up a lead, but like one of its useful features. of course, Uh is to light up leads already populated on a board. So if you're doing massive like Led array, uh, boards and things like that to check individual leads, this could be really quite handy.

so it'll light them up enough to see them. So here's a microcurrent lead. It's one of these reverse mount ones, so it's actually emitting on the other side, but you can see that it's fleshy flashing there. But unfortunately, if you get the polarity wrong, you're going to get zippity-doo-dah would it be nice to like, uh, you know, actually reverse that? That would have been really good, but unfortunately you can't so you're going to get the right polarity.

But I do like that it actually flashes a lead like that and you know it's a reasonable brightness. So just you know. Imagine if you had a board just populated with you know, tons of lids like this. Go along and just test in each one.

Ah, that's worth its weight in gold. And pro tip: you don't actually have to have it in diode mode to test your diodes or your Leds. It works in resistance and capacitance mode too. And capacitance flashes slower.

Just measure a larger inductor there. 104 micro Henrys, but it doesn't give us any extra. Uh, gives us no decimal place on there. And the smart tweezers: 94.13 Micro Henrys that's at 10 Kilohertz.

that's the thing. You can actually select different frequencies to measure it. and at one Kilohertz Ninety Four Point Two, Three Ninety Six, Mic Point one Micro Henrys. But we've got the leads as well.

But you know? Yeah. So unfortunately, this is significantly over there. 104 micro Henries. Oh hang on.

it did actually flash something. a secondary series resistance down there? Well, 1.6 Ohms, did you see that 466k Is there a secondary parameter I didn't think there was. See if I can get. Oh there we go.

96 Ohms. You saw it pop up there briefly. I'm not sure what the deal is there is that trying to measure the esr of that inductor the same time, But it goes. It only comes up sometimes 2.4 ohms and then it vanishes.

Anyway, it does have a calibration mode that you can enter, so we can actually close the tips like that: Keep closed open Tips: Please keep open. Boom. Save data. Yes please.

And it's now calibrated. But it does have a more advanced calibration feature where you can actually go in, plug it into the Pc, and actually, uh, you know, edit the calibration file yourself and it gives you this information in the manual, which is great. So technically, although this red significantly different, it is technically within the uh, five percent plus three digits. And you've got to remember the plus three digits matter when you don't have any, um, a decimal place in there.

So not only you know that's like, let's say it's a hundred Micro Henry's spot on. That's its absolute value then. Uh, okay, it's reading four percent over, but it's also plus three digit spec. so it could actually be it could be 105 plus three digits.

So it could be 108 or basically 92 Micro Henrys to 108 Micro Henry. So yeah, this is not designed for, uh, precision work. As I said, it's well, it's not a go no go. It'll give you the value.

But yeah, if you want accurate measurements and stuff, this is not going to replace a hand a proper high quality handheld Lcr meter. Now if you put it into auto identify mode, it's not going to identify a voltage unfortunately. Zero. Ohms.

Yeah. so put it into voltage mode here. and well. Negative: It can't measure negative voltages anyway.

It does have a maximum spec of minus 5 volts even though it does have a positive spec. Oh, there we go. 3.03 I do believe that is correct. I've measured that with a multimeter so you know it's pretty good.

but I'd like. Okay, you can measure voltages with it if it's the right polarity, but you can't do it if it's the negative polarity. I I don't know. a bit of a gimmick.

Maybe there's some niche use for it. Time? it can generate noise. Like why? What is what's the value in this? Apart from some marketing wankery on the brochure seat. And anyway, it does have an arbitrary waveform which can actually edit when you hook this up to the Pc.

and uh, you can actually edit up to a hundred points in like a text file. Um, it's like it's really quite neat and all this anyway. And but yeah, if you want to get out into calibration mode out of calibration mode back, you hold that down. You're in M for manual mode and as I said, hold it down.

You're going to identify which is, uh, got A for auto mode and then you can hold it down and you're in uh, sig Gen setup and things like that. So I you know it's fairly intuitive to use the button on the back. I have accidentally like pressed it once or two and not pressed it, but you know touched it because it's a, uh, it's basically a capacitive touch sensor and the probes here. they do have the polarity so uh, red is positive blue that's a European thing for negative And you can see you can actually replace the tips so you can just unscrew them there and get replacement tips on this thing which is absolutely fantastic.

Now you might think, how do you charge this thing? Well, it actually comes with Tada A charging and Usb C data connection cable. So you actually plug that in there Like that you can see there's a little Led on there and you plug this into here. so unfortunately you can't still use it in that mode and you can't use it while it's being charged. Bummer.

And if we plug in a power pack there, Bingo The lead, Trust me, that's on. Oh, there you go. From this angle, it's better. Look at that.

straight on hopeless. What the? What's the deal with that light pipey thing? that's a hopeless light pipe? This is bizarre. Check it out. Straight on.

Nothing on the edge like that. you can really see it. Ah, that's unbelievable. So while it's charging, tells you the Dfu version number which is different to your firmware version number and your input voltage which is, uh, kind of nice.

but unfortunately, um, it doesn't work while you're charging. So this is one of the downsides of this thing is that if you sit on the bench and it happens not to be charged when you need this thing, then that's really annoying. Like it can take two hours to charge. It might only take like five minutes to get enough juice for a couple of measurements or something.

But yeah, I don't know. I can't get the help but feeling they've put so much effort into the design of this thing. It's absolutely gorgeous. I love the feather touch tweezers on it with the attention to detail with the magnets in there and the beautiful wide measurement range, the interchangeable tips.

I love how it like auto changes between left and right hand mode and it's just. you know it's really fantastically designed, but I can't help but think if they just made the head a bit bigger, put a larger screen on it, measure some secondary parameters, and maybe even power it from like a Aaa cell. I know why they put the battery, uh down here. It's supposedly because it's balanced like that.

Look at that. The weight is nicely balanced so it doesn't feel like it's like really heavy. So if you're using it for long, uh, durations or something like that, you're doing production binning. Uh, you know things like that then and that could be really nice.

Whereas the smart tweezers here yeah, they've got like this ergonomic divot thing in there, but it does sort of feel a bit top heavy like that, but I can't help but think what a nice one with like a single Aaa cell in it or something would have been like. I know it would have been a bit top heavy, but oh, maybe I would have sacrificed that, but I don't know. Some people are fans of the Usb rechargeable thing and if you lose your lead like you're screwed right, there's nothing you can do but hearing lies. The problem.

If you have to actually plug this uh lead in every time to charge this thing up and uh, it doesn't work with the uh lead in place, then well, you have to like, do this. Let's say you used it. You know, a couple of times a week or something like that, Then you've got to plug and unplug this thing. And I've got a question.

The longevity of you know, such a 3.5 millimeter Trs Uh Jack system just being plugged and unplugged continuously if you used it a lot. So yeah, it may not be the best solution from a reliability standpoint. So lucky it's cheap I guess. Um, but if you only use it occasionally I you know it's going to last a long time, but it's just, uh, it's It's not as nice if it had some other charging uh solution like they've already uh, you know, integrated magnets into the solution So like they could have had some sort of like external, uh, magnetic charging.

You know, external contact charging solution or something like that. or just regular Usb charging or something like that. Or just like a simply a replaceable like triple a cell on the end or something. But yeah, I yeah, reliability could be an issue.

And as I said, uh, the firmware update on this was a pretty seamless I won't show you, but you basically just plug in your Usb cable. Here it appears as a drive on your computer and you just, um, drag the hex file into the directory and it automatically renames it to what it needs and then you repair it. and it. It didn't even tell me, maybe I blinked and missed it.

Didn't even tell me it was updating the uh, firmware in the thing and it just did it. Um, but anyway, yeah, I've updated to uh, the latest version and yeah, that was dead easy. So the verdict on the Mini Wear slash E design. Uh, because E-design is the company.

Apparently Mini Wear is their brand. Uh, the Dt-71 tweezers. Well, I absolutely love the engineering on this thing. It's absolutely fantastic.

But yeah it's like it's a bare bones Lcr meters. I wouldn't recommend it. Probably is your only Lcr meter you should have like a proper like handheld or bench Lcr meter for doing you know, more precision work. This is not a precision device, doesn't have the range, doesn't have the resolution um and doesn't have the accuracy to you know really be a top-notch Lcr meter.

but damn it's handy And the price point at under 80 us bucks delivered. Absolutely fantastic. And the tweezer design is just brilliant on it. so there's really no excuse for any decently equipped lab now not to have a pair of handy little Lcr tweezers like this.

Because as I said, like surface mount stuff like this like tiny little parts which don't have the value marked on them. and you wanna like try and measure these things using your traditional probes and things? Uh, it's just it's not worth the hassle. These tweezer things are worth their weight in gold. They're absolutely fantastic.

So it's it's a novel little toy at a great price point. There's absolutely nothing that can touch it, so well worth having, but just don't expect you know, fantastic performance out of it. Doesn't measure the secondary parameters and things like that, but if you're like just out after some basic values measuring uh, Smd parts then yeah I it's It's hard to beat for the price point. I'll link to uh, the Aliexpress store to buy it down below.

so if you liked that video, please give it a big a thumbs up and as always, discuss it down below. Catch you next time.