Hi welcome to the Eev blog an Electronics Engineering Video blog of interest to anyone involved in electronics design. I'm your host Dave Jones Hi. You might remember the Xtec Ex 505 multimeter are reviewed in the $100 shootout now at the time I Promised that I'd do some further testing on this because, well, it's above and beyond your ordinary multimeter because it's shock and waterproof or so they claim. Now if it's take a look at the front here there it is.

IP67 And that last digit the seven means that it's capable of surviving supposedly uh, 1 meter of immersion in water for 30 minutes. H You thinking what? I'm thinking absolutely. Canyon Road Trip Time. Let's beat the hell out of this thing.

We're up for another canyoning trip and we got the Xtech E X 505 M and we're going to beat the crap out of it. Different. Canyon This time Twist A Rocky come and join us. Might as well just toss it in.

What the hell? Got to go into the canyon? eventually into the creek it goes. It floats. That's a good start. The crap bush like this.

you're on sh and smile I Don't want to be on and we're heading into Twister Canyon There it is. we're about to jump in. Let's go here We go. The exte.

Yeeha still F in don't don't catch Let It Go In here we go. Boomo got it w got crushed against the wall. beautiful and the meat is going for a slide. Let's go and I made it here we go.

There is actually a point to bring in a meter through. Canyon you can measure the water T this one is. 1 Resolution: Let's check it out. I Got the therac couple Pro it's currently 16 in the air.

Got it all right? Let's throw it in and see what we get. It's going down. hey that's pretty warm. That's pretty darn warm today.

14.2 de I was surprised I thought it was 12 or 13 tops. but no 14.3 and going up there you go. Great day for canyoning. Love it into the canyon.

All right Jump Oh good. all good woo woo. All right into the M into the canyon we go W you're out! Woohoo Here we go. Already made it time.

woohoo W it's pretty good w yeah it's okay. thanks P you can use it as a paddle. that's the way. Oh, we're at the exit.

There you go. That's the end of Rocky Creek Woo woo winner. Check it out. It's still survived.

Amazing! Been all the way through Rocky Creek Not a problem. love it and I'll join themo coming back out of the canyon Me: it still works. Unbelievable. Not a problem at all.

Here it goes wo there we go. All right Come well. we made it all the way through. Rocky Creek We're out and still works.

Still works. A treat. Beautiful! Let's head home. Well we're out and it still works.

Survived the entire trip. no worries at all. Couldn't destroy it at all. So I Think we're going to have to ramp it up in the drop test? Well, the meter might have survived, but can't say the same thing for my leg.

Well, the canyon couldn't kill it and we're going to do the drop test next. But let's try the car test, shall we? Come on, let's give it a go. Yeehaw, it's full of sand and crap. but will it work? Let's try it out.

Oh, still works. Beauty and we're back in the lab. And here's the meter. After going through the Canyon and being run over, uh, you can see the curvature in the you can see the depression there in the case where where the tires actually ran over the thing.

It's great, but it's still the Uh range switch. There's like dirt embedded in the rain switch, but it still seems to, uh, still seems to power up. so let's check it out. Oops, it looks like something's happened to the input the positive input socket.

look I'm shorting the probes out here on on Ohms range and I've really got to depress this uh, contact down here the input probe to actually get the thing to measure so it still works. But yeah, there's probably a crack in the solder joint on that input connector. We'll have to open it up and check it out. and there it is.

reading against a reference voltage here. I'm really trying to put pressure on this input socket, but it's still within spec so it looks like it's still functional except for this input jack here. and there's an up close shot of just the dirt and the gunk sort of in it. and on the backside here it's really, um, I can't even get that that, uh, tilting bail out.

It's just all the dirt is just pressed in there. There's no water in the battery compartment at all, so let's crack it open and see what we get. Here we go. It looks it looks pretty good.

There's no water Ingress at all. Uh, no obvious signs of damage at all. Um, this is the uh, this is the one with the dodgy link in it by the way. Uh so yeah, it looks like it survived.

No problems at all. Now if you take a look at this green PTC here you will see that uh, it's almost. This leg here is almost touching this input jack. It's like, ah, it's less than a millimeter.

It's it's I'd say it's borderline touching that damn thing and that's well, in the case of a PTC which is a low resistance. Uh, anyway, unless a fa condition occurs and then it goes, um, open. but that really just. uh.

so during normal operation, that's not going to cause a problem, but um, during fault conditions, that of course is you know that PTC M you know is just not going to work if this thing shorten out to that. Jack and that's what can happen when you got piss poor uh con construction, uh, technique with just the leads hanging around. Now we saw that in the um, uh, tear down and the review and I I said it might be a problem and sure enough, after being beat around, this thing has moved and that leg's almost touching. It's crazy now.

Uh, the problem with the input jack. I'm not quite sure what it actually is because the solder joint down in there is fine and it's got this nice uh lock nut with um, star washer on the top, so there's no contact problems there. so it really must be like an internal contact thing inside the Uh Jack itself. Maybe it's just some dirt and grit or something in there.

Yeah, it's definitely something inside the actual uh Jack down in here now. I've taken off the lock nut and the star washer. Um, so it's got this uh, screw thread coming through at the bottom here as you can see like that and this is a very tight fit. this uh input probe here and we'll try and we we'll probe this so it's making good contact in there I Have no doubt and you know, not a problem.

but if I start to wiggle this red probe a bit, it really does. Jump Around Quite a bit. So there's something going on inside that input jack I'm not sure what, and I won't bother dissecting it. but yeah, that's um, well, essentially, that's a fail really after going through the canyon, because if your input jack doesn't work reli reliably then your meat is not going to work.

But uh, granted, it, um, may not have been the canyon. It was probably because it was run over with the damn car, but of course we couldn't physically destroy it. so it's time to ramp it up and go to the drop test to be continued.