Hi, yes, it's a bit different. We're in the new Eev blog lab not in the garage anymore and it's time for a tear down. So this time around we've got the IET De 5000 LCR meter. this is uh from they're a Gen Red company IET We saw the uh, we had a look at the IET Decade resistance uh box uh, quite some time ago and this is the first bit of real electronic gear we're going to take a look at and J Red have a pretty darn big tradition to live up to, so they pretty game sending me this.

Thanks Benjamin for uh, sending it, but they're pretty confident that will be impressed by the I De 5000. So you know what we say here on the Eev blog: don't turn it on, Take it apart now. I Know this isn't a review, but I Can't help show you the carry case that it comes in because it's rather neat and it's much better than just the cardboard box you get with other instruments like this. It's really quite nice.

I Love it and uh, let's pop it open and take a look at what's inside. Tada There it is the LCR meter and a whole bunch of accessories, some of which are optional extra. We've got the manual up here as well. uh and there you go.

so we'll open uh these as well. uh, hopefully and uh, we'll take a look inside. but yeah, it's just beautiful presentation, nice form fit custom carry box I Love it there! IR Adapter Alligator clips the tweezers a beautiful why can all manufacturers do this so professional? I Love it and I'll just go through the prices on these cuz I Know people want to know even though it's not a review. So in the base unit, you actually get the meter itself with the battery which fits in here I've actually installed it? Um, you get the uh ground lead like that and you get this uh nice uh tl21 um alligator clip lead and that is actually a uh Buy wired uh by wied device so it's really quite nice.

uh so you get that, but that's all you get. the um other things, the USB uh interface which goes on the back is optional extra but that's only uh $29 so that's pretty good and you get a USB cable up there. uh, the P power adapter. a little bit pricier $39 for the power adapter I think they should throw that in for free, but anyway, and the uh tweezers very nice as well.

They're only 29 bucks too. bargain. I Love it! Um, the standard calibration certificate $79 and a fully accredited calibration certificate which I got is $1 150 bucks. So the accessories aren't too bad at all and the main meter itself are street price on Amazon you can get it for about30 odd uh dollars and it's a 0.3% uh class instrument and the meter itself is really superbly built.

It feels feels like a tank. it really does the Plastics feel. Real quality anyway. I Can't help myself but get into a r view of it but it'll take me all day.

The little like USB um adapter at IR of course and it's got a uh a B on the back little mini B and it just plugs in like how does it plug in there we go no yeah like that and I like it and they've got the rubber feet on there as well so when you include that adapter it's it's nice. they've thought about that. Really lovely I Love it. and the til in bail not uh, not too bad.

You know it's a bit narrow at the base there, but anyway I like it feels great. Can't wait to open it if we take a look at the Uh standard adapter that comes with it. it is actually a four wire adapter. the uh um uh blade terminals like that have uh both sides on them like that uh and I don't but well these are standard alligator clips.

They're not like I don't think they're are the bi-wired uh type so I'd be very surprised. We can uh check that we can take it out. but I think when we open this up we'll actually uh see inside there. So let's crack this thing open and uh, have a quick have a quick sticky beak inside here and see what we've got Tada Oops there it is.

There it is and uh no they do. It is actually it looks like it is by wired. There you go. they.

they're actually wired those separately right up to the alligator clip itself and absolutely no surprises whatsoever. It's just a standard but reasonably high quality alligator um clip and uh, they're actually solded both in there like that. so at least they eliminate the wiring which is better than uh, most um LCR meters and most adapters. Little bit of a shame that they couldn't uh finish it up with with a dual um jaw uh LCR like a proper alligator uh clip that actually sensed on both sides.

but G You know that's pretty good. This is the standard adapter. so I Rather like that and curiously, under the lid here, there's actually a PCB embedded in there with some test points and some tracers running out. What that is? uh, your guess is as good as mine.

It doesn't seem to do anything at all, but there you go. Um, that's the standard adapter that comes with I Rather like it, they've just got. There's no connection in there, they're just the plastic moldings which help uh, it in place on there and it picks up the two uh blade uh terminals from inside the LCR meter. I like it and inside the Tl22 uh tweezer adapter is uh, no different.

It's still got that weird uh PCB arrangement in the top there and they've got the um uh shielded uh wiring going through. You'll notice that the uh, guard Shield they've got the Uh two terminals coming from uh, either side of the blades there and uh, they've got the Shield as well. so it's fully shielded uh cable all the way up to the probe itself and you can see in there you can see that's where they join. They join right at uh, the probe tip right up there.

So they're eliminating all of that cable as well as having shielded and for like 29 bucks. Bargain! I Love it! Tweezers are very, very nice, beautiful and inside the USB adapter you guessed it. no surprises whatsoever. and uh, ftdi uh USB to uh serial converter chip.

so pretty bog sand stuff there. Uh, you know you could use any um, you could actually bodge in any off-the-shelf uh ftdi um IR Rs232 lead to work with these things, but I just love the design of this thing. They put a a lot of thought into that and uh, you know they put the extra rubber feed on here and it clips into the case nicely. Ah, beautiful.

And if you look down in there, the banana plugs are also uh, split as well. They're actually uh, four wire banana plugs, but uh, unfortunately the Um adapter which uh comes with it only connects actually to the blade. so um, you know it's getting a split uh banana Jack that actually fits in there would be as rare as hen's teeth and IET certainly, uh don't sell one which is a bit of a shame because really, uh, with these four wire capable LCR meters, you really want to hook them up to a um, like you know, your own custom test jig and you want to be able to get all four wires going out. and really, the only way to do it is to use this adapter and then wire those out.

You can't do it using the banana plugs. Bit of a shame, but at least they take out the internal PCB uh Trace resistance which is better than most LCR meters on the market. so thumbs up. But anyway, let's crack it open now and see what's inside W calibration seal.

Let's void that shall we? Ah, is there anything better than voiding a calibration sticker? I Don't think so. I Love it! There we go. It's cracked in. Take the screws out and see what's inside and they felt like self tappers but they're actually captive type so they can't fall out and go all over the really nice touch.

but that looks like uh, you can undo it with those four screws without taking off the battery compartment which is another four screws on the back. So let's take it open. There we go there it is. Tada and my first reaction is Wow! Look at the minimal amount of circuitry.

There's hardly anything in here. There's two main devices which curiously have been, uh, blacked out. They've been potted over and uh, and gunked on there to uh, presumably to hide the Uh numbers. I custom part I Don't know, but wow.

I've never seen that little amount of circuitry in an LCR meter before. I I Actually love it. It's great. It's minimalist design, not much can go wrong.

Nice surface mount construction and oh well, yeah, I'm impressed. Check out the huge buzzer on there. It's absolutely enormous. We've only got the one um LED here, the one IR lead so it's only a one directional um IR coms.

It's not actually uh, bir directional for the Um RS um 232 USB uh coms there and uh, well, apart from that, it's got the Uh battery compartment there, solded on, hand, solded directly onto there. Would have been nicer. Again, it's a single 9V battery. Would have been nicer if they uh mounted them on the board, which, uh, is all the rage these days and have the terminals poke up through.

That would have been nice. They could have eliminated the wiring totally, but well. I'm impressed so far though. And here's all the main analog circuitry down here, down near the connectors.

And really, I don't think it's enough? Um, these uh, so 23 foot pits here are unpopulated. Um, they've got a couple of high power um sndd uh snd resistors there and the main device. It's It's not enough all. there's probably likely more circuitry underneath.

Anyway, the um, there's your uh, uh, four wire, um, input blade terminals there. The soldering is quite nice on there. They would have been hand soldered and the banana plugs as well soldered directly onto the board. So um, this obviously has its own.

Crystal So that's obviously some uh, you know, intelligent uh controller. There's some uh, software running in there doing something and it goes off to the main processor which is up here. and uh, it's there's one external device. Is that some, uh, that's probably maybe an external esquare prom I'd have to have a look at that running on its own.

Crystal There's some other circuitry up here. that's um, power supply. cuz there's the input uh terminals there. That's probably some more, uh, power supply stuff.

Uh, judging by the larger uh Parts there, and well, I think we're going to have to flip the board over over and uh, see if there's any circuitry on the other side. You'll note the uh ground in here. Theyve separated the two grounds. This is all digital circuitry up here and they separated it from the analog and it's star grounded at that point there and that would duplicate on the other side of the board as well.

I'm sure. But yeah, I think we're going to have to take off a few more screws and probe further and I'm not sure if you're actually going to be able to see that, but there's that clear, uh, potting resin on top. Well, they've actually blacked it out. Or it's uh, black potting resin.

It looks clear on top actually. but I've never seen it that professionally done. They've blacked out the number I Tempted to almost get the Dremel out and have a chip away at that? Well, there you go. There's no circuitry on the other side at all, which I guess with hindsight is not that surprising because well, you would have put them all on the top side so that you could reduce your manufacturing cost to do a topside load.

There was plenty of space, so it really does only need that small amount of circuitry that it must be a lot of magic happening in here. It's almost certainly a custom, some sort of custom, uh, analog device so, or a custom hybrid analog processor. or you know, I don't know. Um, it could be an offthe shelf uh one.

It could be an off the-shelf uh, uh, micro, like a Psoc or something they could be doing. you know, um, something very, uh, clever there. But there you go. there's the blade terminals.

We've got the standard rubber, um, uh, key mat in like that, which looks, you know, good, decent quality, and uh, we've got the backlight here, which they've gone to a lot of trouble to put on the extra connector on there. It's really nice. it's manufactured quite well. The LCD is a separate Uh component which screws onto the main Uh top board up there.

There be some some zebra strips in there like that. One thing with the board we should not is that it's version five. They've gone through at least five spins of this board. uh to refine it.

That shows that they've uh, paid. You know, it's quite a bit of attention to detail when they're designing and uh, laying out this thing whether or not it's had several tweaks after it actually went to production. I Don't know whether or not there were in-house revisions before it made it out, but well, um. I've got to admit I'm quite impressed uh with the design, build, and quality and construction of this thing.

It is, uh, first class and it does live up to the generate tradition. beautiful and if we have a look at that 8 Pin so package, it is a 24c O2 if you can see that in there. So that is the Um external uh E prom which stores the Uh calibration values and other settings for the instrument. I Guess the only real downside of the minimalistic uh input circuitry like this is that there's really no uh input protection that I can see there.

No. Ms There's no big uh, backto back power diodes or anything sort of protecting the input. so I'm a bit uh, uh, cautious, you know. I Hazard A guess that it this might be much easier to damage the Uh input circuitry on this than some other LCR meters, but I'm willing to be stand corrected.

but I can't see any major input protection on there. There is one tiny little PCB Mount trim pot single turn trim pot down in there I wonder what that one's for? but apart from that, there are no other adjustments uh, inside the instrument. it'll be all done uh with software and all the calibration and it' all be tweaked uh in software for sure. And as far as the case goes, they've actually got two levels of LCD protection in there.

Really quite nice. One thing I just noticed is a tiny little bit of what looks like some of the PCB actually scraped away just between the capacitor and that so 23 package there and I'm not sure why that is. Not sure what's going on there, but um, somebody's had a little hack at that. Maybe it's some little uh mod or something like that that, so they might fix on version six of the board? Who knows.

and of course it's made in Taiwan But hey, that's better than made in China these days. And uh, really, this is actually only one of, um, a couple of uh, um, I/ genad uh products that are actually made in Taiwan um, one of the very few, the most. the rest of them are actually made inhouse by I but uh, this particular one, they had to do that I guess to meet the uh, you know the Fairly price sensitive uh market for these sort of handheld uh LCR meters. They probably didn't have much choice.

You know, they probably weren't going to sell too many. you know, $1,000 LCR meter and the spring blade contacts like that? Uh, no problems at all. that's uh, they're fairly look like they're fairly good. They will last a fair, you know, a decent amount of uh time.

I I've certainly haven't seen any uh, better implementation than that one. And as for the actual Uh case itself, you get an idea of how thick the internal Plastics in this thing actually are and that's why it feels so Hefty and uh, solid. It's really good quality Plastics and good quality molding and Construction and design in the case. It's beautiful.

Now you notice there's one thing missing from this case that you'll usually find in other LCR meters and that's shielding. There's no shielding. Usually you'll get one of those Springs coming up from the PCB to uh, contact the metal uh shield in which is usually folded inside the case. but uh, they've decided not to add it to this I Guess they figure they don't need it.

so that's a tear down of the I de 5000 LCR meter and uh, I'll do a full review of it. uh soon. but uh, these full reviews take some time. So uh.

still working on the lab here anyway. better get on to the next tear down which will be the Uh Agilant LCR meter. see they compare And by the way, just an update on the Uh IET um RS 20101 W uh decade Resistance Box Lovely box that uh, we tore down and review some time back just to follow up on that. I did ask about um I Did ask them about this little uh bodge what looked like a bodge wire down here, but it's actually not I Was told that it is actually a trim wire that is a Mangum uh wire designed to trim that resistor to precisely the value they wanted.

So there you go. Attention to detail. Not a bodge at all I Love it!.