Yep, Said it before and I'll say it again. Life moves pretty fast. if you don't stop and open your mail once in a while, you could miss it. Hi, welcome to Mail Bag Monday Again, um I have been absolutely inundated uh with Ma I've actually reached double digits since the last time I cracked 10 items.

So anyway, uh, there's a whole bunch of stuff to open I won't get through them all I'll just, uh, pick a few and uh, sorry if you're uh, if you can see your bit of mail in the video there and I don't do it I will get around to it. So I got a couple of Aussie ones here so let's check them out. This is from it's from Perth and it's from Hub at he WBA A.c. Au so Hub um thank you I don't know your name but uh, check out the website.

There's no other details on here but it is Australian so let's check it out. Get my knife here trusty! Victorinox mini champ and uh, let's crack this sucker open. pla. What does that mean? It's probably just already written on there I'm going to rip this.

oh hey, what do we got? IM Pla Brilliant microcurrent cases. a multitude of what is the collective uh term for microcurrent cases or 3D printed objects? I Don't know, but they all are in different types of pla. Oops, There's something else in here. aha that was a stuck on the inside there thinking I wouldn't see it no I I see it all printable.com There you go p R I N TBL L.C So that's I Assum website.

got to check it out and if you haven't seen this uh before Charles Pxs at MakerBot um actually uh designed this uh 3D printable case. You can download it from the thingy verse uh, website and it's um, a case for my microcurrent and it should. It is a little bit, uh, tight in some places depending on that, but it's uh, designed to fit the board on there like that and uh, it's got the Uh name on the side there raised out from the side of the case and it's neat. And this is a whole bunch of different colored material.

Wow. must have taken. There's been no raft on that. It's been printed without a raft.

You can see how smooth that is, but uh, this is printed with a whole bunch of different material. I pla Uh, that's the sample we got I assume it's you know that's a 3 mm stuff or something. It's not the standard 1.75 and a whole bunch of different colors. It really looks quite neat.

They almost look edible. I like it. and I checked out the website printable.com and I found out a bit of uh uh info about the IM pla. Did a bit of a Google Search and IM stands for impact modified pla.

It's like your regular pla um stuff you can get for your 3D printers, but it's impact model modified in some way. shape or form. I'm not exactly sure of the process, but it's supposed to be more durable and more like a thermoplastic. A You know, a proper uh thermoplastic.

you would get an impact resistant thermoplastic you get in high quality products and apparently you can use this stuff to now. 3D print on your 3D printer. Brilliant costs about 48 bucks per kilo spool. It's available in this 3mm uh stuff I'm not AA Not sure if it's available in smaller diameters, but there you go.

Learn something new every day. a new type of material. Brilliant I Assume well that's what this one's uh printed out of and you can I can feel I think I can feel the differences. This does feel like a more traditional, high quality thermoplastic then this seems a bit more brittle.

This seems like it would you know really? uh, shatter if you took a hammer to it or something like that. Yeah, I probably should take a hammer to it, but I won't These are nice microcurrent cases, but there you go Google it impact modified pla. so thank you very much. Nameless person who sent that in.

there was no name name on the website at all and this next one here comes from Tada gigum. Electronics I'm sure if you Google that you'll get the website in Mccy fields here in New South Wales in Sydney uh there in the uh Southwest of Sydney and let's crack it open so thank you very much. didn't put a name on there, just ghou gum electronics and uh we will slice this sucker open and see what we get. What have we got? We have a letter.

do you like letters man Baseline mid-range pick, training and development wall. We have another pick. oh hey, this looks fun little breadboard on there. Let's check out the letter first.

Hi Dave Don't know if you've ever come across my gou gum pick assembler and see tutorials? No I haven't but everyone should check it out Gum.com They seem to be popular and a lot of people have told me that they found them useful. Excellent! I've recently Um developed a training board to go off my pick tutorials. The idea is that comes with everything you need to complete all the Baseline mid-range lessons. It's not intended to be a general development board, but when people finish the tutorials, they don't need to throw the board away.

Still functions as a nice here we go. It cost 89 bucks fully assembled or 69 as a kit which is why it's through hole. Excellent. If you want to say the 20 bucks thank you very much.

Dave There you go. Great video blog. Thank you very much. Let's take a look at this.

We got our Uh CD with Baseline construction and operating guides I assume that's what we got printed out and we have some additional parts for the tutorials. Just a couple of extra chips on there. Yeah, there's a pick on there and there's a couple of microchip. Oh, they're the 10f ones.

Okay, this pick development board is designed as a training environment specifically for use with the introductory gougam Baseline and mid-range pick tutorials. Okay, all right, so what else is? Oh, nice documentation everyone knows I'm a big fan of nice documentation I Like that a lot of effort gone into that to explain all aspects of the board. Brilliant. All the jumpers explains what all the jumpers do.

Brilliant! Baseline assembly and it looks like a chart. lessons examples so they got a whole bunch of oh, take you through all the low and mid-range lessons. Oh, and we've got some schematics. Excellent.

Ah, let's take a look at the hardware. A funky looking board with a really neat looking seethrough. I've um, never. SE I've seen photos of these, but that is a seethrough breadboard that's rather neat I Like that.

never actually seen one in person before, but you can see the contacts in there. Nice. I Really like that idea. and if we take a look at the board here, we've got our in circuit serial programmer ICP interface up there that goes to the Pck kit 2 or the Pick kit 3 I presume you can also buy that from Gigum Electronics and uh, two, uh, regular Um machine pin sockets.

Here they're not zif type with the Uh lever which would have been nice, but consider in that you're using the in circuit serial programmer, it doesn't really matter. so you can whx some of your chips in here, which you get and run all the examples they go down to uh, these uh headers here and then you can jumper those over into here. So that's why they presumably Supply Some solid core wire here. would have been nice if they were, uh, pre-cut or something like that, but heck, um, yeah, that's rather neat.

We've got a whole bunch of leads you can drive and we've got a buzzer. We got a couple of pots and we got other stuff and jumpers. That's a rather, uh, neat seven seg display of course, powered from an external Uh 3 or 6vt or presumably you could also power it directly from the ICP Port as well. If you're in the Uh market for one of these, um I I won't pair it up and play around with the software that'll take like forever.

One thing I've always wanted to see if I could do is experiment with uh, taking the base of the breadboard and exposing the contacts on the bottom and actually uh, Reflow soldering them directly onto pads on a board so you wouldn't have to jump over like this. from a header connector over to the main board. you could actually access the individual pins on the breadboard directly. And I think there might have been a few people who've experimented.

uh, doing that. Um, so I'm not sure how successful you'd ultimately uh, be in, uh in doing that. Of course you couldn't inspect any of the joints. It'd be like a BGA Um, you'd have to x-ray the thing to check if your solder joints are okay, but that would be I Think neat if you were able to get a, um, a bread ball like this that actually uh, Reflow soldered directly onto the main board without having the jumpers.

I Just think that would be neat. And there's a few options on here. There's a couple of oscillator options 32 khz 4 MHz You can select all those with jumpers. We've got some photo cells uh there and over here and uh, we can adjust a variable uh frequency as well.

Input: One interesting thing: I Just noticed with this board. if you take a look at the power input here this DC jack. it's got a series Dio protection in there, but it goes what looks like down to the ground plane but it's not. This plane.

On the top here is actually your positive Rail and that goes over and connects to pin two of your in circuit serial programmer and the bottom of the board is is all ground and that's connected through there to pin three of the IC SP connector. so that's effectively being used. Not that it matters on a board like this, but uh, it just means that the top and bottom uh layers on a two- layer board like this act as one big bypass capacitor effectively. The other thing I like about this is that no effort has been made to make it small.

You know it's big. You can, uh, solder this. If you get the kit and you can hack things, you can wire stuff. it's just, you know it's not uh, built down to some tiny little board.

It's nice and big We you can access everything and thumbs up for any project that uses a triple 5 timer. Love it! And I just check Dave's website very quickly at Gum.com AU and you can download all of the uh tutorials which are presumably uh on here so you can have a scratch and Si sniff at all the documentation, all the tutorials, and the source code before you decide to buy the board. and that's the issue. I Mean there's so many of these pick development Boards out there, countless ones and uh, it really all comes down to what one is the most suitable for you and it comes down to not really the hardware.

It comes down to the software and the documentation. So go on there. download the documentation if it thinks you know, if you uh, if it looks like a really good one which you can understand and it makes sense then you buy the board. If not, eh, you go look at someone else's that's how these boards work and uh I think the um tutorials look quite good for this one, so thank you very much.

Dave That was interesting. If you're after these sort of uh, uh, Baseline uh low to Baseline mid-range pick development boards. check out Gigum Electronics Next up we got one from Charlie Pia from Uruguay Awesome! I don't think we've had one from Uruguay before Mont video go figure. and uh, on the front here, we've got some lovely stamps.

Check these out. They're like, uh, you know, gumnut babies like we have uh here in Australia or something like that. They're little uh, creatures inside nuts. so I can't read that I don't know what that says I'm sure all of our urugin if that's a correct term.

uh, viewers can tell us all about that. Neat. Well, let's open it up and see what we have in here. Don't need the knife for this one.

What do we got here? Charlie We got a padded bag in. Oh, he's returned it. Oh, it's my microcurrent. He's returned a microcurrent.

Why is he returned a microcurrent? Here we go. This is one for your collection I Hope it is useful, but first of all, don't turn it on. Take it apart tool included. Regards thank you very much.

What have you sent? No, he um, it's I don't think it's a microcurrent. doesn't have the look and feel of a microcurrent, but uh, this is the microcurrent that I sent to him. So obviously Charlie has purchased one of my microcurrents before and sent it back in the same bag. I Like it.

So what do we got here? Oh I didn't even I didn't even realize I just cut that it's a flat Flex Cable ribbon. Oops I Just oh man, that's that's great I Love it. flat. Flex Cable There we go.

Excellent, nice work. Didn't even notice just oh, it's a little analog multimeter. Oh what a heaper crap. Look at that.

As much as I love analog multimeters. Oh my goodness, that is the one hung low of analog multimeters. Oh my oh what an absolute shocker. I mean it doesn't even have a Uh brand on there, Does it? It's just.

uh. Is it going to fall apart if I take the rubber band off? Oh my, that's an absolute shocker. Oh man, would you try? would you measure 1,000 volts Ac with this thing? o I Don't know. Let's uh, get our screw driver out here Tada and let's open this sucker up.

Oh boy, what can I say? A Picture Tells A thousand words. uh, crusty meter movement in there. Just a couple of contacts for our single able A for the Ohms range and a calibr a pot in quote marks. Um, you've got your ohms oh no sorry oh that no sorry.

that is the Ohms Adjust. There you go. Oh man, oh this is so embarrassing. It really is.

This is terrible. Murial? My Australian viewers will oh missed one. oh this is. this is shocking really and there'll be absolutely bugger all on the bottom.

There we go. It's just the uh switch contacts and that's it. Look at the little probe post the little 2 mm ones and that's the probe by the way. Oh man, that is so crusty Look, they haven't even bothered to put a point on it.

Yeah, why bother on a multimeter like this? Oh that is. is this the crappiest multimeter possible? Quite possibly I think it's worse than the Uh one hung low $2 digital ones. And if we have a look at the sensitivity of this thing 2K ohms per volt. Oh man, that's as bad as you can get you.

uh, of course you invert 2K on the calculator there for one volt and you get 500 microamps full scale deflection for the meter movement. So curiously, I might actually uh, just uh, hook this up to my um, uh, constant current source and put in uh, 500 microamps and uh, see if we get full scale deflection. Imagine trying to measure anything high voltage with this thing I mean this: Trace comes over here. This is from one of the input Jacks comes over here right next to the other input jack.

Take a look at the creepage distance so tracers are on the other side of the board there. But the creepage distance? There is just absolutely nothing and right up here too. Cuz this Trace extends up here and it goes right. That's even worse.

Look at that. Oh man. H Are there any words to explain the crappiness of this? I I'm Can't believe they even sell this pile of junk. And although this steaming pile of dog turd doesn't, uh, deserve it, I Will hook it up to my Keithly 225 current source.

so let's check it out. All right. I'm on the 500, uh, micro full scale deflection range here. and if beginners out there, if you haven't ever used an analog multimeter before, we on, uh, basically 500.

So a 500 microamps. Uh. full scale deflection here. So you'd use the 50 there.

You just pretend that there's an extra zero in there. So that's 500, 400, 300, 200, 100. And it should. The meter needle should be smack on that Mark there.

But it's not. It's reading high. it's reading 145. That's why there's supposedly a little mirror in there so you can eliminate parallx error.

You can probably see the so you can read it at the correct angle and ah man, it's just a steaming pile of dog turd. What I'm going to do is I'm going to zero the thing here so let's no current going in. so I'm going to zero it at this angle. Oh, you can't even zero this heaper pile of crap for that particular angle.

Nah, it's just garbage. Absolute garbage. The 500 microamps full scale deflection. Oh What fail hello.

I'm feeding 500 microamps into that supposed to go to full scale deflection. It's probably hitting. Is it hitting something in there? No man. words cannot explain how much of a heap of crap this thing is.

so thank you very much Charlie for this wonderful bit of high quality test equipment. And I know what everyone wants me to do with it. And I think you'll get some satisfaction in the near future. Not in this video.

but uh yeah. I Got something planned for this sucker? you'll see. And the next cab off the rank. Here we have Le Chi Hong thank you very much Le Chi if I'm pronouncing that correctly from Malaysia Panang in Malaysia Great.

Let's check it out. and if we read the custom form to toys, so what sort of toys do we have here, we will find out shortly. Such is. ah, let's rip it.

Let's rip it. Oh sorry. forgot to look at the Malaysian stamps. Ah lovely.

We have some birds. We have a bird. Excellent. I can't read that on the screen here.

Sorry, but anyway, that's lovely. Got some trees and some flora and FAA I Like It Anyway Here we go. It's a huet Packard box HP but I'm sure it is reused. Nobody sends me original stuff, it's all used.

Now let's have a look. Two toys. What sort of toys? Bubble wrap? Bubble wrap. Oh hey Oh here we go.

We've got one of these nice little um, it's like an one of these attenuator boxes. Hey hello! this is I Was expecting farting novelty toys, but uh, no, we've got some good stuff in here. There's there's a note. Let's read Lei's letter here.

it's Hi! Dave I Enjoy your blog so much and I think I'm going to send you something to show to all viewers. Thank you very much! That's what this mailbag segment is designed for. Recently, I've been working on a small project that involves Uh PCB assembly testing for production. We need to perform simple measurements to different test points on the PCB assembly after Smt mounting all off the off the shaft.

Passive probes are good and inexpensive, but I found they are not good for my production as they're mainly designed for debug and troubleshooting. I have a two channel 70 Meg scope and I need to measure uh, no more than eight points on the assembly I use a H Uh, Hp/ Agilant 35 970a together with a RF module to switch between test points. so he effectively uses an eight channel scope for his production measurements there. Um, that's not enough because off the shelf passive probe utilizes a special High uh Zed approximately 200 ohms and lossy.

Yeah, 150 ohms per meter resistance coax which will definitely cause unwanted Distortion to my measurement if I try and Max them on the agilant maxer. There, ah encloses a Do-it yourself passive probes that I've uh built for my production testing. I Do not claim it's my invention because it's basically an embodiment of a US patent. Excellent, We can Google that I'm sure I will not repeat the theory.

Here is the summary consists of two parts. prob in scope. in um, mistakes. We'll check it out.

Let's have. Oh, here we go. Schematic: This is what we want Here we go. This is a Uh a passive probe.

A clearly optimized for some tweak for some sort of uh step response or some sort of response into the uh scope probe with the coax. Neat design rules. Here we go. we can go through it I'm sure if you want to, uh, simulate that, you could go to your heart's content.

that would be most interesting stuff. uh, simulating and even bu of course building up and measuring. Um, these kind of passive probes uses Rg174 uh, coax. It's recommended cuz it's small and bend radius and it's commonly available so when combined.

Uh, so this is nice. It talks about which component values up here. Uh, what their job does. Combines with the cillos Scopes 1 Meg input gives a certain a 1 to 10 reduction ratio for the low frequency B and high probe resistance.

blah blah blah great I Like it. What else have we got here? Cable length configuration: All right, that's what he's using. It's design optimized for 1.4 M Uh. Cable length with a cable capacitance of 140 Pea Farad And they're the values you tweak in your circuit to match your particular coax that you're using.

There's a lot of art that goes into these passive. uh, prob. oops. Oh, here we go.

It optimizes the step response. There we go. Chosen this one. 22 Ohms is the optimal value.

anything. uh, any value above that. Uh, it reduces, uh, the overshoot or increases the overshoot. So clearly hand tweaked that value for this particular circuit.

And this coax. Hey, check this out. We've got components taped onto the circuit for our kit. There's our little kit, got some boards, take a look at that, and uh, that we can build one up.

And here's the pre-built one and it looks nice. It's just. it's amazing what some you know heat shrink can do just to make it look reasonbly professional. Got some easy hooks on the end for connecting directly into this circuit.

There's our circuit on the PCB down in there. We've got a little matching board in there to do that and uh, the Rg174 coax to the BNC. It's given me another one here which allows me to build up another one with this little kit. Nice.

I Like it. So this part of the circuit. this board here is this input probe circuitry up here, mounted on that little board directly into the easy hooks. Then it goes into the coax which is our big coax here.

and this connects into the um, uh, this end of our circuitry which connects into the scope. so our p probe plugs into there and then this plugs into the scope and that contains the rest of our matching circuitry down in there. Neat! So let's uh, crack that open and have a look inside. Bingo We crack that open and there we go.

It's nice. it's mounted 45 angle like that so you can solder the pins directly from the ground pin there and input pin. so that's a really great layout there. I I Love it and I love these little Pomona boxes.

He's actually provided me a spare one and there it is. Pomona Uh, 3752 aluminium diecast box and you get all the connectors built in. Great for doing as I said those um, you know, little little attenuators or uh, you know, like an RF attenuator or a little trap filter or something like that. Really handy little boxes to have a few of these l around.

I Highly recommend them! I Don't think they're particularly cheap, but I've built many a thing into these style boxes. You can get them in various sizes, but uh, this is a tiny little one and I can't really let this slide without checking out his handiwork inside. This only one way to get in there. There you go.

Isn't that beautiful construction there? I Really love it and uh, clearly those slots in there are designed for for for uh, hold it maybe? uh, wrapping some wire around or attaching other stuff to I like it is left out a square on the ground plane there. that's probably to what lower the capacitance to the ground plane because if you just flood, fill that board completely with that ground plane then you're going to get capacitance between the ground plane through your F Fr4, which is a dialectric material. Of course everything's a dialectric material, even air. and uh, can um, you know cause stray capacitance and uh, ruin your day especially with high frequency stuff.

So beautiful little construction there. Thumbs up! I Like that. really robust, beautiful. so thank you very much.

Le Chi for uh, sending that in. It's most interesting passive custom passive probe there and I'll leave it up to the viewer to um, simulate and check out this circuit and have a play around with it and we'll call this the last one for today. And remember, if you want to send stuff in, send it to that crazy aie BL Perbox 7949 Borham Hills BC 2153 Australia not Austria so let's take a look it is from Todd hey Todd Harrison from Todd fun he's a fellow blogger. he's also got a YouTube channel he's from uh meso Arizona I've been to Arizona um I didn't get down to Mesa which is near uh Phoenix I believe which is um South I went to Uh Flag Staff So I went to meteor crater there and I remember I was driving along.

we're driving along the road heading to Uh head headed to meteor crater and we saw a sign Winslow Arizona coming up. You know tune your radio to you know 88 something to get the Uh info. So we oh yeah, we tuned in. See what's at Winslow Arizona You know this, you know the Eagles song and uh, sure enough, they have the girl in the flatbed forward.

That was pretty much the only thing that they were trying to entice people there with I think so H We gave Winslow Arizona a Miss but we never got down to Phoenix. Now I'm not sure what's going on with the Indianapolis 500 because even though I'm Not A Yank I'm pretty darn sure the Indianapolis 500 is held in Indiana and not Arizona go figure but Tada we have Monument Valley of course I've been to Monument Valley Fantastic! Love it! Cannot recommend it highly enough. Awesome! So thank you very much Todd from Toddfun and I can barely make that out I think it says meter at $99 sort of the um size and weight of a meter. So um I don't know.

Let's open it up. and if you haven't checked out Todd's YouTube channel uh by all means do do. He's a fellow video blogger and Uh has a website as well at Todd Fun.com but also has a YouTube channel. Today here we go, we got a letter.

oh there you go. Awesome! Chinese Market Fluke 7 MB for your collection and Tuesday tear down. Many fans including myself would love to see a full product review someday. Order this in the USA from De stream for 9960 with free shipping and it took 47 days for delivery.

Are you kidding? I Didn't care for the way it was shipped in a simple unpadded bag. ooh yeah, it's not, uh, true. RS um other shortcomings, but yeah, it's probably um from all I've heard about it and I have seen uh photos inside it. it's uh, not a bad meter for 99, you know, for under a 100 bucks.

And by the way people ask Yes, it is a genuine fluke, but um, it's only for the Asia-pacific market. You can only buy it in well Asia Market it's not. It's not sold here in Australia either. Um, so it's not in the Pacific uh region.

but it is actually a genuine uh fluke. And there you go. It even tells you not for sale outside of China So warranty void if sold outside of China So you know, um, you buy this thing, you get absolutely, uh, no warranty. It's not built to I Don't believe it's built to.

You know the same exacting standards as a proper fluke where they give you, uh, you know, lifetime warranty, but um, it certainly is not a bad meter at all. Look at the uh, from what I've heard and that that feels pretty solid. It uh reminds me of um the you can see the roots in the old um what was it the fluke? uh 19 oh I can't remember I think it was the 19 um one that they originally started the made in China thing with of course this is not made in the US it's uh, made in China that would look like pretty quick auto ranging. There you do.

Do you get the standard fluke probes? Let's have a look so this is great. Thanks Todd This is uh awesome. I Have actually been meaning to get one cuz quite a lot of people have asked to actually uh see a review of it. Yeah they're the sharp they the TL I'm not sure what the I think TL 74 I think is the standard model number.

uh fluke probes. Anyway, they are th000 volts. oh cat, no look at that cat one. Are you kidding me? They've got to be kidding right? th000 volts cat one 10 amp are what cat one are you? You got to be joking I Oh man.

Unbelievable. Anyway, they are. They do feel reasonable quality. not as good as the regular uh fluke 19 Yeah, that's it.

There you go. Flk1 19 CF fluke? not they've still got the old fluke um 19 model number that was the first probably. Oh if memory serves me correctly, like 10, maybe even 11 or 12 years ago the fluke 19, uh came out. it was fluke.

First experiment getting AA manufactured in, designed and manufactured in uh China and um, it failed. Uh, it sold really well apparently. but uh, it failed dism. almost every one of the Fluke 9 on the market.

um, you know, fail terribly. But we do have another um, looks like a genuine fluke temperature probe. Let me compare it to my good one which came with my, uh, high-end flukes. Now the one on the left here is my genuine one.

As you can see, it uses a lighter colored brown uh cable there as opposed to this darker color one. So apart from that, it's actually, uh, rather hard to tell the difference between these two temperature probes. H I don't know I think I'd Uh, trust the higher end one better. So anyway, it does feel like a quality bit of Kit It does feel like a quality Fluke meter and you know it's it.

Passes all their you know standards and stuff like that. I'm sure it's got micro amp uh range it defaults to DC Brilliant. Why can't the Bloody Fluke 87 default to DC instead of bloody AC God It's annoying and uh, it's got capacitor range. What's the minimum? Uh, 10 Paa Farads minimum resolution there, that's you know it's PA of the course, but uh, the range switch feels like a quality fluke.

This is not going to be a proper review if we have a look here. It uses two AA instead of the more traditional 9V So let's this thing open and uh does feel pretty rugged I Really like it. Not a huge you know there's some protection in the Uh holder. It's not the world's thickest or best holder, but uh, looks like that feels like a metal threaded in.

Ah, you can easily lose that. It's not like captive with the how does that? How does that work? Hang on. How does that? Oh oh jeez, that's all. It's a little bit dodgy anyway.

um, some grease on there, so that's a step forward for those who actually, uh, prefer the doublea's um, most likely it won't have the high voltage ohms uh output. so that's okay. Okay, that just slides in there and awkwardly sort of lifts out. h Don't really like that, but hey, it's you know it's not too bad I Think this one's probably going to perform pretty darn well on the uh, low end of things in the sub $100 category.

and uh, yeah, you know You' got to wonder why fluke? Don't bother to Market this anywhere else. Is there something that you know? They're not that proud of it? They just, you know, making money out of it on the Uh Chinese market or whatever. Who knows I you know I don't know. Anyway, let's go to and continuity.

It's not the latchin' type and it's pretty. It's not very loud at all so but it is instant. but it's hang on. let me put the mic up to that.

There you go, it's not that great. Now these probes don't seem to be the best quality tips on them. I might try and get a zoom on that now. On the top here is the Fluke 17 probe and on the bottom is one of the new Fluke Teal 175 probes and not sure if you can see it but you can see the see the marks on there.

It's not nearly as smooth and Polished as a proper high quality fluke probe. So I I think you know these are really built down to the lowest possible cost and I can't believe it Cat W Are you kidding me? So I'm surprised Fluke would actually put their name on a multimeter where they're only supplying Cat One rated probes. Even if it is, you know their their Uh Chinese manufactured Chinese branded Uh meter only sold in China I Don't care, that's like that's unacceptable. Even your cheapest of cheap multimeters at least.

Um, come with like you know, a Cat 2 or Cat 3 rated probe. That's just silly. Yeah, I mean these might be 1,000v rated, but that's 1,000 volt Cat one, Which means it's a designed for low energy in theory. Technically, you shouldn't even be proving a standard main socket with these things cuz that is a high energy source.

It's just unacceptable. As for the auto ranging on the resistance mode, let's give it a go. Little bit on the lethargic side, but not too bad. Now, one thing that's a bit deceptive here is the hold that is not the fluke.

the uh patented fluke Auto Touch Hold: It is just a regular, crappy multimeter hold where you press the hold button and it holds the reading. It doesn't you know? um, do the the auto touch hold thing. Oh man. the other thing I Noticed on this it's got no backlight at all.

The uh, yellow one there is only designed to, uh, um, you know, toggle between the various modes. That's it. One thing I Find rather hilarious. Patent pending.

Why why would you want to patent Chinese Multimeter: Give me a break. and if you have a look at the input Jacks here. Cat: 1,000 volts but it is actually Cat 2 rated 600 volts so you know, not that great really. And if I hook it up quickly to my DC voltage standard.

got it set for 3 volts and I'm measuring 2.9 93. Not spot on, but uh, certainly. uh, well within the 0.5% spec. And if I take that down once again, it's this is supposed to be spot on one volt.

and uh, if I take it up a range there we go, switch to there, that's supposedly 5. Vol So it's uh, spot on. Oh yeah, a couple of least significant digits out out there, but uh, not a huge deal. Let's take it to molts and I don't like how the display blanks like that as you as you move it.

Look, that's a bit. It's a bit disconcerting. Anyway, that's um, supposedly 100 molts and uh, it's still within spec of course. But uh, yeah, you know.

And if I plug in my resistance standard here 1K it's uh, within spec. At least still easily within spec. Oh no. color codes are back to front.

Oh, the electrons won't know what to do there. We go spot on at 10K but once again, sample size of one whoopy dooo. So although this is not a review, my initial um, you know, first 5 minute impression of this thing haven't opened it up yet. We'll leave that.

We'll certainly leave that for a tear down. uh I Don't know. when you know it's like a 100 bucks delivered or something like that. I think to Australia it's slightly over 100 delivered.

Maybe you can get it under I Don't know I haven't checked. but yeah, I don't know. It's more of a $50 class instrument. really? I mean it's not even cat 3 Uh, Raider doesn't have a backlight and you know it.

It feels rugged enough. It feels like just as a general knockabout basic. um, you know, volt. ohm meter with some basic capacitance? Then you know it's it's.

probably going to do the job. but I think there's um, almost certainly, um, better value? uh, elsewhere. even in like the cheap Brands like uh, Unity or something like that perhaps? So yeah, at this stage I'm a bit confused as to why you would buy a cheap ass fluk like this. It's not entirely cheap ass.

I mean you know it's still. um, you know Todd paid, um, pretty much 100 bucks for this thing. and you don't get any of the fluke goodness. You don't get the touch hold.

uh, we haven't looked inside it yet. I Assume it's a reasonable build quality, but you don't get the proper nice. super reliable. You can bit your life on fluke probes.

you get these cheapy cat ones. Don't believe it? You don't even get a backlight on the thing. it's I don't know. I I don't know why they bothered anyway.

Thanks Todd We'll certainly hear um and see more about um this in the future. so thank you very much. Todd Um, if please check out Todd Fun.com he's got a Blog as well. So I hope you enjoyed mailbag.

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