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My build-it-yourself ESR Meter that I bought on eBay for £8.99 including delivery arrived from China today. Typical brown paper Par Avion jiffy bag with a customs declaration of $5 gift. Bless 'em.

I guess to keep costs down it didn't include any instructions or paperwork. There was a URL printed on the circuit board itself - knock yourselves out: http://91make.taobao.com/. I believe this may be the right device listed at ¥68.00 which converts to about £6.50, so £2.50 to post it from China was very reasonable! There was a slight error in the supplied components: the 9V battery clip was missing but there was an extra push button switch (luckily I had a spare clip).

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Only took about 20 minutes to put together and solder. If that's not your thing for about £2 extra you can get it already made up.

Testing a 2.2 uF Tantalum Capacitor:

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TIP102 SCR:

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And here's the 35-year old 11,000 uF 20V electrolytic capacitor I replaced on the Paragon voltage regulator board. ESR ready looks pretty good!

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Very impressed with this little gadget. I tested loads of other components and all the values were within tolerance with those of my digital multimeter, except that can't do clever stuff like work out which pins are the base, collector and emitter on transistors.
 
Great device but on the recommendation of eevblog I bought a PTH socketed version. Unless yours has an ICSP header?

I payed £11.05 built and delivered.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/291041497713?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1439.l2649

Also the webpage for the guy who invented it.

http://www.mikrocontroller.net/articles/AVR_Transistortester

Eevblog 36 page discussion-o-thon.

http://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/$20-lcr-esr-transistor-checker-project/

You can also buy them in nice cases :p

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Transisto..._Measurement_Equipment_ET&hash=item19ece1bef1


If you do ANY electronics work don't think about it, just buy one. Only disadvantage I can see is it struggles on caps >2200uf.
 
Thanks, @abaxas for the links, especially the inventors site. Mine has SMD devices rather than the large DIP that sits under the display on yours. I'm assuming this is so you can remove and update the firmware on the chip? It was a bit tricky to see as it's located under the now permanently soldered display but mine does have an ISP6PIN connector, so I assume it can be updated too. But I am jealous though... yours got the fancy red button cover ;)

Personally I prefer the ZIF socket but a case of some sort would be good. I just bought the absolute cheapest I could find to try it first. It's quite a whizzo little gadget though!
 
TBH there is no 'best' device. I just went for the dip socket as newer firmwares need a 328 atmega so thought it was upgradeable. Unless some mega feature comes I'm sticking to whatever I have now as it just works.
 
Holy **** @lukewells, that is some serious TOOL PORN!!! Haven't seen one of those IC leg formers for years. My dad's garage is full of old school gizmos like that.

Lovin' those Wera screwdrivers, I need some new screwdrivers myself. Too many rounded Philips and flats the misses has used to open and mix tins of paint [sigh].

Did you see the latest addition to my workshop? A Tektronix TYPE 453 Oscilloscope. Very pleased with that :)
 
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