A VOM tutorial

[ezdays]

This a great tutorial for anyone who has little or no experience using meters. For those buying meters I personnally recommend the manufacture Fluke. They have proved to be the best meters I have used both in school and now in electronics design. They are usually fairly pricey but seem to work very well and are very accurate. Also I have had good luck with the Wavetek Meterman brand. That is what is on my desk at work right now (model 15xp). However for personal and hobby use I have a Mastercraft meter that Canadian tire puts on sale for 9-15$ every couple of months. The one thing you want to be sure of when picking out a meter is the Current rating (Amps) Be sure that your meter can handle the currents you want to measure. If you try and measure the current of a big club layout with a small meter that is only designed to handle a couple amps then it may make a nice popping noise and begin to burn up. Just like a z scale decoder in a G scale train.

Yep, like I said, most meters have a separate 10 amp input that is not fused, so be sure your range setting is higher than what you're measuring.

And fluke for sure is the top of the line. For those that are not using meters everyday on a professional level, it might be more than they want to invest. I would opt for a cheap one rather than none at all, and a Fluke if I could afford it.