Table of Contents
Out-of-Box Review
I recently received part of the prize from Element14 as the fifth prize winner in NI LabVIEW and Test Automation Beginner’s Course. The received prize is Multicomp Pro MP730655, which is a basic model of DMM. Thanks to Element14 Community for such sweat prize. It is my first time to write a Thank-You review on the prize from Element14 Community. The review will be very short due to the limit of my time for the testing.
The overall body case of MP730655 is round curved for easy hand holding. I really like the fresh green color of the body case. Another user-friendly feature is the on/off power butter, which can save me a lot of trips to turn on/off DMM instead of turning the function switch back and forth to turn on/off DMM.
The list price of MP730655 at Newark.com(US) is $30.09. You can get one at $13.63 as today’s promotion price plus tax there. What features can you expect from a 3.5-DMM under $15(USD)? The main features of MP730655 include resistance, AC/DC voltage/current, capacitance, and battery voltage measurement.
Basing on the datasheet of MP730655, it is a handheld true RMS DMM as below:
What a sweat DMM at such budget price with true RMS features!
Some Features and True RMS Performances of MP730655
1. Resistance measurement
There is a low cost solution for resistor subject: seven decade programmable resistor board. I got it from Ebay many years ago.
Here is my measurement setup for resistance measurement:
I used 3 other digital meters to measure resistance as comparison:
- Fluke 177 Trum RMS DMM
- Extech LCR meter, 380193
- Tenma 72-1012 bench DMM
After such brief testing, MPMP730655 resistance measurement has pretty good performance. Since Fluke 177 is calibrated by the authority, I assumed that the reading from Fluke 177 is the baseline to compare other meters.
A simple error graph is presented as below. The cal row kept the reading from meters as seven decade programmable resistor board was configured at zero value . However, due to the trace and wiring, DMM can read some small resistance from such configurations.
The error definition here is relative, not absolute.
I will have blog 2 regarding True RMS performance on MP730655. Stay tuned.