you guys kinda make me long for the old Triplett meters we used at Gearhart. They were everywhere.

 

 

 

Dude, exactly.  Up here, though, it was more often a Simpson 260 - though I'm kind of stunned to see the prices associated with these things now.  A few years back I bought a crate of 'em for twenty bucks through a rather odd surplus->thrift store channel.  This is the type of meter I'd recommend to our friend here, because you can really see what's going on.  Even for hardcore electronics pros, what you get on a DVM can sometimes be very confusing.

And autoranging.... Don't get me started on autoranging...

Edited April 29, 20214 yr by jonathan909

it's nice, but taut-band instead of D'Arsonval - and no anti-parallax mirror! lol!

Yeah, there times when seeing a needle 'waver' a little, or the rate something charged or discharged was important. Digital just don't cut it for some stuff.

They built a lot of variations on this one - I think some had mirrored scales, but probably the same meter movement.

Right about the needle movement - that's what I've been alluding to in this thread.  Even regular, low frequency (think 1Hz or less) periodic functions, whether sine, square, triangle, sawtooth.  With an analog meter you see immediately what's happening.  Digital:  Just a lot of wild numbers bouncing around.  Of course, lots of DVMs have the little bargraph down below to help, but it's not the same.

A few years back I banged together a little CO2 controller for grow rooms - modern CO2 sensor with an analog output fed into an AVR to run the CO2 generator, room ventilation, etc.  On the first pass I put a digital display on it for the ppm reading, but then built a second rev with a nice big analog meter instead, kinda just for fun.  I tell you, even I was surprised at not only how much faster and easier to read it was, but also at its retro/sexy/cool vibe.

Edited April 30, 20214 yr by jonathan909

10 hours ago, jonathan909 said:

Yeah, probes are a whole thing.  For many years my preferred probes have been the extendable needle point probes made by Huntron:

https://www.jensentools.com/huntron-98-0078-mp10-microprobes/p/447me109

Woah cool probes Jonathan.  They look like Lo-Pan's fingers.  Won't have to worry about any of the local hustlers jumping me when I got those in hand. 

Edited April 30, 20214 yr by dirty_mech

Heh - diggin' the Carpenter reference.  Haven't watched it in a long time.