DIYbanter - View Single Post - VOM -- How to use

Rick Brandt

HeyBub wrote:
wrote:

All I want to know most of the time is if there is current flowing
and if there is, how much?

You can't.

VOM stands for Volt, Ohm, Milliammeter.

Current is measured in amps; your meter can measure - at best - some
thousandths of an amp.

Buy a Kill-A-Watt box for ordinary household measurements. It'll
measure volts, watts, Hertz, kilowatts, kilowatt hours, and other
stuff. Here's one on Ebay:

You can get an inductive probe for measuring AC amps and it doesn't require
breaking the circuit. You just snap the probe around one wire and use the
milliamp current range on the VOM and read it as amps instead of milliamps.

Good ones are expensive though which is why you mostly only see pros having
them.