"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

In article ,
Michael A. Terrell wrote:

"Dave Plowman (News)" wrote:

In article ,
Michael A. Terrell wrote:
I agree. I use mine all the time, but the contacts inside are
wearing out. Where would you find an inexpensive new analog
meter? Do they even make them anymore?

A half decent DVM will have a a bargraph to mimic a needle
movement.

A decent DVM won't have a bargraph to annoy you.

It's there to inform. Of course information may well annoy you. And I
consider my Fluke quite decent.

When you're at a bench with over 30 pieces of test equipment,
including four or more identical DVMs the bargraph is just more visual
noise.

Thought the question was about the spec for a basic DVM?

As regards a bargraph being 'visual noise' that's the whole point. It
draws your attention to the direction and rate of change. If you're using
'30 pieces of test equipment' at once, you can't possibly read them all
accurately at any one point in time - so a bargraph sounds to me even more
useful here.


Maybe, if you want to be distracted. I was testing modules in
$20,000 to $80,000 (US) telemetry receiving systems. The 'Video
Combiner' module compared the linear 0-5V AGC buss in two receivers, and
was allowed an error of under 1.5 mV.

I wouldn't use any meter with one on my bench, but some techs wanted
them even though they were useless. They also clutter their benches with
piles of other useless crap. Tell me of ANY bargraph that will give
useful indication when the change is in millivolts, where the voltage
being measured is 5 to 15 volts. The bargraph would be 2 volts per
division. The bargraph driver is noisy enough that the display is
unstable at the boundaries, and some are used with an overlap to reduce
flicker. it does this by dithering the reference voltage.


--
You can't fix stupid. You can't even put a band-aid on it, because it's
Teflon coated.