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Great to know that you're still getting some use out of it. The Zilog chips are getting quite expensive and I'm surprised that they're still being made after all this time. The Chinese guy seems to be selling quite a lot of his meters and I haven't heard any complaints about them. His firmware has more functionality than my original code so he must know what he's doing. His meters have the same circuitry as mine, so the measurement technique must be the same. I'm impressed that he worked out the details and copied the whole thing. These Chinese people are very determined!...
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Re: Finally built the Bob Parker "Blue" ESR Meter
You're the first person who's noticed the thinner "fusible" PCB track. 👍 Andy's doing his own thing with the Blue meters. My only involvement now is supporting people who build them and have a problem, and pop up on the Alltronics discussion forum.
The editor quickly found out what the ESR meter was designed for, and even did a little article about getting one of the Dick Smith meters and using it!
None of us ever expected it to become well known. It's been...
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Re: Finally built the Bob Parker "Blue" ESR Meter
Thanks for the measurements. I don't actually have a Blue meter with me, and I was quoting the figures for the original Dick Smith ESR meter. I kinda forgot that the blue LEDs with their higher voltage drop reduce the meter's current consumption....
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Re: Finally built the Bob Parker "Blue" ESR Meter
The current consumption jumps all over the place depending on how many segments of the displays are on. It's about 15mA at idle but can get up to maybe 40mA.
According to Energizer's data, the 522 alkaline 9V battery has a capacity of around 600mAH at that level of discharge, so a 500mAH Li-Ion battery could be expected to last a similar amount of time.
Hope this helps......
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Re: Finally built the Bob Parker "Blue" ESR Meter
So far I haven't heard of even one microcontroller failure due to connecting the Blue meter to charged high voltage capacitors. In fact the late John Bachman at Anatek who I collaborated with actually tried connecting one of the meters to bigger and more highly charged capacitors until it started blowing tracks off the PCB, but the microcontroller survived.
I only designed the ESR meter to help with my own repairs. I submitted it to a local magazine as a construction project, and the editor...
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Re: Finally built the Bob Parker "Blue" ESR Meter
In case anyone's wondering why it's necessary to power the Blue meter from an unusual voltage and short out R30 before invoking the diagnostic function, it's because the microcontroller's firmware was designed for the Dick Smith Mk2 ESR meter which has a different voltage regulator and there's no R30. I knew that if I changed the firmware to suit the Blue meter, there would be endless mix-ups between the different microcontroller versions.
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Re: Finally built the Bob Parker "Blue" ESR Meter
I know that this is one year late. Before using the diagnostic function in the Blue ESR meter, a few things have to be done first (which are in the instructions): [COLOR="Magenta"][B]"Before doing the self-test, it's very important to first set VR1 to the center of its adjustment range, short out R30, 100R and make sure that the meter's supply voltage is in the range of 6.2 – 6.8V. Do not use a 9V battery for this test because it will cause a false F2 warning!"[/COLOR] If you don't...
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Re: Chinese clone of Bob Parker Blue ESR meter
Hi there Volkswagenvan. In Down Under Australia, the old Volkswagen vans were called "Kombi vans" (see picture).
Thanks for your nice comments - much appreciated! I think that the reason some people think capacitance meters read low on sick electrolytic caps is because the very high ESR fools the capacitance meter.
Happy repairing! 👍...
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Re: ESR meter upgrades
Thanks Per. It's amazing how much brighter even cheap Chinese displays are, compared to what was available back in 1995 when I designed the original meter! 👍...
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Re: Chinese clone of Bob Parker Blue ESR meter
Per Hansson alerted me to this discussion. I'm not sure where to start. Maybe by saying that the Zilog Z86E0412PSG1866 microcontroller is still in production, so not obsolete just "vintage". The "Blue" ESR meters from Alltronics are still selling very well.
By piecing together all the evidence, this Chinese clone of the Anatek "Blue" meter is simply a direct copy of its PCB and he's probably getting the PIC microcontrollers from the Nippur guy who has actually duplicated the functions of...
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Re: recommend ESR meter, Multimeter, hot air rework station
Thank you for your expert thoughts on this subject. I'm really impressed that this forum contains so many knowledgeable people. I've unsubscribed from watching this thread so I won't see anything else on it....Last edited by Bob Parker; 06-14-2013, 12:53 AM.
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Re: BlueESR meter - Does it also do SMD ceramics?
The Blue ESR meter was designed for identifying defective [B]electrolytic[/B] capacitors which are causing actual faults, not testing other types of capacitors to see if they are in spec.Re: BlueESR meter - Does it also do SMD ceramics?
The Blue ESR meter was designed for identifying defective [B]electrolytic[/B] capacitors which are causing actual faults, not testing other types of capacitors to see if they are in spec.Re: BlueESR meter - Does it also do SMD ceramics?
The Blue...
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Re: BlueESR meter - Does it also do SMD ceramics?
Sorry but I simply don't have time to read through everything you wrote in detail and answer all your questions. I've just moved houses and I'm trying to get back to some kind of normality.
Could you please download the kit notes for the Mk2 Dick Smith ESR meter at members.ozemail.com.au/~bobpar/k7214.pdf and read through the information about testing electrolytic caps towards the end? That will answer some of your questions. Once you've done that, could you ask the questions it doesn't cover and I'll try to answer...
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Re: BlueESR meter - Does it also do SMD ceramics?
I expect that I'll get flamed by one of the experts here for saying this, but I can't see much point in measuring the value of capacitors. It's not likely that the typical capacitance meter/multimeter could reliably measure capacitors in circuit, and you wouldn't really start desoldering all the SMD capacitors on a board just to see if their capacitance was correct... would you? The chances of damaging them or something else would be vastly higher than the chances of finding a defective one. In my experience doing...
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Re: BlueESR meter - Does it also do SMD ceramics?
Hi from Down Under,
The Blue ESR meter works by hitting the capacitor under test with (almost) constant-current pulses, and looking at the voltage drop across the capacitor a few microseconds after the start of each current pulse. Large capacitors don't have time to charge significantly so that voltage drop can be taken to be due to just its ESR.
The smaller the capacitor, the more it will charge in that few microseconds. That charge voltage adds to the voltage drop due to ESR, making...
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