As makers when you get a kit you might be inclined to make modifications – or even outright improvements – to the build, based on your own design prowess. In this blog nop head tackles the 500 ppm LCR (inductance, capacitance, and resistance) meter from Elektor. The ribbon cable flip is something I routinely encounter in my own case mods, and wonder if the designer originally intended for the plug to be ‘rolled over’ or even twisted. It’s fun reading nop head think his way through this kit assembly.
It is also more accurate than any of my multimeters and has wider measurement ranges. For example it can measure resistance from 0.1mΩ to 1GΩ and capacitance between 0.1pF and 0.1F. This means I can now measure parasitics like contact resistance, stray capacitance and lead inductance. The principal reasons it can do this while my multimeters can’t is because it uses a four wire Kelvin connection to the device under test, and as well as measuring voltage and current, it also measures the phase between them.