Check Your Pockets For Components

The ideal component tester is like a tricorder for electronics — it can measure whatever it is that you need it to, all the time. Maybe you have a few devices like an ohmmeter and maybe a transistor socket on our multimeter. But what do you do when you need to see if that thyristor is faulty? [Akshay Baweja] wants an everything-tester at the ready, so he’s building a comprehensive device that fits in a pocket. It will identify the type and size of:

  • Resistors
  • Capacitors
  • Inductors
  • Diodes
  • Transistors
  • Thyristors
  • TRIACs

The key to its small size is the USB-C power port instead of an onboard battery and accompanying charging circuitry. On the back of the custom PCB is an ATMEGA328 and the front sports an OLED screen, three testing pin sockets, and a button.

We appreciate how the controller doesn’t care what order you connect the pins, and it figures out what the test subject is and the function of each lead. Results appear on the screen until you load a new component and press the button again. A function generator feature sets it apart from the run-of-the-mill testers out there, but it doesn’t have an audible continuity meter.

13 thoughts on “Check Your Pockets For Components

  1. Please clarify: It looks like she built the hardware, but (most of) the software is based on the well known and well copied Transistortester from a german forum. Yes, she still did something, but the real magic is in the parts-identification-algorithms.

  2. Maybe one could be built with a wireless charging receiver. Then if you have one of those phones that can wireless charge other phones you could just lie the tester on the back of your phone to use it.

    Of course just plugging into the usb port on the phone for power would be more efficient and work with a wider variety of phones. But then you need to carry the cable.

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