Multimeters Without A Country: Fluke’s Broad Trademark Bans Yellow Multimeter Imports

March 19, 2014 by Mike Szczys 249 Comments

Check out this SparkFun Digital Multimeter. Does it make your blood boil to see them ripping off Fluke by using the color yellow? From SparkFun’s side of the story that’s exactly what’s happened here. They have a shipment of 2000 of these things stuck in customs. The trademark being infringed upon can be found in their article. Fluke owns the trademark on multimeters with a dark face and yellow border. Great. This seems like a wonderful idea, right up there with Apple owning tablets that are shaped like a piece of paper.

Okay, so if you’re not crying big fat tears for Fluke being taken advantage of in this way let’s talk about more immediate issues than fixing trademark, patent, copyright, and all of the other screw-the-little-guy type of laws (not that SparkFun is necessarily the little guy but you know what we mean). The DMMs sitting in a warehouse are costing SparkFun $150 per day. We believe they have no option of choosing a warehouse with a lower cost as we must be talking a pallet or two, right? The only two options they do have are shipping them back to China where they were manufactured, or having them destroyed. The former will cost more in re-import tariffs than the cost of the product, and the latter comes with a $150/hour disposal fee and no metric on which to judge how long it would actually take. We hate seeing this kind of waste, but sure enough 2000 DMMs are headed for the shredder in a couple of days.

We know you already have your flaming sword in hand, but simmer down for just a second. Fluke makes great products, ask anyone. And companies the world over defend their trademarks. Hopefully there will soon be a positive response from Fluke on this one. If you would like to politely encourage them to do the right thing we found Fluke’s Facebook page URL in the SparkFun comments thread. Both are worth browsing.

[Thanks Chris via Reddit]

Collin’s Lab Is Coming Back

February 3, 2014 by Todd Harrison 30 Comments

We would like to share a bit of good news; Collin’s Lab is back on the airwaves of the Internet. If you didn’t know, [Collin Cunningham] previously created excellent short videos, sometimes entertainingly tongue-in-cheek, for Make Magazines on the subjects of electronic components and fundamental electronics. In 2012 he was hired at Adafruit as a Creative Engineer to help with software development and video production.

Going forward Collin’s Lab videos will be a regular feature on Adafruit’s Blog and their YouTube channel. We’re sure there is going to be tons of entertaining learning from Collin with his unique video production skills and presentation delivery.

This first release of Collin’s Lab on Adafruit is a primer review covering fundamental multimeter functionality and measurements. Not much here for the medium to advanced electronics hacker but for the beginner this is an excellent and quick way to learn the basics on using your multimeter.

If you want to checkout Collin’s older video productions you can find them on his Narbotic Instruments site under – “Make Presents” and “Collin’s Lab” or watch them all with this convenient playlist. Just after the break you can also watch his latest edition of Collin’s Lab.

Continue reading “Collin’s Lab Is Coming Back” →

Adding RS232 To A Multimeter The Hard Way

November 12, 2011 by Mike Szczys 23 Comments

You might want to store information from a multimeter to be graphed over time. This comes with pretty much all of the high-end professional models. But if you buy a super cheap meter you can bet this isn’t an option. [Jazzzzzz] has found a way to pull the data from a $4 meter via RS232. It’s not impossible, but we definitely think he’s doing it the hard way. That’s because he’s not just tapping into a dormant feature. He’s actually adding a microcontroller to sample the data and push it via the RS232 protocol.

On the bright side, this is easier than building a multimeter from scratch. The sampling circuits are still being used, with a PIC 16F688 intercepting the signals as they enter the stock microcontroller. The signal he was after comes into the chip on just one pin, but to get the readings right on the PIC he had to use an OpAmp. That’s only part of the puzzle as he also needed a way to tell what the selector switch was set at. In the end, adding a potentiometer and reading its value let him calculate the position.

[Thanks Karl]

Pong Clock

September 14, 2008 by Eliot 5 Comments

[funnypolynomial] saw this Pong clock years ago and had been planning on building his own version. With a move looming he decided it was finally time to finish up his Pong clock since completed projects take far less room than incomplete ones. The core of the system is a ThinkPad. He separated the hinge and bolted the keyboard to the back of the screen. The display ribbon was long enough, but he had to extend the wires for the backlight. The power button was also extended and the battery removed. The software is a Windows screen saver that uses the two mouse buttons for navigation similar to how you set a two button watch. Every minute the the left player misses the ball and the right player’s score increases. You can see a video of the clock below. In the past, he also turned a digital multimeter into a clock. Continue reading “Pong Clock” →