Fluke 12E+ Multimeter Hacking Hertz So Good

June 7, 2016 by Moritz Walter 30 Comments

It kind of hurts watching somebody torturing a brand new Fluke multimeter with a soldering iron, even if it’s for the sake of science. In order to find out if his Fluke 12E+ multimeter, a feature rich device with a price point of $75 that has been bought from one of the usual sources, is actually a genuine Fluke, [AvE] did exactly that – and discovered some extra features.

During a teardown of the multimeter, which involved comparing the melting point of the meter’s rubber case with other Fluke meters, [Ave] did finally make the case for the authenticity of the meter. However, after [AvE] put his genuine purchase back together, the dial was misaligned, and it took another disassembly to fix the issue. Luckily, [AvE] cultivates an attentive audience, and some commenters noticed that there were some hidden button pads on the PCB. They also spotted a little “C”, which lit up on the LCD for a short moment during the misalignment issue.

The comments led to [AvE] disassembling the meter a third time to see if any hidden features could be unlocked. And yes, they can. In addition to the dial position for temperature measurement, [AvE] found that one of the hidden button contacts would enable frequency and duty cycle measurement. Well, that was just too easy, so [AvE] went on checking if the hidden features had received their EOL calibration by hooking the meter up to a waveform generator. Apparently, it reads the set frequency to the last digit.

The 12E+ is kind of a new species of Fluke multimeter: On the one side, it has most of the functionality you would normally expect from a “multi”-multimeter – such as measuring both AC and DC voltage, current, capacitance and resistance – and on the other side it costs less than a hundred dollars. This is made possible by the magic of international marketing, and Fluke seems to distribute this crippleware product exclusively in the Chinese market. Therefore, you can’t buy it in the US or Europe, at least not easily. A close relative of the 12E+ which should be a bit easier to obtain is the Fluke 15B+; the meter we saw earlier today when [Sprite_TM] hacked it to share measurements via WiFi. The 15B+ seems to be identical to the 12E+ in appearance and features, although it’s unknown if the two are hackable in the same ways.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FUmbsBYVTQ0

Thanks to [jacubillo] for the tip!

Hacking A Fluke Multimeter To Serve Readings Over WiFi

June 7, 2016 by Jenny List 47 Comments

Your multimeter is probably your most useful instrument if you work regularly with electronics. It goes with you everywhere, and is your first port of call in most cases when you are presented with a piece of equipment. And when you think about it, it’s a pretty amazing instrument. Multimeter technology has advanced to the point at which even an inexpensive modern device has functions that would have required a hefty budget a few decades ago.

There is still one thing affordable multimeters remain unable to do: they can’t log their readings for analysis on a computer. They’re an instantaneous instrument, just as they always have been.

Lord of Hackaday [Sprite_TM] decided to hack his multimeter to serve its readings over Wi-Fi. Rather than start with a throwaway meter from the bargain bin, he did it with a Fluke. The meter he chose was a Fluke 15B+, the company’s budget offering for the Indian and Chinese markets, since he had one spare.

Opening up the 15B+, he was presented with its processor concealed under a blob of epoxy and thus unidentifiable. Armed with the knowledge that other similar Flukes contain Fortune Semiconductor parts, he investigated as many data sheets as he could find from the same company and finally identified it as an FS98O24 one-time-programmable microprocessor. Sadly this chip has no serial port, but he did find an I2C EEPROM which he correctly guessed held calibration settings. Removing this chip gave him a meter with slightly off calibration, but also gave him a serial port of sorts.

Further detective work allowed him to identify the baud rate, and supplying random commands delivered him some that returned data packets. Eventually he identified a packet containing the states of the LCD’s segments, from which he could derive its displayed value. Connecting an ESP8266 module with appropriate software left him with a Wi-Fi connected multimeter. There was a little more refinement to his hack, he created a power management board to activate the ESP when needed, and a neat hack to display its IP address on the screen.

Multimeter hacks have featured several times here at Hackaday. We’ve had another serial port hack, or how about a remote display for another Fluke on a Gameboy Advance?