Voltset Multimeters At World Maker Faire

September 27, 2014 by Adam Fabio 18 Comments

Many tents at World Maker Faire were divided up into booths for companies and various projects. In one of these tents, we found the Voltset booth. [Tom, Ran, and Michael] were on hand to show off their device and answer any questions. Voltset is essentially a multimeter which uses your phone as a display. It connects to an Android phone via USB or an optional Bluetooth module.

Now we’d be a bit worried about the risk of damaging our phones with a voltmeter electrically connected via USB. However, many people have an old phone or retired tablet kicking around these days, which would be perfect for the Voltset. The Bluetooth module alleviates this problem, too – though it doesn’t fix the issue of what happens to the multimeter when someone decides to call.

Voltset isn’t new; both the Voltset team and the similarly specced Mooshimeter were also at World Maker Faire last year. In the interim, Voltset has had a very successful Kickstarter. The team is accepting pre-orders to be shipped after the Kickstarter backers are sent their rewards.

[Tom] told us that the team is currently redesigning their hardware. The next generation prototype board with more protection can be seen in the far right of the top photo. He also mentioned that they’re shooting for 5 digits of accuracy, placing them on par with many bench scopes. We’re skeptical to say the least about 5 digits, but the team is definitely putting their all into this product. We’ll wait until the Kickstarter backers start getting their final devices to see if Voltset is everything it’s cracked up to be.

Pimp My Cutting Fluid Pot

June 26, 2014 by Kristina Panos 16 Comments

oil pot

Think about the simple tools you use every day. From writing implements to wire spoolers, there is arguably nothing that deserves to be hot rodded more than the things you depend on and might even take for granted.

For mad machinist [Chris], one of those everyday tools is his cutting fluid pot. Of course he already had one. A heavy one. A manly one. But it wasn’t completely ideal, and it wasn’t plated with gold that he prospected, refined, and processed himself. More on that in a minute.

[Chris] had obtained some neodymium ring magnets a while back. He was playing around with them in his shop when he noticed that his cutting fluid applicator brush fit nicely through the center and, being metal, was contained nicely through the wonders of magnetism. It was then that he decided to build a cutting fluid pot that would keep his brush in place and remain upright. Better living through magnetism.

He drilled and chamfered the brush hole out of a #20 JIC hydraulic cap and used the matching plug for the base. In case your catalog is out of reach, those are a 1¼” pair. [Chris] bored tiny pockets in the base for tiny magnets. After bathing both parts in delicious brake cleaner, he adhered all the magnets with LOCTITE®.

Okay, so, he’s done, right? No. Of course not. It did not surprise us to learn that [Chris] is also a miner, and not the 8-bit kind that hates creepers. Over the last two years, he prospected, refined, and other gold-related verbs using equipment he made himself. Just make the jump and watch the video before we give it all away. You’ll laugh, you’ll cry, you’ll be compelled to watch his other videos.

Continue reading “Pimp My Cutting Fluid Pot” →

Fluke Issues Statement Regarding Sparkfun’s Impounded Multimeters

March 20, 2014 by Mike Szczys 164 Comments

fluke-reponds-to-sparkfun-dmm-impounding

Fluke just issued a response to the impounding of multimeters headed for market in the United States. Yesterday SparkFun posted their story about US Customs officials seizing a shipment of 2000 multimeters because of trademark issues. The gist of the response is that this situation sucks and they want to do what they can to lessen the pain for those involved. Fluke is providing SparkFun with a shipment of genuine Fluke DMMs which they can sell to recoup their losses, or to donate. Of course SparkFun is planning to donate the meters to the maker community.

Anyone with a clue will have already noticed the problem with this solution. The impounded shipment of 2k meters will still be destroyed… eh. The waste is visceral. But good for Fluke for trying to do something positive.

Before we sign off let’s touch on the trademark issue for just a moment. We can’t really blame Fluke too much for this. The legal crux of the matter is you either defend your trademark in every case, or you don’t defend it at all. In this case it was the border agents defending the filing, but for ease of understanding we’ll not go into that. On the other hand, speaking in general business terms, the way things are set up it is advantageous to acquire a trademark specification that is as broad as possible because it helps to discourage competitors from coming to market. So trademark is good when it keep hucksters from trying to rip off consumers. But it is bad if applied too broadly as a way of defending a company’s market share.

Where does Fluke come down in all of this? Who knows. There is literally no right answer and that’s why the discussion around yesterday’s post was full of emphatic arguments. A Fluke meter is a cream-of-the-crop device and they have the right (and obligation) to ensure that reputation is not sullied. SparkFun serves a market that probably can’t afford a Fluke at this time but may some day in the future. And this is the reason we can feel okay about this outcome.

[via Twitter]

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]

Upgrading A Fluke Multimeter With A Masterful Addition

August 23, 2013 by Brian Benchoff 24 Comments

LCD

The old Fluke 8050a multimeter from the 80s is an awesome piece of lab equipment. It’s built like a tank, and thanks to the newer more portable models, this old meter is available for a pittance on eBay. [Ken] picked up a few of these meters and decided to give one of them a little upgrade – a 2.2″ 320×240 LCD display that is a vast improvement on the old stock seven-segment numerical display.

Inside the Fluke 8050a is a 40-pin DIP processor that handles all the computations inside the unit. [Ken]’s solution to tap into this processor was to take a 40-pin PIC microcontroller, bend some of the pins backwards, and use the remaining pins to drive the new LCD display. It’s actually somewhat brilliant in its simplicity and looks really cool to boot.

The rest of the circuitry consists of a level converter and a few wires going directly to the LCD display. [Ken] already has another Fluke 8050a on the bench waiting for a facelift and some plans for a few improvements that include a bar graph, histogram, and possibly even a touch display.

Adding Fluke 54 II Features To A 51 II Thermometer

September 10, 2011 by Mike Szczys 9 Comments

The difference between Fluke’s 54 II and 51 II thermometers is the addition of a second channel for dual temperature sensing, and buttons which control data logging. Oh, and an additional $150 in price for the higher model. [TiN] was poking around inside and with the help of some forum members he figured out how to unlock additional features on his low-end Fluke temperature meter. You can do the same if you don’t mind cracking open the meter, sourcing and soldering most of the components seen above, cutting holes in the case for the buttons, and hoping it still works when you put everything back together.

It seems that Fluke designed one full-featured unit and watered it down to fill a hole in the lower-priced market just like some other testing-hardware manufacturers (Rigol’s digital storage oscilloscopes come to mind). But the MSP430 P337I in this meter cannot be reflashed, so this would most likely be unhackable hardware if the firmware for the two models is different. After some intensive study of the PCB layout [TiN] found a set of resistors which seemed to serve no external hardware purpose. They do connect to the microcontroller and together they create a two-bit code. He was able to get pictures of the four different hardware models and work out which resistor combinations identify the different meters. Now he can get the firmware to believe it is operating a Fluke 54 II, the rest is just putting the correct passive components onto the unpopulated locations.

We think the quest is what is of interest with this hack. [TiN] did an amazing job of photographing and writing about each step in the process. We’re unlikely to try this ourselves but loved reading about it.

DIY Smart Tweezers Make SMD Work A Cinch

August 10, 2011 by Mike Nathan 22 Comments

diy_smd_smart_tweezers

[Noel] does a lot of SMD work and wanted a pair of “smart” tweezers that could be used to place components as well as for reading their capacitance and resistance values on the fly. As we have seen, these things can be somewhat costly, and not really necessary if you already have a good multimeter. With that in mind, he figured he could build his own for almost nothing.

He started off with a pair of kids’ “training” chopsticks which are durable, but more importantly, non-conductive. He took a second pair of tweezers, this time made of metal, and split them in two. He soldered wire to a set of ring terminals, mounting one on each leg of his broken tweezers. The final bit of assembly involved using zipties to mount everything on the plastic chopsticks along with the addition of banana plugs to the end of his probes.

[Noel] says that the tweezers work quite well, and with such a low price tag, we can’t argue.