A schematic for a continuity tester that modulates its pitch based on the resistance measured

Op Amp Contest: Clever Continuity Tester Tells You Where The Problem Is

A continuity tester, as found on most multimeters today, is a great tool for finding broken connections and short circuits. But once you’ve found a short, it’s up to you to figure out which part of the circuit it’s in – a tedious job on a large PCB with hundreds of components. [John Guy] aims to ease this task with a continuity tester that modulates the beeper’s tone according to the resistance measured in the circuit. Tracking down a short circuit is then simply a matter of probing multiple points along a track and observing whether the pitch goes up or down.

The circuit is based on a single AD8534 quad op amp chip. The first stage measures the voltage across the circuit under test in response to small current and amplifies it. The resulting signal is fed into a voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) made from one op amp connected as an integrator and another working as a comparator with hysteresis. Op amp number four amplifies the resulting square wave and drives a speaker. A low-pass filter makes the sound a bit more pleasing to the ears by removing the higher notes.

[John] paid particular attention to the PCB design to make it easy to assemble despite having a large number of SMD components on a small board. He even placed a parts list on the rear silkscreen, so anyone can assemble it even without the accompanying documents. The resulting board can be placed in a laser-cut acrylic case, turning it into a neat handheld instrument that will definitely find a place in any engineer’s toolbox. Measuring resistance through sound is not as accurate as using a full four-wire setup with an ohmmeter, but will be much faster and easier if you just want to find that annoying solder bridge hiding somewhere on your board.

Your Multimeter Might Be Lying To You

Multimeters are indispensable tools when working on electronics. It’s almost impossible to build any but the most basic of circuits without one to test and troubleshoot potential issues, and they make possible a large array of measurement capabilities that are not easily performed otherwise. But when things start getting a little more complex it’s important to know their limitations, specifically around what they will tell you about circuits designed for high frequency. [watersstanton] explains in this video while troubleshooting an antenna circuit for ham radio.

The issue that often confuses people new to radio or other high-frequency projects revolves around the continuity testing function found on most multimeters. While useful for testing wiring and making sure connections are solid, they typically only test using DC. When applying AC to the same circuits, inductors start to offer higher impedance and capacitors lower impedance, up to the point that they become open and short circuits respectively. The same happens to transformers, but can also most antennas which often look like short circuits to ground at DC but can offer just enough impedance at their designed frequency to efficiently resonate and send out radio waves.

This can give some confusing readings, such as when testing to make sure that a RF connector isn’t shorted out after soldering it to a coaxial cable for example. If an antenna is connected to the other side, it’s possible a meter will show a short at DC which might indicate a flaw in the soldering of the connector if the user isn’t mindful of this high-frequency impedance. We actually featured a unique antenna design recently that’s built entirely on a PCB that would show this DC short but behaves surprisingly well when sending out WiFi signals.

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Short Circuit Tracer For A Buck

Almost every meter you find today will have a continuity tester. Connect the probes and it will beep if there is a short and won’t if there isn’t. But where is the short? That’s another problem when trying to measure a component that is connected to many other components. [Learn Electronics Repair] wanted to have a tool to find shorts on a board and wanted to build a tester that uses 4-wire resistance measurement to isolate the device under test without having to do surgery on the circuit. His $1 build appears in the video below.

The first part of the video talks about the theory behind resistance measurement with two and four wires. Let shows several diagrams, but he mentions that at one point he shows an incorrect schematic (at 12:03) instead of the early correct one (at 10:35) and mentions it, but if you are skimming the video, you might get confused.

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The Engineering Case For Fusing Your LED Strips

Modern LED strips are magical things. The WS2812 has allowed the quick and easy creation of addressable RGB installations, revolutionizing the science of cool glowy things. However, this accessibility means that it’s easy to get in over your head and make some simple mistakes that could end catastrophically. [Thomas] is here to help, outlining a common mistake made when building with LED strips that is really rather dangerous.

The problem is the combination of hardware typically used to run these LED strings. They’re quite bright and draw significant amounts of power, each pixel drawing up to 60 mA at full-white. In a string of just 10 pixels, the strip is already drawing 600 mA. For this reason, it’s common for people to choose quite hefty power supplies that can readily deliver several amps to run these installations.

It’s here that the problem starts. Typically, wires used to hook up the LED strips are quite thin and the flex strips themselves have a significant resistance, too. This means it’s possible to short circuit an LED strip without actually tripping the overcurrent protection on something like an ATX power supply, which may be fused at well over 10 amps. With the resistance of the wires and strip acting as a current limiter, the strip can overheat to the point of catching fire while the power supply happily continues to pump in the juice. In a home workshop under careful supervision, this may be a manageable risk. In an unattended installation, things could be far worse.

Thankfully, the solution is simple. By installing an appropriately rated fuse for the number of LEDs in the circuit, the installation becomes safer, as the fuse will burn out under a short circuit condition even if the power supply is happy to supply the current. With the example of 10 LEDs drawing 600 mA, a 1 amp fuse would do just fine to protect the circuit in the event of an accidental short.

It’s a great explanation of a common yet dangerous problem, and [Thomas] backs it up by using a thermal camera to illustrate just how hot things can get in mere seconds. Armed with this knowledge, you can now safely play with LEDs instead of fire. But now that you’re feeling confident, why not check out these eyeball-searing 3 watt addressable LEDs?

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Continuity Tester Uses The ATtiny85’s Comparator

There’s an inside joke among cyclists – the number of bikes you need is “n+1”, where “n” is your current number of bikes. The same probably also applies to the number of tools and equipment a hacker needs on their workbench. Enough is never enough. Although [David Johnson-Davies] has a couple of multimeters lying around, he still felt the urge to build a stand-alone continuity tester and has posted details for a super-simple ATtiny85 based Continuity Tester on his blog. For a device this simple, he set himself some tall design goals. Using the ATtiny85 and a few SMD discretes, he built a handy tester that met all of his requirements and then some.

The ATtiny85’s Analog Comparator function is perfectly suited for such a tester. One input of the comparator is biased such that there is a 51 ohm resistor between the input and ground. The output of the comparator toggles when the resistance between the other input and ground is either higher or lower than 51 ohms. Enabling internal pullup resistors in the ATtiny85 not only takes care of proper biasing of the comparator pins, but also helps reduce current consumption when the ATtiny85 is put to sleep. The test current is limited to 100 μA, making the tester suitable for use in sensitive electronics. And enabling the sleep function after 60 seconds of inactivity reduces standby current to just about 1 μA, so there is no need for a power switch. [David] reckons the CR927 button cell ought to last pretty long.

For those interested in building this handy tester, [David] has shared the Eagle CAD files as well as the ATtiny85 code on his Github repository or you could just order out some boards from OSHpark.

Fail Of The Week: How I Killed The HiPot Tester

Have you ever wired up a piece of test equipment to a circuit or piece of equipment on your bench, only to have the dreaded magic smoke emerge when you apply power? [Steaky] did, and unfortunately for him the smoke was coming not from his circuit being tested but from a £2300 Clare H101 HiPot tester. His write-up details his search for the culprit, then looks at how the manufacturer might have protected the instrument.

[Steaky]’s employer uses the HiPot tester to check that adjacent circuits are adequately isolated from each other. A high voltage is put between the two circuits, and the leakage current between them is measured. A variety of tests are conducted on the same piece of equipment, and the task in hand was to produce a new version of a switch box with software control to swap between the different tests.

This particular instrument has a guard circuit, a pair of contacts that have to be closed before it will proceed. So the switch box incorporated a relay to close them, and wiring was made to connect to the guard socket. At first it was thought that the circuit might run at mains voltage, but when it was discovered to be only 5V the decision was made to use a 3.5mm jack on the switch box. Inadvertently this was left with its sleeve earthed, which had the effect of shorting out a DC to DC converter in the HiPot tester and releasing the smoke. Fortunately then the converter could be replaced and the machine brought back to life, but it left questions about the design of the internal circuit. What was in effect a logic level sense line was in fact connected to a low current power supply, and even the most rudimentary of protection circuitry could have saved the day.

We all stand warned to be vigilant for this kind of problem, and kudos to [Steaky] for both owning up to this particular fail and writing such a good analysis of it.

Our Fail Of The Week series has plenty to entertain the reader who is not of a nervous disposition. This isn’t the first fail to feature a suspect bit of connector wiring, not an unexpected short or even some magic smoke.

Possible Fire Hazard: Wanhao Duplicator I3 3D Printer

A while ago Wanhao was reaching out to its customers and resellers, warning them of a design flaw in their Duplicator i3 that may cause fires. The printers suffered from an issue that caused crimp connections of the nozzle heater cartridge’s supply line to fail due to the mechanical stress in the cable drag chain. In their “Recall” titled note, Wanhao provides instructions on how to fix the issue.

Now, [Chuck Hellebuyck] released an unboxing video on the Duplicator i3 Plus, during which the heated bed emitted magic smoke that could be rationally explained as another design flaw.

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