The Best Multimeter Tutorial in The World (How to use & Experiments)

I'm going to do simultaneous measurements with a very good and expensive fluke and then I also have a $10 craft one that I bought just for this video, so you're welcome and we're going to work with both. side by side, so the first thing I'm going to do is give a quick comparison between the to indicate how to use them properly and why someone would pay 150-400 for a Fluke

multimeter

. Here's another different Fluke

multimeter

that works and why if you just want to measure a couple of things is it okay to buy one of these? It's really no big deal, especially if you're just starting out or you want to do a couple of measurements, maybe you're installing a ceiling fan and I'm not quite sure if that brick is actually off or not.

I've seen circuit breakers that shine and still have power flowing through them, so I'm going to open this one up and then we'll do a quick comparison and then we're going to jump right into that, so what's the little timer? Well, the only thing to note is that this is really indicative that all budget or cheap meters have what appear to be more options if you are not. What you're looking at looks familiar because you look at this more expensive one here and it looks like, well, it's got less words and you know maybe it does different things, but it's simpler, maybe it doesn't do as much, so you look at this. a look, wow, look at all these different ranges, look at what it can do well, this meter does not automatically go into zone or auto range, what voltage you want to measure, you should know that with some advance notice it won't hurt you. it just won't give you a correct reading that's all that's the difference as to why this one is between 600 and 200 millivolts and you know this one here when it comes to measuring DC take a look it just says V it's not So. say anything else but that, so that's a big reason why you can pay more for one of these meters simply because you don't have to fiddle with them for the most part if you're just using a multimeter, for example you're installing a ceiling fan or you are replacing an outlet or septic tank.

Oh you know they work pretty well if you're looking for more precise measurements, obviously this might not be the way to go if you're planning on using the multimeter a lot. only once every month or so, so I definitely want to make sure that you probably get one that's a little more industrial. This, for example, may not be as efficient in using the batteries you put in, so it may only last a couple hundred hours, perhaps. this will last another last even longer this may not have auto shut off certainly the electrical property ratings, resistance, how much current it can hold won't be as high as something like this, in fact, you can say that for example, right?

Here this is a category two. Well, now when we look at this meter, here we're talking about a category four and a category three, depending on what voltage level you're dealing with. 600 volts or a thousand volts again. This is a ten dollar budget version. if you want to measure DC voltage, direct current, for example, you want to measure battery voltage, then you would turn to, for example, up to 20 volts, you would measure it and connect the com, this is the central one and since you are measuring. voltage resistance maybe you want the internal resistance of a battery if you want to measure the resistance of a wire or you want to see if the wire is broken this is where you would go for something like this do you want to measure a resistance of a resistor there again that's what that you would use for this test, a diode also beeps when there is connectivity, it generates voltage, which is why it requires a 9 volt battery to properly test the diode, you need it to have a built-in battery. -In function specifically for testing a 9 volt battery or a 1.5 volt battery, it is possible that this multimeter could put a small load on these and potentially give a more accurate reading than, for example, moving it to two volts, I don't do it here.

I don't know, we can check it later. The reason it's gray is here, saying that if you want to measure the current, keep calm where it is, but you move the voltage home and Milly answers here and the reason there are two basically have to do it the way which is fused with these two connected and you are measuring something like a battery or small circuits, maybe you are trying to measure a fuse, okay we are measuring a small circuit with power on, for that you need current. So this is fine, but if you look closely, you should read because what it says here is 200 milli amps maximum.

That's the point 2 amps max you can take where you will blow the fuse and this won't work. If you want to measure current higher than that up to 10 amps then you need to use calm and the 10 amps can be disconnected from here and connected here. These 10 amps have an internal fuse and this circuit for this today must be as separated as possible from the microprocessor and the internal parts, that way if this explodes it does not affect the multimeter, it does not play with this because it passes so much current that it does not destroy it, That's why they are separated.

Here's okay now for comparison, when we're dealing with amperage, this would change to milliamps and if we zoom in real quick we can see again, we connected to the calm here just like we did with this one, so this one had to come. Here, for this multimeter, when we talk about measurements, come here milliamps, here anything over 200 milliamps, you would need to use this, again, this is just your measurement current and be very careful to stay consistent with these readings. It is 10 am. for 30 seconds at most, okay and this is basically saying don't continue to leave this measurement stream and think okay for half an hour, you're going to screw this up and potentially screw this whole thing up just because it's cheap and I'm not.

I'm sure how much I would really trust putting in 10 amps. That's a lot of juice anyway. When we go here, this portion of fuse is up to 400 milliamps. Now this doesn't make it any better because the other one was 200 milliamps in this is 400 million it's just the way it's designed and again you see there's 10 amps here up to a maximum of 10 amps now there's no time here that's something for which you should consult the manual just because there is no Time does not mean that you can use 10 amps all day and all night and hope it is not a problem because 10 amps again is a lot of juice, the 400 milliamps or the small rating of milliamps in our budget version as well as our voltage and our resistance reading were combined into one, okay and the high current was separated with this multimeter again, this is a little more expensive, we see that they have completely separated a circuit to measure voltage currents in thousand amps and diodes, so they've separated them again, probably more for numerical precision, you want to make sure you get better resolution and to do that, sometimes it's better to more easily separate the circuits, so that's the difference.

There is another difference that I should mention is that the probes will certainly be different, as well as having a different category rating, the cables for example may not be as good quality, the tips may simply be nickel or some type of metal. that can chip easily and you already know that. that could affect a reading later if it starts to peel, whereas if you have slightly more expensive probes, you might not experience that, for example, these probes here are category three for a thousand volts and category four for 600 volts and these can handle 15 amps max so be careful if you are going to play around, make sure the probes that come with the multimeter and choose that one, you don't want to change these probes, throw them into this multimeter and then expect the same.

In performance, you will notice that you know it can even be harmful as these are category three and can be maintained up to category four thousand volts. These can only handle 600 volts, so don't mix and match them, they're not like shoes and suits. Anyway, here we go, we're going to do something simple, first we're going to measure a battery so that the batteries are DC, so we're going to take our chance, we're going to tell it what we want. to DC it says auto range so the handcuffs have been partially more expensive for this one since we're measuring a battery we want to select the range so let's say around 200 millivolts or just two volts and let's go ahead and measure. so we have our trusty industrial battery here move over there we go with my cell phone this so it's reading about point to point seven volts flying back and forth a little bit now when I use my little fun let's take a look how it works again.

I'm connecting the negative and this is the positive reason why it shows 1615 because I showed where I selected 2000 millivolts, if I raise it up to just between 20 volts, now I get a point six two volts, so you won't damage the multimeter if you go over it when you lower it you won't damage it but your readings won't look correct and most of the time you will clearly feel that my battery is not 1613. volts so there you have it so you can see the decimal point at 200 you can see the decimal point at 20 the difference between these two and you get better resolution if I want to measure up to 200 volts you see the decimal point move back measure the conductance I want to see if something is conductive and you can do it a couple of ways some of the readings actually create a tone , others you can use your own, so I'll keep everything where I found it since I'm measuring. ohms and the opposite of what I'm going to measure the conductance of is a piece of tape and I know that sounds a little strange, but this is metal tape and for one project I actually use this as a wire.

I was making a circuit board and I cut it out. a couple of patterns since I was using low current and I was basically using this as a wire although it's just some fancy duct tape so let's say you didn't know if it was conductive because you didn't know initially. I thought maybe there was some kind of plastic on this, some kind of polymer, there you have a very, very low resistance, so let's take a look, if I put it on this tape it jumps a little bit, but that's it, so this tape is conductive, so again I was I can use my multimeter for something you wouldn't normally think of.

Hey, let's see if my tape is conductive, but in fact it is and like I said, you can use this as wires for a circuit board if you want current to flow through something you can. Use it for whatever you want, as it is very flexible. Now, what about our craftsman here? What are we going to do? How is it going to work well? Let's take a look, since I'm measuring ohms. I'm just going to bring. Lower it to 20k, it doesn't matter again, it won't break if you lower it, but for our sake, let's move it to 20k in the middle and then play if we think it should go up or if we should. come down so we're going to plug them in right here so if you want to be more specific if you want to see more resolution we can move it down now we get a little bit more resolution now we get even more because The look of our period is we see 1.0 3.2 .

I mean, it's jumping around as I move these wires because it's not perfectly flat and for other similar reasons, but add, for all intents and purposes, this is a conductor. Wire people are probably the

best

crazy house for resistor, so what I have here is a resistor. I don't know its value so I just measure its value okay so instead of seeing zero now we're seeing one which means it's perfectly conductive right well no because look we're at 200 ohms our resolution is weird, is what I mean, it's too low, so let's move it up one, this is 1000, but 1000, so let's move it up to 20 K, so it's between 0.99 and 1.0 kilo, so it's a resistance of 1 kilo ohm.

Now we can certainly verify that it's already on the ohm reading, I know if that does anything, so let's go ahead and try again and I think I was touching it before, so one point zero zero two kilo. ohms, exactly what the other one said, so perfect measuring resistors, so let's measure the voltage with this guy when we're going to use this one first, okay, so we have our two probes, right. It matters since I was measuring AC and it alternates between positive negative negative positive it doesn't matter which end you put it on what does matter, although if you want accurate readings it's what setting you choose here since we're measuring voltage. current, so it stays where it's set, that's what the V is for, we're going to measure the voltage and in the US the voltage is 120 guys, AC voltage and around 200, that's what we would expect out, you know, 120, so let's go ahead and plug them in and nothing that really disadvantages them is that they have to select their own and if you're not paying attention if you look at this and you have to voltage AC 200.

I don't know if you know that most Of people would say okay, that's it, it's dead, there's nothing here if they went to 600 and then all of a sudden 121 volts and To be honest, this is a problem, okay, 200 volts. I don't think they should have used that metric system knowing that people will probably use this to measure AC power from C output electrical receptacles.I think it was again bad design on their part because a lot of people may assume it's 120 volts, this is 200 volts, true, it's higher, it should be displayed, but you don't have to be too careful, go up one more if you're not sure.

It's worth getting one that's maybe mid-range and automatically selects the voltage so you're not guessing or playing with it, so to be safe I always go a little higher. just to make sure you know the number isn't really low, kind of like the setting was here and you see padded zeros to the left of that, that's basically what's happening here, it's 120, but the decimal point is here , so it's one two zero. so this will be point one two zero I guess it sounds like it shouldn't have to show anything, so it doesn't. I would say this is a bad design, bad design again, we are measuring the voltage so I will put them.

The voltage we are measuring is the AC welding range, so there is no risk of accidentally not selecting the correct one. It should just plug it in correctly. I try again and get a tidge davol from there 120 point one volts, this one shows up a little bit. of resolution is more expensive now I mentioned I wanted to show you how I would use a multimeter and here's something I discovered the other day and it's something we can investigate together. I have not done it yet. There's a switch on the wall above that that if I turn it off, it turns off the power.

This is the interesting part, although this here is a little light so I can see where I'm going and not be in the way. my toe so often and I have that switch off and yet it's still partially on it's clearly a wiring problem so I'm going to go and turn this off and as soon as I turn it off you can see what it becomes the reading. because I was very surprised to see that and that's why you would use a multimeter the switch is off twenty five point six volts available this switch is off and yet we are getting a significant voltage obviously this receptacle needs to be replaced there it could be a connection problem ground, the switch on the other side could have grounding problems, this can cause problems not only with the electronics in general but also with your safety, if Fluke and other companies make a probe tester to check for voltage and all what he does lights up. turns on and fails, beeps or flashes.

I have one myself. If I had tested it on this outlet here, it wouldn't have worked because it's too low, but there you have twenty-five point six volts available, so that's why I would use a multimeter and that's why I always use a multimeter to confirm that it's actually there is nothing here. Another option available is continuity testing on a diode. Current should only flow in one direction, if it flows in the other direction we have problems, the diode could be bad for example, what I really like about this continuity test is that it makes noise, so in a sense it is like the operation itself, but what it does is introduce voltage into the probes and if that voltage goes to zero, it beeps, so basically I have an audible signal instead of just having to read here and here and here and here and here you don't have time to look at this every time you can just sit there and listen to actually why don't we do that, let's just test the damn everything is fine so move it to a continuity tester, test it quickly, good multimeters every time you touch it, regardless of the duration you should hear the beep, these cheaper multimeters many times, if you go too fast it will act like it doesn't beep, we'll do that test a little later.

I want to see if this is communicating with any other part of the board. It could be okay, so this means that this point is connected well, so this means that This diode somehow has a direct connection in an indirect connection, but that's the advantage. I can quickly go and test across a circuit board and test for continuity. Okay, continuity tester, so let's do what I did with the other probe. Let's quickly review. This and let's see if we can hear that tolerance, when to criticize, what not, maybe it's too broad, so it's not trust statistically speaking, of course, and of course, that's going to work, but if I reviewed it and tried it very fast.

You may not understand it. Circuit analysis is probably not the

best

thing to do with this little guy here now. Resistance, as we talked about before, is basically the measure of how much voltage can pass and it depends on the properties of a resistance of the material which depends on the temperature, sometimes the pressure of whatever you are using, in this case we want to measure how much current are carried by ions that are not in the water, so this is what we are going to do. This is a pretty easy basic test. I put different problems here, I'm just going to add them and change this reading above to where we can start to get some numbers, so the 200 kiloohm resistor is when it is currently and it says 33 or 32 kiloohms, so 30 mm.

It's clear we are getting different readings, don't be alarmed, it all depends largely on how far the distance is between the probes, where the ions are, this is just tap water so there will be some ions floating around. around. there, which means it's a driving thing now, when we put this guy here, come out, what should we expect him to do? Look, what should we expect resistance to be? I don't know what the resistance will be, but I know. I know one thing, when we add salt to water, we're going to have basically what's called an electrolyte, so basically what we have when we put some of this in is that the sodium and the chlorine have to dissociate, they have to break down, and as a result.

So sodium, which is a conductor, is a metal, shouldn't be able to basically be a charge carrier and start allowing charge to flow back and forth because it can literally move back and forth between these probes as you do so. we do, we should start to notice that. the resistance of these guys is going down now it's not predictable how much they're going to go down no matter all we're going to do is see if we can observe the resistance going down a little bit of salt water or a little bit of salt now it won't necessarily be immediate.

You should probably mix it a little to separate the NaCl and it will start carrying more current. I'm just putting in more right now to speed up the process. I'm a little cold. Here, if I had hot water, this, of course, would be much better. We can see that chance now reads considerably less now that it's at three, before it was at eighteen and you may have to move this craftsman down to provide better resolution there. come on so it's not right about three so now look we're about to get more consistent readings between the two and that should make sense since I'm just associating the sodium and chloride which means this is It's getting more conductive as it gets. more conductive we should see that the resistance should be reduced a little more here again.

I'm just trying to speed up the process with a little work on my part. You can see that the resistance has decreased initially. This now showed 18 kilo houses. it's about 1.6 this one was showing 30 kilo ohms now it's about 2.8 9 so now I'm going to have some fun now I'm going to be a little mean and I'm going to pour a bunch in there come on just have some more fun buddy hmm really just pour it in there that's okay, okay, okay now if I wanted to now if my goal was to try to see how conductive I can get the easiest way to do it is not to sit here and I have to do all the mechanical work to separate it.

The easiest way to boil it is if I boil this. It would be conductive quickly. Now I added a lot more salt. Here you can see that the numbers are starting to decrease again more rapidly. Unfortunately, most of the salt now accumulates at the bottom. It's really late and I need to stay awake because I want to finish this video. This is horrible, so I'm going to try some salt water, maybe it will be the cure-all. It's just going to keep me awake and make this video right for you guys, it's probably going to be pretty gross, oh my gosh, um, basic chemistry that reminds me, um, if your glands are swollen, this isn't the tip of a multimeter, but if your glands swell a little.

A little here, gargle with salt water when you are measuring bulbs and want to check if they work. You can really only do that with these guys because they have a filament that zigzags up through the other end and connects back down, so just like a wire, it has resistance and continuity, so you could, for example, change it to continuity and keep one end on the outside and the other firmly down and you notice that apparently it's not enough for this continuity tester to activate so we can move it to the resistance so it's about 26 27. All this tells us It says is that this bulb still works and I only mentioned this, for example, if you are not sure if you should change the bulb if you change two or three. of them and none of them worked or you are just curious, whatever the reason is it is another good reason to use the multimeter.

I'll try the continuity tester on this one first to see if this one trips, yes it sure does. it says 25 ohms so it's within this range it says hey messenger connection and that beep goes on so I know this bulb works depending on what you would use this type of switch this could be a kill switch and, oh, red switch. the button you used to start a new whatever, but what if you didn't have the schematics for this? Maybe there was nothing written or it was there and you couldn't see how it was designed. My point is: what if when I press down?

Which ones connect or disconnect? How would you know for sure? Let's say you had to replace the switch with another one and you had 10 minutes to do it and couldn't find the schematics. You have a multimeter but you don't have the schematics. Does this close a circuit? Does it open a circuit? How would you know? You could probably spend 10-15 minutes looking for it here. They potentially have a model number that may help, but you most likely have these. changes and you won't know exactly what the connections are. One of the ways you can do this is to just set it as your own and just start polling from a common point and see, so let's keep it up. and let's test it to be conductive there, not conductive, they're not Cove there, in other words, closed, open, open, okay, now here's the audible instead of just looking at the resistance, closed, open, open, what it means that potentially these two when this Killswitch is active on the protection, potentially these two could disconnect and these two could connect.

I don't know, but so far what we know is that these two are connected, these two are not, so now let's turn it off, see if we can figure out what just happened in here. interesting, my time closed is now offline offline no connection until now, what I can be sure of is that when this was open, these two were connected in a closed loop, these two were an open loop, so what I'm going to try now is Go down to this because I suspect this is one set and this is another set when it is open as it is now these two are connecting these two are disconnecting when it is closed these two are disconnecting or an open circuit becomes closed circuit or it's connecting just what I'm assuming and we can test that theory right now.

You should hear an audible noise if now these two are connected if my theory is correct and in fact that is exactly what is happening and you should not hear any noise from these two they should be completely separated as expected in a very short time we were able basically discover the internal schemes of this guy right here. I didn't need to Google it just using the continuity or resistance reader. By the way, you can also use it on resistance meter, test the switches to see if you are using a rocker switch, whether this good connection or not, maybe the switch is defective and there is a high resistance when you press it a little when you press it with more force, then there is less resistance, so on this particular multimeter it has a nine volt and 1.5 volt measurement option and I'm very curious to see if those readings will be different than if it did.

I just go to my CC and measure it that way. Basically I want to see if there is a load if they put a couple of resistors in line and in series just to test if you can have a high voltage battery. that appears to be high voltage, but as soon as you take current out of it, as soon as you try to put a load on it, it fails and it happens a lot with car batteries, let's say 20 volts and again I line this up and I get one. point six 2 volts about now I want to move it to 1.50 and I want to see if I get any different readings on that so I'm getting a point five five five volts right to make sure I'm not the one that's going to change it back toThere seems to be a little bit of a difference, so you could potentially be putting in a little load just to get maybe a little bit more accurate reading, so all of this basically means that this mass should be ready to go.

For this next measurement, I'm going to measure current now, a couple of warnings and please don't fast forward through this part, especially if you're not sure what I'm talking about: current is what kills people, no. the voltage, if desired. Proof of this, think about the winter time when you are walking and receive an electric shock or shock someone in return, that is twenty or thirty thousand volts. You died? Current, on the other hand, will kill and it only takes, I'm not mistaken, something like one or two and that depends on your body chemistry if you're a lightweight if you drink salt water like I just did if you went to exercise if it's a wet or non-humid day all of that can drastically affect the way your body reacts to the current so be careful and if you're not sure what you're doing then don't do it because you don't want to have an accident, you don't want to get hurt or get killed because you didn't take proper action, maybe ask a professional, ask someone who knows what they're doing.

Doing another thing I want to talk about quickly is this to measure current, the multimeter is not an accessory or is not considered extraneous to the circuit, it is literally part of the circuit, this means that the multimeter when connected will keep the circuit working if you disconnect the multimeter circuit should no longer work that's how you know you're measuring current and that's why you have to be so careful, not only do you have to be careful not to touch the probes or be careful where you place the probes especially if you're close to components high voltage or high current.

You also have to be careful because this multimeter may not support that rating, this is ten amps, but very carefully, if you use that point before, it says only for thirty seconds. max and I wouldn't even accept that. I have no idea what the amperage is. The other thing is to make sure your probes are also compatible to measure the amount of current and if they are certified the reading should tell you that. here it says cat three thousand volts but let me take a look at this cable this cable says two thousand volts eighteen gauge American wire can run up to eighty degrees Celsius this one is ready for cat three thousand volts and at ten amps so this is telling us again and that and that should make sense, it should make sense because if the multimeter can take ten amps, I would certainly expect the probes tool to be lower, even compatibility where this can measure more, but they won't.

I check again what is happening. I have current traveling through that top black probe. This guy here is traveling through here. It's going to go to my multimeter, which is currently set to ten amps and as we're measuring the current. I have it. on the gray one that I showed before, it should connect when you're measuring it, ten amps and it's AC, ten amps, so I plug it into the wall outlet and then I have it connected to the red probe that's double clamped with alligator clips. to the main outlet then it goes through the toaster it comes back out again to the black connector finally it goes back home through that screwdriver that's why you don't give screwdrivers to kids because you can very easily stick them in a wall outlet ask me mom for more details, so I'm going to turn it on.

It's not a problem so far and what we are looking to do again is measure the current and keep in mind that this is quite dangerous. I've lived another Kerner life, so I have to be very careful, those two are close even though they are separated, so be careful, here we go, there we go, right now it's six point seven three amps, so when someone has a toaster with the microwave on, it is very obvious why The fuse may fail, especially these older houses have a 10 amp fuse. You put a toaster in it. You only have three point three amps left before the fuse blows and you may also notice that the resistance increases because these coils get hotter and hotter on the inside. this toast and as those coils get hotter and hotter, the resistance increases, the six and six and three quarter amps going through that multimeter.

That's why I encourage you not to use these cheaper multimeters because if an engineer in a different country does it to you. I can't verify if the UL certificate is justifiable, whether when they say up to a thousand volts or ten amps, if that is really true or not. I've read a lot of stories about if you guys have used these cheap amps and done a test like this and something melted or the probes melted with so much current going through here, you know, any of those situations can happen, so now right we're at six point eight six amps, my toast, I can feel it, oh, definitely, it's getting hot over here.

That current that makes that toast possible passes through that multimeter and there we go, we have successfully measured the current much better than salt water.