O.T. Cheap Component tester/identifier

premelec

Senior Member
FWIW I have something similar to this that sometimes gives very far off readings - e.g. showing a particular capacitor - 2 leads - as a transistor with three leads! Hope it works better in this incarnation...
 

PhilHornby

Senior Member
Software driven of course - so the luck of the draw which version you get!

The comments after the youtube video contain some useful links - but I'm not sure how field-upgradeable these are.

I'm not expecting 100% accuracy - but next time I'm staring at something out of my 'bits box', I'm hoping it help identify it.
 

newplumber

Senior Member
thats cool PhilHornby.. I might order one too ...maybe have it by 2018
thats funny premelec wonder how it found the other lead
I would use it just so I can end a argument between me and myself of what the component I jam in it
but for 7-/+ bucks maybe I can be lucky and it will work close enough
 

AllyCat

Senior Member
Hi,

I discovered that I'd already downloaded "version 1.13" of the same document, dated May 26, 2017, which appears to have come from here; presumably a link on the YouTube video's comments.

The updated document shows photographs of several of the "Clone" Chinese boards; your link looks identical to the one described as the "T4 tester" (Yellow PCB) on page 28.

Cheers, Alan.
 

erco

Senior Member
I have one of these, it seems to work properly. Fun to see if it IDs the component correctly, I haven't tried to stump it yet. Of course most of my components are legit and labeled, so this is more of a benchtop novelty. But I do have a few "grab bags" of components. Maybe one day I'll sort through them all.
 

Janne

Senior Member
I ordered 2 of these after checking out the EEVBlog video of it. Going to try flashing it/them with the newest firmware, judging by the pictures it has the 6-pin ISP connections (although reversed) on the bottom of the PCB.
Luckily I already have a reverser cable for the ISP due to a slight mistake on an earlier project :p
 

stan74

Senior Member
I've had one for 4 years, transformer logo,ebay. Very useful as it measures cap esr as well as most components. The later models use a 328p ie arduino uno chip. You could reprogram it apparently.
 

premelec

Senior Member
i used my unit recently to look at a suspect electrolytic - it said damaged or missing component - replacement fixed the unit... useful indeed though sometimes not same reading as my other two capacitance meters...
 

newplumber

Senior Member
I finally had one show up...from my testing it seems to work great
now it will be super fast to reorganize all my piles of resistors/caps/you name it
I don't have a capacitance meter yet so hopefully its somewhat close for standard caps
 

Janne

Senior Member
Just to confirm, the 6-pin header on the backside is for a normal AVR-programmer connector, so if you have a suitable programmer it's easy to try other firmwares, there are quite a few variants floating around.
The thing seems to be pretty good at identifying different parts. Accuracy straight out of the box is not the best(for example capacitance measurement are off by around 3% from my experience), have not tried any calibration methods yet.. But plenty ok just for identifying parts, and considering the price.
 
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