Back to the basics.
I am fed up with my various digital multimeters. They are often in a weird mode and show funny numbers and it often takes me some time to figure out what setting is wrong. What happened to KISS instruments? Since I am working with battery cells and assembled 5
batteries these days quite a lot, I quickly designed and built my own tester, essentials only. All with components I had on stock, except for the 9V battery case, which came from Lazada.
The tester measures voltage only and has 3 ranges:
- 2V: for 1.5V cells5
- 20V: for LiIon and LiFePo4 cells, 6V and 12V lead acid car and motorbike batteries and any other batteries under 20V total voltage
- 200V: for assembled LiIon and LiFePo4 batteries, I have versions with 32V, 48V and 72V.
I actually wanted to make it an analog device, but did not have the suitable display for that. Maybe some other time. Digital is also better to take on the road since the index of the analog meters can be sensitive to shock and vibrations.