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mini component testers

painttoad

painttoad

i am a toad
Subscriber
almost everyone has one. you can get them on amazon, ebay, aliexpress etc.

they have their limitations and i have had a ton of issues with them over the years but i still keep them around.

anyways, i noticed long ago that these things will not measure small value caps. i can't remember exactly what the smallest value is that can be measured.

so i had the bright idea the other day, lets measure a 100pF cap and stick a small value cap in parallel with it.

mind your slots. if you have one cap in 1 and 3, you must use 1 and 3 for the other cap..




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i'm sure i am not the first person to realize something so obvious but i have never seen this brought up.
 
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painttoad said:
almost everyone has one. you can get them on amazon, ebay, aliexpress etc.

they have their limitations and i have had a ton of issues with them over the years but i still keep them around.

anyways, i noticed long ago that these things will not measure small value caps. i can't remember exactly what the smallest value is that can be measured.

so i had the bright idea the other day, lets measure a 100pF cap and stick a small value cap in parallel with it.

mind your slots. if you have one cap in 1 and 3, you must use 1 and 3 for the other cap..




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View attachment 3852716View attachment 3852717

i'm sure i am not the first person to realize something so obvious but i have never seen this brought up.
Click to expand...

Like you I stopped using mine when I got a Peak but kept it around. Now I'll have to see how mine reacts.

Took me a bit to notice the blue cap. Getting slow in my old age...
 
Had to do some serious searching to find the charging cable since it hasn't been used in such a long time. I found a couple that fit and I believe the short white one came with the tester. Charging now.

I have another cap tester somewhere I'll have to find and maybe see if I can open it up to find why it doesn't work. From what I remember it didn't work right from the start.
Looked something like this one:

Screenshot (1452).png
 
Since these aren't that great at all for testing caps in general, I don't use mine to test caps as a rule. Mostly it just gets used to test to see if transistors have failed, (they will test as a diode usually), and to test diodes or to see how far old carbon comp reaistors have drifted in value.
 
kwayde said:
My tester measured 27pf but couldn't read 20pf.
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i can measure 33pf but not 22pf

i don't have anything in between.

Lavane said:
Since these aren't that great at all for testing caps in general,
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some are, some aren't. some won't get the pinouts of transistors correct either.

this one:

Annotation 2026-10-09 095626.jpg

reads the 33pf as 69pf but it still won't read the 22pf. it will read hfe close to another tester but vbe will be almost 100point difference

i keep it around in case i need to scavenge the battery. (i regret not trying it out for over 30 days after buying it.)

9 out of 10 times, when i am testing caps, i am not measuring absolute value, i am going for a match.

the other 1 out of 10 times, i am measuring what came out of the unit out of curiousity.
 
painttoad said:
some are, some aren't. some won't get the pinouts of transistors correct either.
Click to expand...
My recently purchased model (last 2 weeks), came with these known issues. My 4th grade spelling kicked in, and I overcame the typos in the doc (too large to upload here), besides there are many clones of this out there.
 

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Thank Painttoad for that observation. Makes sense. I think I will keep a reference cap in my tester tray.
( small storage bin to carry the battery in a secure manner )
 

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FWIW, my first Peak tester was purchased close to 15 yrs. ago, was their yellow colored LCR model LCR40 .
It will measure, if I remember correctly, capacitance down to around10 picoFarads after shorting its leads together and running the tester, I seem to remember, to self calibrate.
I initially purchased it to engage my housekeeper/caregiver to sort through various 2 leaded residual components lying around from over twenty yrs. of servicing, scraping various electronic devices.

She being totally ignorant of correctly of trying to identify/sort/test small piles of axial leaded parts such as resistors, small capacitor, inductors color bands initially with one of my portable digital VOMs, so I thought to try out the Peak LCR component identifier/tester that I saw on sale in a MCM Electronics flyer mailed to me, and after a few minutes of demonstrating how to use the PEAK device, she rapidly tested & sorted all the resistors values & any small axial leaded color banded caps & inductors to be separated to be placed into their respective parts type drawers/containers in my electronic repair shop.

That Peak`s testing devices performance so impressed me to look into purchasing other models the company offered after a few yrs.

I have various HQ bench sited device testers like Sencore, B&K Dynascan, & Genrad, for more detailed & thorough component testing, but they are more involved for simple quick go/no go, or just identification, if desired/needed.

You sometimes can get the quality results of what you pay for, and all my Peak brand component testers have paid for themselves in correctly quick time saving trusted use since purchasing.
 
I thought Doug's thread was pretty complete.

dlucy

Post in thread 'dlucy’s guide to transistor testers and curve tracers'

“cheap component testers”

What is a cheap component tester?

The term “cheap component tester” is meant to cover any one of many models of small semiconductor analyzers based on microcontrollers like the ATmega128 and which run software designed to run a bunch of tests on a connected electronic component, guess the type of that component (e.g. resistor, capacitor, transistor, etc.), and display a few measurements about that component.

cheap component tester 00.jpg cheap component tester 01.jpg cheap component tester 02.jpg cheap component tester 03.jpg

The practical result is you stick a component in the socket, press a...
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