Smd Transistor Tester

[Mary Hargrove]

AlltronicsLLC is based in Silicon Valley, California and has been supplying electronic, electro-mechanical and test equipment since 1978. AnaTek Instruments was incorporated as a family-owned business in New Hampshire in 1991. In 2007 Anatek partnered with Bob Parker in Australia to produce the distinctive and popular "Blue" ESR and Ring Tester Meters. In 2014 Anatek was acquired by Alltronics LLC and we continue to proudly offer the "Blue" range of component testers and also sell many other new and surplus parts for electronics hobbyists and professionals.

The unit is remarkably useful. It detects the *type* of device, and shows useful information such as the effective capacitance of diodes, the beta of transistors, and so on. It even sorts out which leads are which (E, B, C).

Seem to take a long time to review this. These testers have been around for ages.

I agree. Good little tool for how cheap it is. But made like shit. But then it does come from China. The land of cheap.

And when it comes down to it, yeah, these things are cheap. You can get them shipped to you for less than $15 on ebay. And for less than $20, you can get one that is quite close to the original schematic, with thru hole parts and a socketed MCU for easy hacking. Look for the GM328 from EZM Electronics studio. Quality is just fine, for a device without a case.

None of them release firmware updates, and none of them release source for their version of the firmware. Fish8840 and 91Make seem to have modified the mainline firmware pretty extensively for graphical display. EZM though seems to keep pretty close to the mainline. Fortunately, people have been successful at getting recent versions from all three manufacturers to work with the mainline firmware by changing a few config options in the makefile and recompiling. The details are in that thread in EEVBlog, starting around page 54 or so.

Now I would like to come back to this webpage and read more but it this web page used up 3.246 Megabytes of mobile data and mobile data is very expensive in New Zealand, Data used to last a long time on slow dial up 54k speed, but not now with super fast internet. because of data hungry websites (I call obese websites)

My PC power supply was bad. I removed 4 1000uf electrolytic capacitors and checked them with this gadget. Somehow all 4 of them show up as diodes. I went back to eBay and found an identical looking unit. The description says the capacitance range is 25pf -100,000 uf, so 1000uf is covered.

careful with testing caps. You MUST discharge the caps by shorting their leads before attaching, as the surge from stored energy can fry these. There is also discussion on the EEVblog thread on building a protection circuit, but I do not recall on what page of the thread.

Warnings:

BE CAREFUL with the display. The display is attached to the display module PCB by only the 2 flat cables. If you turn the display over, it will hang from the flat cables and they can easily get cut. Tape the display to the display PCB immediately, after which you can do something more permanent like hot glue or an actual case or whatever. I knew this and i still flipped the display before tapeing it, but fortunately the cables were ok.

Someone had a scratch on the PCB, which had cut one of the tracks and the device did not work, so before soldering, check the PCB for scrathes and test the tracks if you have any doubts.

The good:

Easy to assemble, easy to modify, nice display, has a voltage reference (TL431) instead of the zener diode, but apparently it is a not a very good voltage reference, so it might need to be replaced.

Anyway, this is just my opinion, i just got the thing and i definately do not know the other versions thoroughly, so make your own decisions. I like this version, because i can make it better/fix it easy. Check the official manual for different versions, although the differences are not that simply put in there either.

I have the V1.10 (2016?) version of this component tester board with the rotary push button dial on lower left side and I got it in a kit. Does anyone have the BOM or where these 29 resistors go? They are silkscreened but no values are called out on the board.

First thing to try is to look for other sellers in aliexpress, bangood or where ever you bought it. The images are quite small, but you should be able to see the correct values. If not, ask for more help.

A circuit tester is used to check whether a transistor which has previously been performing properly in a circuit is still operational. The transistor's ability to "amplify" is taken as a rough index of its performance. This type of tester indicates to a technician whether the transistor is dead or still operative. The advantage of this tester is that the transistor does not have to be removed from the circuit.

Transistor hfe varies fairly widely with Ic, so measurements with the service type tester give readings that can differ quite a bit from the hfe in the transistor's real life application. Hence these testers are useful, but can't be regarded as giving accurate real-life hfe values.

Transistor testers have the necessary controls and switches for making the proper voltage, current and signal settings. A meter with a calibrated "good" and "bad" scale is on the front.In addition, these transistor testers are designed to check the solid-state diodes. There are also testers for checking high transistor and rectifiers.

The curve tracer instrument in WaveForms allows several of the Discovery family of devices to draw characteristic curves of common devices like diodes, NPN and PNP transistors, and both P- and N-type FETs. The Transistor Tester can be plugged into the Analog Discovery and enable the use of this instrument without any need for reference circuit set ups, similar to a traditional curve tracer instrument. However unlike traditional curve tracer instruments, WaveForms runs on a computer, readily providing measurements, cursors and screenshots that can be taken with the click of a button. This is extremely convenient for lab reports, and much more accurate than a photo of a display.

When using the Analog Discovery and Transistor Tester and adapter is selected, the curve tracer instrument provides the appropriate reference resistors and can be used to easily plot the characteristic curves and add cursors to take the necessary measurements. The Adapter is loaded with a 2x15 female connector which can be plugged directly into the analog Discovery. Components or leads can be attached via the terminal block on the Transistor Tester.

*** Note: During the course of my exploration, I actually fried my tester..... I already had another one on the way, so I'll build another one. However, hopefully you do not fry yours. I'll describe what I was doing at the end of this Instructable. If you use a 9v for testing this whole time, don't worry about it. If you are "experimenting" with different power sources....or how to measure voltage with this thing....perhaps see the end of the Instructable first.

First, connect a 9v battery, or a 6 to 12 volt DC supply to the barrel power jack. In this example I'm using a 9v battery. Press the silver knob down to "start" it up. As nothing is plugged in to test, it may show you the *warning* that it is not calibrated.

Scrolling through the menu gives you these options. This Instructable will hardly scratch the surface of the capabilities of this thing -- (at least initially -- I'll update as I continue to use it and understand it). For those more technically inclined than me, this manual explains everything.

To calibrate, as it describes, you must connect all three testing spaces with whatever "probes" you plan to use. For this example, I plan to plug the parts directly into the testing places, so I put together a little thingy which I just place into the ZIF for calibration.

"Capacitor meter With the 1 3 symbol the tester changes to a capacitor meter function at TP1 and TP3. This operation mode will be marked with a [C] at the right side of the first display line. With this operation mode capacitors from 1pF up to 100mF can be measured. In this operation mode the measurement is repeated without key press. With a key press the tester finish this operation mode and returns to the menu. In the same way as with resistors, the tester changes automatically to the capacitor meter function, if a capacitor between TP1 and TP3 is measured with the normal tester function. After a automatically start of the capacitor meter function the tester returns with a key press to the normal tester function."

I won't pretend to know anything about these, except to put the right ones in the right place as directed by smarter people. However, this example shows the result of measuring one, and I've provided some details from the spec sheets to see how it measures up.

"For normal measurement the three pins of the transistor will be connectet in any order to the measurement inputs of the TransistorTester. After pushing the start button, the Tester shows in row 1 the type (NPN or PNP), a possible integrated protecting diode of the Collector - Emitter path and the sequence of pins. The diode symbol is shown with correct polarity. Row 2 shows the current amplification factor B or hF E and the current, by which the amplification factor is measured. If the common emitter circuit is used for the hFE determinatation, the collector current Ic is output. If the common collector circuit is used for measuring of the amplification factor, the emitter current Ie is shown. Further parameters are shown for displays with two lines in sequence, one after the the other in line 2. For displays with more lines further parameters are shown directly until the last line is allready used. When the last line is allready used before, the next parameter is shown also in the last line after a time delay automatically or earlier after a key press. If more parameters are present than allready shown, a + character is shown at the end of the last line. The next shown parameter is anyway the Base - Emitter threshold voltage. If any collector cutoff current is measurable, the collector current without base current ICE0 and the collector current with base connected to the emitter ICES is also shown. If a protecting diode is mounted, the flux voltage Uf is also shown as last parameter."

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