When I started to deal with Chinese electronics suppliers from websites like Alibaba, Aliexpress andTaobao, I discovered that there are huge amount of undiscovered tools from the Chinese market. They are not easily discovered, maybe due to the Chinese language barrier, especially when we deal with a Chinese website like Taobao or maybe because most of us are used to deal with known electronics distributors like Spark fun.
I also discovered that I can get my stuff from there in a lower price and in most cases of the same quality.
We can’t deny that dealing with known and trusted electronics stores such as Spark fun and Ada fruit is more comfortable and safe, but our proposal is an alternative one.
That doesn’t mean that our series will focus only on tools from Chinese suppliers. We will also explore special tools from EBay, Tindie and other resources.
This series is weekly, so stay tuned! Please note that when we talk about a tool from a certain store or a supplier, we don’t claim that we guarantee the quality and if the store is trustworthy.
You can reach the posts published in this series using the following link.
Welcome to the second post in this series. Last time we talked about the graphic component tester. This time we are going to talk about another useful tool in our labs. I discovered it from the Chinese vendors and it’s called ‘LC200A L/C Meter’. It’s a tool that measures capacitance and inductance.
It has two leads that are connected to the target inductor or capacitor. LC200A has four measuring range positions:
- C range – Capacitance (0.01pF-10uF).
- L range – Inductance (0.001uH-100mH).
- Hi. L range – Big inductance (0.001mH-100H).
- Hi. C range -Big capacitance (1uF-100mF).
This device has three options to power it, through mini USB, 5.5mm DC socket or 4 AA batteries.
To use it, you need to press the red button for 1 second after connecting the probes so the device calibrates, because the probes may give some drift (error) in the readings.
Read More: Tools for the Electronics Hobbyist Part 2- LC200A L/C Meter