I assembled this this very carefully for Christmas. Put a safety diode in the 9v battery lead, and gave it 9v from bench supply. Result - NADA - nothing ! ? Just blackness !! Ah, well, I thought, no surprises there, but then thought, "maybe RUclips has something on it !" Well I can't thank this guy enough when I noticed he pushed the rotary control spindle IN - and it all happened. Merry Christmas !
But of course it's completely obvious that you need to short certain places together and press the button ! And what pins you put component legs into is knowledge that we are all born with.
i just bought the exact same kit. Glad I found your video. Instruction manual says to install the SMT stuff first. My display came with the header soldered to it already.
you can opt out of using the surface mount components as to they are for just surge protection, the unit will still function, I've built 2, 1 with, 1 without SMD
Great video! Could you make a step by step tutorial showing how to restore the screen contrast?? It seems everyone including me, builds these things sucessfully then tinkers with the screen settings and messes it up to the point where nothing is visible. So to have a tutorial showing the exact steps to take from power up would have mega views on here and be very helpful!!!!!!!!
Do you know any tests to find out the reverse transistor voltage? maximum voltage supported by it? so we can find out if any transistor is false or not
Mine is excellent! But the frequency generator portion is crap on mine! It goes up to 9 Hz and that's it! What the hell? I bought mine from eBay prebuilt. I don't understand why mine is so different, yours and others are presets for quite a few different frequencies, mine on the other hand is variable from 0 hz to 9 Hz and that's it! Any help would be appreciated. It will read voltages, the PWM and frequency output is on the same jack, the one by the bottom voltage jack. It will read voltage through the jack with the V on it. Supposedly up to 50 volts.
What is annoying is when mine starts it shows the menu for 2 seconds. The menu does not respond and then it switches to showing the battery status and a line of text that reads Vext=0mv. I was hoping Dr Spock could translate that line into English I could understand. It's OK when it works but far from polished. Might of been a better idea to check the battery before showing the menu and not the other way around.
Not a bad kit at all. I like your bench set up of oscope, power supply..etc. i see the tabasco sauce on the bench. I live around 30 miles from avery island Louisiana! My fav hot sauce!
DirtyDon RC why thank you :3 the whole idea for that combined Bench setup was actully something like a shower thought and me just being often annoyed to have 6 big devices for just one application. So i just combiened some scrap equipment i had with some cheapo but good chinese kits in order to make one massive device that does all. Hehe yeah TABASCO brand Hot sauce is my favorite too. Sadly didn't get the chance for a tour of the factory when i was in California a few years ago :/
Is the 9012 transistor supposed to get really hot? Can someone else check theirs and confirm? I can't find any shorts, but it is unusual. You can take the screen off and it still heats up. Its the first transistor after the power input if you follow the traces(it is also labelled 9012).
Okay, so after a lot of testing I found that 9012 is not supposed to get so hot it can cook popcorn. I found that the 3k3 resistor which I believe is supposed to level shift the voltage or pull down the circuit or something was 2.5k ohms attached to ground instead of 3.3k right out of the box! It was marked with correct color code, but was out of spec. So, I replaced it with another 3k3 I had on hand. The thing runs much cooler now and works perfectly(kinda, see below). For those of you who have the 1-||-3 capacitor test function that gives you 25%+ out of spec results, use the C+ESR@tp13 option and that will actually measure capacitors properly. Unfortunately for whatever reason you can't just plug in your capacitor and test it, or else it comes up with bad results. You can I suppose just quickly add 1/4 1/3rd to the result and call it good...but I don't trust that 1-||-3 test mode at all. It doesn't seem to work out of the box. For reference, I tested ALL resistors in the entire device, and all were to spec(after I replaced 3k3). The 470k ohm resistors were testing 465-472k, but I don't think that is enough to cause capacitance to be 25.54% lower than actual value(independently tested on my multimeter to be exactly 22.3uF. The device reports something around 16.7uF? If I go into the C+ESR@tp13 mode, it reports _exactly_ correct 22.3uF that my meter shows. Which is good. Half the reason I bought it was so I didn't have to hold probes onto a capacitor to test it. On another note, Anyone know if this thing can test thyristors? I had a bunch of 2 pin devices in TO-92? package with the third pin being really short(unusable). So, I finally just looked up a part number from one that had a readable part number. It came up as a thyristor. I guess these are pretty obviously 2 pin thyristors, but it would be good to test their properties without individually looking up datasheets from the almost unreadable slop written on the device. Anyone know?
Most of the bloggers on youtube use the green worktop boards, where do you get them from?. As it's an Arduino Uno chip, is there a shield version of this unit?.
Smashing video :-D Looks like a very handy device, i think i would have to put a dot of glue on the pcb to hold those tiny smd parts down, so i could solder them, eyes are getting old lol :-D.
your making it hard work doing it like that only solder one pad for an ic and fit it to it then solder the other pins . best way one pin fit then ouer pins
Great video...thanks for sharing...and suspenseful, too...lol! :-D ... it's suspenseful watching those tiny little surface-mount bits being held in that spring-loaded tweezer... just a little wrong tap and PIIIIIING!!!..that tiny little surface-mount bit goes flying at flea-speed off into the abyss of never-never find-it land...lol!... you did great though... and those little tester/id'er's are definitely awesome..
Mine worked fine for a few months so a few gos really of use and just died switched off and never back on again ! i am wondering if they program the chip to die after some time to make us buy another ..great tool when it was working but no reason to not even get a half a year out of it which would of been a few days no stop use really !
Thats strange. Had mine for over a year now and it works just fine. Almost use it on a daily basis. Maybe something was faulty. Often the voltage regulators tend to go bad or the screen died. You can check with a Multimeter if the voltages at all the pins for power (5V) are still good. A pinout of the used chip can be found here: www.homautomation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Capture-d%E2%80%99%C3%A9cran-2014-03-06-%C3%A0-21.52.42.png The chip is just a standard arduino uno (Atmega326p) one you can't program these to "die". You could get a new chip, reprogram it with open source code transistor Tester code that can be found onine (wich also gives you a few more features) and it should work again. just make sure the hardware on the component Tester is still functional. The first component tester I got ended up breaking when I was measuring some capacitors. I presume one of the capacitors was still holding a charge above 5V and ended up killing the whole thing.
Thanks for the reply ! i read a few people had my problem but mine worked fine from the start for a few months. i checked the regulator it gives 3 volts out to the chip .but pressing the button i can read it is still doing that but only when i hold it in . transistors look fine ..took screen off still same voltage problem..i noticed a surface mounted chip might be that . It was a great frequency meter so i did get another which is here but i have not built it ..i could put the new chip in and see but i don't want it to go faulty if its that catch 22.
My kit doesn't work, double checked all components location. Device draws 0.4A while pressing the knob and 9012, 9014, 7550 packages get very hot. Any idea?
Hi! i have bought it but seller forgot to send me capacitor for calibration :( Could you tell me please how many farad and volt i need? Tester ask me to make calibration but i don't know wich capaticotr i need. Thanks in advance!
I looked at the messy source code as I have the same issue. It maybe something to do with the watch dog or something. God knows what the message means. There are later source versions out there. I was hoping it would solve the issue but trying to compile (or make them) is proving super difficult. Damn make files. The supplier protected the Atmel chip with the super sacred open source files lol.
www.banggood.com/DIY-Mega328-Transistor-Tester-Kit-Capacitance-Inductance-ESR-Meter-Diode-Triode-With-Case-p-1129565.html?rmmds=myorder&cur_warehouse=CN I just finished this and it did not work. Watched this video and gave me ideas on what to check. I had swapped the 3.3K and 33K resistor and had a solder bridge on a transistor. The transistors are hard to solder without getting a bridge. Good little kit
Hmm that sucks. Best to do would be to check all the connections again and trace the the voltages to see if everything goes where it needs to go or one of the transistors itself may be bad
Out of interest to others i had a damaged meg328 would not switch on ...no idea how to fix it but noticed a video on line tracing the voltages the 5 volts come's from the surface mount parts in the mean time .... Well i had ordered another which i had on hand now which i just panned on making till i found out they had not sent the surface mount parts ! very very P......off Ok i have 2 now one broken the other pointless making with missing parts and no easy way to tell them with only 2 options refund or send it back ...i just want the parts ! The last resort was fix the broken one that would not switch on ...first i swapped the screen no good next swapped the pic again no good all other parts looked good a head scratcher of a problem.....back to the video my last resort was just adding the missing 5 volt supply from a bench power supply to the top of the surface mount resistor where it looked like it came from bingo it switch on not only that it worked on its own again as normal but testing the pic the original it was dead but the new russian programed pic worked ,i know whats up now if this thing place up again !...but buyer beware ...the kits with missing parts are as good as no kit unless your like me with a spare !
I ordered two from banggood and both have went bad and they will not do anything, better stay away. They need to send instructions how to reset or something.Mine was the ones that were already put together.I am afraid to go to the russian website, viruses.
I assembled this this very carefully for Christmas. Put a safety diode in the 9v battery lead, and gave it 9v from bench supply. Result - NADA - nothing ! ? Just blackness !! Ah, well, I thought, no surprises there, but then thought, "maybe RUclips has something on it !"
Well I can't thank this guy enough when I noticed he pushed the rotary control spindle IN - and it all happened.
Merry Christmas !
But of course it's completely obvious that you need to short certain places together and press the button ! And what pins you put component legs into is knowledge that we are all born with.
i just bought the exact same kit. Glad I found your video.
Instruction manual says to install the SMT stuff first.
My display came with the header soldered to it already.
Could you tell me what is the difference between the GM328 and GM328A versions?
you can opt out of using the surface mount components as to they are for just surge protection, the unit will still function, I've built 2, 1 with, 1 without SMD
What did you say the shiny silver side is used for ? That is the part that is on the board.
bit of advise when putting smd caps or resistors on put small bit of solder on one pad and then fit it to it then when one side on solder other side .
I don't know why but mine always turns off as soon as I don't hold down the potentiometer
Great video! Could you make a step by step tutorial showing how to restore the screen contrast?? It seems everyone including me, builds these things sucessfully then tinkers with the screen settings and messes it up to the point where nothing is visible. So to have a tutorial showing the exact steps to take from power up would have mega views on here and be very helpful!!!!!!!!
Mine came with the russian version instead of english version anyway of reflashing thing with correct version?
i got mine ready assembled but does not work sadly . wish i had built my own . retuning it .
My version does only use half the screen. Does anyone know if you can change that?
Do you know any tests to find out the reverse transistor voltage?
maximum voltage supported by it?
so we can find out if any transistor is false or not
Mine is excellent! But the frequency generator portion is crap on mine! It goes up to 9 Hz and that's it! What the hell? I bought mine from eBay prebuilt. I don't understand why mine is so different, yours and others are presets for quite a few different frequencies, mine on the other hand is variable from 0 hz to 9 Hz and that's it! Any help would be appreciated. It will read voltages, the PWM and frequency output is on the same jack, the one by the bottom voltage jack. It will read voltage through the jack with the V on it. Supposedly up to 50 volts.
It's a 328, so if you added a serial port like on UNO, & altered the software. you should be able to print/send data to a pc monitor.
What is annoying is when mine starts it shows the menu for 2 seconds. The menu does not respond and then it switches to showing the battery status and a line of text that reads Vext=0mv. I was hoping Dr Spock could translate that line into English I could understand. It's OK when it works but far from polished. Might of been a better idea to check the battery before showing the menu and not the other way around.
Not a bad kit at all. I like your bench set up of oscope, power supply..etc. i see the tabasco sauce on the bench. I live around 30 miles from avery island Louisiana! My fav hot sauce!
DirtyDon RC why thank you :3 the whole idea for that combined Bench setup was actully something like a shower thought and me just being often annoyed to have 6 big devices for just one application. So i just combiened some scrap equipment i had with some cheapo but good chinese kits in order to make one massive device that does all. Hehe yeah TABASCO brand Hot sauce is my favorite too. Sadly didn't get the chance for a tour of the factory when i was in California a few years ago :/
Is the 9012 transistor supposed to get really hot? Can someone else check theirs and confirm? I can't find any shorts, but it is unusual. You can take the screen off and it still heats up. Its the first transistor after the power input if you follow the traces(it is also labelled 9012).
Okay, so after a lot of testing I found that 9012 is not supposed to get so hot it can cook popcorn. I found that the 3k3 resistor which I believe is supposed to level shift the voltage or pull down the circuit or something was 2.5k ohms attached to ground instead of 3.3k right out of the box! It was marked with correct color code, but was out of spec. So, I replaced it with another 3k3 I had on hand. The thing runs much cooler now and works perfectly(kinda, see below).
For those of you who have the 1-||-3 capacitor test function that gives you 25%+ out of spec results, use the C+ESR@tp13 option and that will actually measure capacitors properly. Unfortunately for whatever reason you can't just plug in your capacitor and test it, or else it comes up with bad results. You can I suppose just quickly add 1/4 1/3rd to the result and call it good...but I don't trust that 1-||-3 test mode at all. It doesn't seem to work out of the box. For reference, I tested ALL resistors in the entire device, and all were to spec(after I replaced 3k3). The 470k ohm resistors were testing 465-472k, but I don't think that is enough to cause capacitance to be 25.54% lower than actual value(independently tested on my multimeter to be exactly 22.3uF. The device reports something around 16.7uF? If I go into the C+ESR@tp13 mode, it reports _exactly_ correct 22.3uF that my meter shows. Which is good. Half the reason I bought it was so I didn't have to hold probes onto a capacitor to test it.
On another note, Anyone know if this thing can test thyristors? I had a bunch of 2 pin devices in TO-92? package with the third pin being really short(unusable). So, I finally just looked up a part number from one that had a readable part number. It came up as a thyristor. I guess these are pretty obviously 2 pin thyristors, but it would be good to test their properties without individually looking up datasheets from the almost unreadable slop written on the device. Anyone know?
Most of the bloggers on youtube use the green worktop boards, where do you get them from?. As it's an Arduino Uno chip, is there a shield version of this unit?.
Smashing video :-D
Looks like a very handy device, i think i would have to put a dot of glue on the pcb to hold those tiny smd parts down, so i could solder them, eyes are getting old lol :-D.
your making it hard work doing it like that only solder one pad for an ic and fit it to it then solder the other pins . best way one pin fit then ouer pins
I scrolled down to see a comment just like this one. LOL, I agree!
Some good tips like the chip notch thanks. i would have blew mine up i'am sure if i had not watched your video going to build mine soon ;-)
Great video...thanks for sharing...and suspenseful, too...lol! :-D ... it's suspenseful watching those tiny little surface-mount bits being held in that spring-loaded tweezer... just a little wrong tap and PIIIIIING!!!..that tiny little surface-mount bit goes flying at flea-speed off into the abyss of never-never find-it land...lol!... you did great though... and those little tester/id'er's are definitely awesome..
Mine worked fine for a few months so a few gos really of use and just died switched off and never back on again ! i am wondering if they program the chip to die after some time to make us buy another ..great tool when it was working but no reason to not even get a half a year out of it which would of been a few days no stop use really !
Thats strange. Had mine for over a year now and it works just fine. Almost use it on a daily basis. Maybe something was faulty. Often the voltage regulators tend to go bad or the screen died. You can check with a Multimeter if the voltages at all the pins for power (5V) are still good. A pinout of the used chip can be found here: www.homautomation.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/03/Capture-d%E2%80%99%C3%A9cran-2014-03-06-%C3%A0-21.52.42.png
The chip is just a standard arduino uno (Atmega326p) one you can't program these to "die". You could get a new chip, reprogram it with open source code transistor Tester code that can be found onine (wich also gives you a few more features) and it should work again. just make sure the hardware on the component Tester is still functional.
The first component tester I got ended up breaking when I was measuring some capacitors. I presume one of the capacitors was still holding a charge above 5V and ended up killing the whole thing.
Thanks for the reply ! i read a few people had my problem but mine worked fine from the start for a few months.
i checked the regulator it gives 3 volts out to the chip .but pressing the button i can read it is still doing that but only when i hold it in .
transistors look fine ..took screen off still same voltage problem..i noticed a surface mounted chip might be that .
It was a great frequency meter so i did get another which is here but i have not built it ..i could put the new chip in and see but i don't want it to go faulty if its that catch 22.
My kit doesn't work, double checked all components location. Device draws 0.4A while pressing the knob and 9012, 9014, 7550 packages get very hot. Any idea?
bad IC, bad 9012, 9014, 7550, ect
See this video: ruclips.net/video/4AN6rInz5s8/видео.html
Did I miss some information here? Where did you get the kit? Which kit is it? How much was it?
you can get it pretty much in any online store, amazon, ebay, aliexpress, ect... this one is around 18€ (may be a lot cheaper on aliexpress)
dang need a microscope for this and whole lotta patience.tu good work.
what name and number was the component tester kit in this video.
They often go by the name Transistor Tester. This is the gm328
Hi! i have bought it but seller forgot to send me capacitor for calibration :( Could you tell me please how many farad and volt i need? Tester ask me to make calibration but i don't know wich capaticotr i need. Thanks in advance!
100nf to 20 mf will do.
Thank you for the video it did explain some questions that I had.
For the latest modified firmware for these testers have a read of this thread www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/$20-lcr-esr-transistor-checker-project/
Is it possible for you to post a copy of this software (epp + hex files)? Thank you.
I don't know what files you mean. I just used the pre flashed firmware of the thing that it comes with
Imagine this thing, but for ICs.
Hi mine says vexed =0mv would you possibly know what would cause this error ?
sorry never seen that error before. cant find anything to it online
@@HardDiskLover ruclips.net/video/NHthWtKWXJE/видео.html There you have seen it now
I looked at the messy source code as I have the same issue. It maybe something to do with the watch dog or something. God knows what the message means. There are later source versions out there. I was hoping it would solve the issue but trying to compile (or make them) is proving super difficult. Damn make files. The supplier protected the Atmel chip with the super sacred open source files lol.
ohne SMD-Bauteile funktioniert der Tester auch
Does somebody have a stl file for 3d printing a case for this tester?
www.thingiverse.com/thing:2070417
Where is a source for this kit?
search on ebay, aliexperess, amazon for component tester / transitor tester
www.banggood.com/DIY-Mega328-Transistor-Tester-Kit-Capacitance-Inductance-ESR-Meter-Diode-Triode-With-Case-p-1129565.html?rmmds=myorder&cur_warehouse=CN
I just finished this and it did not work. Watched this video and gave me ideas on what to check. I had swapped the 3.3K and 33K resistor and had a solder bridge on a transistor. The transistors are hard to solder without getting a bridge. Good little kit
my tester doesnt work, 9V battery is ok, the display doesnt even light up
Hmm that sucks. Best to do would be to check all the connections again and trace the the voltages to see if everything goes where it needs to go or one of the transistors itself may be bad
Out of interest to others i had a damaged meg328 would not switch on ...no idea how to fix it but noticed a video on line tracing the voltages the 5 volts come's from the surface mount parts in the mean time ....
Well i had ordered another which i had on hand now which i just panned on making till i found out they had not sent the surface mount parts ! very very P......off Ok i have 2 now one broken the other pointless making with missing parts and no easy way to tell them with only 2 options refund or send it back ...i just want the parts !
The last resort was fix the broken one that would not switch on ...first i swapped the screen no good next swapped the pic again no good all other parts looked good a head scratcher of a problem.....back to the video my last resort was just adding the missing 5 volt supply from a bench power supply to the top of the surface mount resistor where it looked like it came from bingo it switch on not only that it worked on its own again as normal but testing the pic the original it was dead but the new russian programed pic worked ,i know whats up now if this thing place up again !...but buyer beware ...the kits with missing parts are as good as no kit unless your like me with a spare !
heh full color screen and its all one color and one size text, these firmwares need major UI work
there are custom firmwares that people have made ;P
Where can we find the firmware?
44:22 yo need to pour that tobasco in to make that thing work :-D
replace this 8,000 MHZ crystal with a 16,000 MHz crystal will get faster.
I ordered two from banggood and both have went bad and they will not do anything, better stay away. They need to send instructions how to reset or something.Mine was the ones that were already put together.I am afraid to go to the russian website, viruses.
Flux
i hate the smd io, burned my finger because of that shit :D
awwee no XD I know that too well :P done it many times got some really fine tweezers now. Helps a lot and no more burns ^^