Low-Cost Capacitance Meter
Approx construction cost US$19
A typical multimeter can measure voltage, current and resistance over a wide range of values, and usually has a few "tricks up its sleeve" such as continuity tester and transistor checker facilities. Some multimeters have capacitance measuring ranges, but this feature remains something of a rarity. This is a pity, because anyone undertaking electronic faultfinding will soon need to check suspect capacitors and a ready-made capacitance meter is an expensive item of equipment.
The unit featured in this construction project offers a low-cost solution to the problem of testing capacitors. It is an analog capacitance meter that has five switched ranges with full-scale values of 1nF, 10nF, 100nF, 1uF, and 10uF. It cannot measure very high or low value components, but it is suitable for testing the vast majority of capacitors used in everyday electronics.
More details on this construction project can be found in the May 2000 issue of EPE Online, the world's first web-delivered electronics and computing hobbyist magazine.
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