Sunday, July 8, 2012

Advanced LC meter

After finishing my last project - "Simple LC meter", there were some discussions in the forum I am a member of, that ability to measure electrolytic capacitors would be very useful in this type of device.
I searched the Web and found a very cute project named LCM3 on this Hungarian site: hobbielektronika.hu . I love Hungarian rock since my school days, but I don't know a word in Hungarian :( . So, I searched the Web again, this time for this specific project and found a Russian forum where the project was discussed in details and I got more useful information about parts, settings and so on.

Specifications of the LCM3 are (according to authors of the project):
Capacitors:
from 1pF to 1nF - resolution: 0.1pF, accuracy: 1%
from 1nF to 100nF - resolution: 1pF, accuracy: 1% 
from 100nF to 1uF - resolution 1nF, accuracy: 2.5%
Electrolytic capacitors:
from 100nF to 100 000uF - resolution 1nF, accuracy: 5%
Inductance:
from 10nH to 20H - resolution 10nH, accuracy: 5%
Resistance:
from 1mOhm to 0.5Ohm - resolution 1mOhm, accuracy: 5%