If you are an engineer working in a
firm or an electrician undergoing regular electrical machinery
testing jobs, multimeters
and oscilloscopes can
come extremely handy in your professional overtures. While
oscilloscopes measure wave lengths and voltages in great details,
multimeters are capable of measuring a number of things such as
resistance, current, voltage as well as proper functioning of
transistors and diodes. But which one would be more suitable for your
work and how to choose them? As a dealer of a wide gamut of
electronic products of brands such as Proxxon,
Hameg, Tektronix and the likes here are a few tips from Conrad to
help you choose the right tool for your work.
Multimeter or Oscilloscope?
A multimeter can do a great job in testing and maintaining general
and daily electrical appliances and circuits but cannot check
complicated machinery controls or other electronic design works.
Moreover, while the former can depict the average level of voltages,
oscilloscopes have the capacity to detect signals, changes in
voltages, type of waves, compare voltages and a lot more.
How to Choose a Multimeter
In order to choose a Multimeter you have to look into the operational
area for the device, the measurement functions, features like Auto
Ranging and Dialing, battery life, display options and test lead
lengths.
How to Choose Oscilloscopes
As in choosing a multimeter, the
first things to consider while choosing an oscilloscope
is also the area where you
will be using it, the number of signals to be measured, the highest
frequency of the signals needed and the maximum and minimum ranges of
amplitude. You also require taking into account factors like
whether the signals will be viewed both in the time and the frequency
domains and whether they will be single or repetitive shots. However,
the most important consideration remains that of choosing the right
bandwidth or the input signal’s frequency range that is capable of
passing with the least amplitude dissipation through the front-end
analog.
