DT-9205B Digital Multimeter problem

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coyo7e
 
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DT-9205B Digital Multimeter problem

Post by coyo7e »

I spent a couple hours this morning trying to troubleshoot an arduino project so I broke out my brand new multimeter and, well, it doesn't appear to do a darned thing. I'm pretty new to electronics so I bought one of the beginner's tool kits and the documentation with this multimeter is woeful to say the least - I can't hardly even figure out how to set the dial and as was mentioned in older posts about this product, features do seem to be either missing or inaccessible. After looking at a few older threads on this, I am pretty sure that I'm getting the same issue as someon posted in September:

When I turn the multimeter on the numbers fluctuate for a bit as if it's zeroing. Which is odd because there's no leads connected. When I plug in the leads and change settings on the dial, the numbers fluctuate. If I, say, touch the leads to a fresh 9V battery, I get 0.0. As if to add insult to injury - as soon as I pull the leads away from anything resembling power that I'm trying to measure, the damned screen starts fluctuating numbers again. As I type this, it's on the floor on 20 V-, and it's reading "0.1" .. "0.4" ... "0.2".. "0.0" etc.

I changed the battery, same thing. I even checked its old battery with my analog multimeter and it has plenty of charge. This is super frustrating because I'm trying to go through a crash course in teaching myself enough to get into a digital controls class this upcoming semester and not having a reliable tool with anything resembling useful documentation is actively hampering my progress.

And I'm not kidding either - whenever I try to test something with this tool it stubbornly reads "0.000" no matter what I set it to, but hold the leads in my hands or wave the leads around in the air and it fluctuates.

Thanks in advance.

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: DT-9205B Digital Multimeter problem

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

It sounds like there might be a bad connection between the meter and the probes.

If it doesn't work with a fresh battery, it's a hardware problem though. Send a note containing a link to this thread and your order number to [email protected]. The folks there will get you a replacement.


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coyo7e
 
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Re: DT-9205B Digital Multimeter problem

Post by coyo7e »

Thanks for the quick reply! I had a moment of inspiration and took the leads off of my analog multimeter and put them onto this guy, and it works fine - so I'm pretty sure one of the leads is defective. :)

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adafruit_support_mike
 
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Re: DT-9205B Digital Multimeter problem

Post by adafruit_support_mike »

That's still worth a replacement. Go ahead and contact the support team.

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