Yup. We need to find a way to credit the genius that figured this out as well as those who put the effort into improving it. Thanks for letting us know who they are! Great video 👍

I like the new dark themed slides. Easier on the eyes.

Thanks Andreas for crediting the original designers! And for convincing me to get one (after 15 years of hobby0 electronics :D) 15:25 Switching to GND is not off ;) That would be float :) 18:30 Do note the current capabilities are a little bit more limited with a IRLZ44 on 3,3V and a IRF540 on 5V. It has a higher Ron because you run out of the linear region quicker.

Great Video, as usual Andreas! Perhaps you could mention, that the Transistor Tester can and should be calibrated. At least my later chinese clone-version has this functionality, which is also described in the fine manual (Chapter 5.5). Properly calibrated mine comes quite close to my bench-top multimeter, when testing capacitors and resistors. I guess with the calibration you can eliminate offsets in the 680 Ohm and 470kOhm resistors, so they don't need to be spot on (which allows our Chinese friends to use standard SMD components ;-) Thank you Andreas to give credit to the inventors of this truly remarkable, helpful little device!

I love these little devices, too. I recently even updated the software on some of them. But be careful with electrolytic capacitors, always discharge them before testing!

This is a really helpful video. There are many videos on this tester but yours is the only one I have found which goes into the history and then tells how and why the tester works. So good, thank-you.

Big hello from Czech republic. I love your videos. Two years ago when I was doing my bachelor thesis with ESP32 as a low energy detector I found out about your channel and a lot of information about ESP32, which was rare back then as the chip was relatively new. I got an A grade, red diploma and a deans award for it. Now I just started doing my Master thesis again with ESP32, now as a device for automatic measurement of volt-ampere characteristics of components with voltage range +-20Volts (which has a number of similarities with component tester) and you just uploaded this video with a LOT of relevant and easily digestible information for me. I dont know how you do it, but I wanted to thank you. You are making a really good job and also making my life much easier. Thank you :)

I do agree, i have another version of this device, where i had to solder almost all the pcb (the ICs were already in the pcb). It was quite fun to build, a good soldering practice and in the end, you end up with a very usefull device. It is good to know all the hard work that allowed this device to work, nice video as allways.

Thanks for this great video Andreas. And especially for properly crediting the inventors.

16:08 it should be able to detect FET by going tri-state on gate. FET gate will remain charged and transistor open, while BJT will close since there will be no current anymore.

Great explanation how this works. I have the rotary version and been very usefull for quick check for parts.

Excellent video Andreas! Thank you for giving us these insights and crediting the original creator(s). I also use one of those and it is very convenient to use. The production of your video is also of outstanding quality. Danke schön 👍🏻

Thank you for this video! I had found the original creators of the project some time ago, but lost the details. It is a very useful device, it is shame that the Chinese companies brand it as "theirs", but publicity like this can only help give credit to the correct people.

Wow! I did not expect that such a device is relatively New in concept (2015). Hat off for the inventor and also thank you for a very educational video to watch on a sunny autumn Sunday.

Many years ago, I hacked a power supply adapter from my mobile phone to also be able to power my Psion 3a. The Psion input voltage was nominally 9 to 10V so I planned to use 3 plain old diodes in series to reduce the power supply voltage from 12V to below 10. Alas, on open circuit, the output voltage was still nearly 12V. It wasn't until I was drawing milliampere that the voltage sank low enough. So I find the multitester quite clever too. In a flash of inspiration with my PDA voltage dropper, I parallelled the diodes with a green LED as a current indicator... It was off when the Psion was disconnected, lit up when powering the PDA and flashed brightly when the device was drawing hesvy current, typically when connected to a modem, transferring data.

Absolutely outstanding, thank you. Very well explained. My wife is smiling at me, when I watch the video on iPad in Bed on Sunday morning... But sometimes they are too rich to be watched only once! E schöne Herbst-Start

I bought this device a few years ago and I'm really happy with it. Your video is very interesting both educationally and graphically. I knew that Mr Markus FREJEK and Karl Heinz Kubbeler were the creators of this device and it is important to remember this. Thank you for everything .

Great video! Makes sense. Please differentiate capacity with capacitance

I love my tester too. Thanks to you years ago I have a case too. Have a good week Andreas.

Great video again! I have now one of these testers and it is a very helpful device. All the credits to the original inventor!

Thanks so much for this video It answered all the questions I ever had about this device and then some a few years ago when I started messing with Arduino I searched for the software for device in hopes to build my own and possibility of adding some ideas to the software but I could never find much about this device other than the fact that the Chinese made it and I don't speak Chinese. This is the most informative video ever on this device and my hats off to these two great inventors!

I love your videos; giving credit to the inventor is so cool. Greetings from Mexico

I would also add Markus Reschke (madires) to the ones deserving the credits; he not only did advance the software significantly, he also provides prompt support since many years...

Amazingly Well Done, most of it was over my head but with time one day I might understand it all.

Another excellent video - thank you & those who originally designed the device

Thank you and Markus. I made a DIY version with more precise resistors, calibrated it and now I am astonished with the accuracy

Excellent video Andreas - thank you...

Great Video, as usual Andreas! Thank you

very useful video, this is getting better every time!

I bought one of these Chinese boxes a couple of years ago, and found the original project due to curiousity how it works. Truly fascinating little devices, and so useful! I noticed the original project is/was still going, and had added support for the various displays the Chinese have bolted on. I did mean to flash an update onto it, but never got round to it (would have involved some board surgery, and my German improving!).

Excellent structured matters. Thank you!

My tester (also a china „clone“) got the extended menu with frequency generator and so on, even though it’s not a rotary encoder version. It can be accessed by long pressing the test button when powering on the tester. Pretty sure it‘s in your tester too. Try it 😏

useful && interesting = 1 great video once again Andreas..all the facts without the BS!.. Excellent!

Impressive design 👍 Thanks for sharing 👍😀

Thank you again for all this valuable lessons.

I LOVE THIS VIDEO! So much better than other "review" videos.

Amazing content ✨👌. After watching this video, I really learned a lot

I have one and I love it! I have tested lots of stuff with it, I think like you said some of the triac stuff might not read but I would say about 98% of the time it is right on. I think that I have successfully tested scr s, and triacs, I find that there is no one single tool that does it all anyway, but this thing is pretty amazing best $15 I spent.

For a project at Uni, I and 3 colleagues tried to do something like this. The project was far too ambitious and was simply impractical as it growed up and up ...and more complicated with every step. All we had at the time was I8031 or early PICs as microcontrollers. Finally, we gave up of measuring and testing analog components and went to digital ICs. That was way simpler. And we used a parallel port interface in a XT (later 386) PC. At first we tried an Spectrum but it needed to load from tape (or to program a EPROM with the software ant those were quite expensive) so we moved to PC. In the end, we made a device that identified most of the 74 TTL and 4000 CMOS ICs and tested them using a database stored on HDD; the programming was in Turbo Pascal. Also it tested the small RAM ICs found in 8-bit computers at the time. All I know is that some professor took the idea a bit further and made a 16bit ISA board and added some functionality. All started with the need to replace a full lab bench with one lighter instrument (the oscilloscope, LRC meter, transistor meter were old, huge beasts at the time)

They are really handy, have a few of them. Nice video👍

I repair a lot of stuff (mostly consumer electronics/appliances) and a cheap component tester like this is one of my most used devices for that. What's also nice are those cheap microcontroller based oscilloscopes (I have a JYETech DSO Shell, that I use more often than my "proper" scope).

cool! thanks (again) for the video with full of useful details!

Nicely explained.

dude you are awesome , im gonna try to watch all your vids, love the swiss accent, im american, obviously, thanks for all the help in the past and the help you will give me in the future

Thanks for the video, letting us know the great project they made. The tester struggles to test some triacs such as BT136 because of required current gate which the tester can't give and as result a transistor is represented. But this isn't a bad thing since it is in the specs and for its price it performs pretty good with other components. to test triacs use a simple dimmer circuit as described in the app note of datasheet of the triac.

After modifying a pair of SMD tweezers to work with this gadget, I watched this again. What an inspirational piece of engineering. And beautifully described by a true engineer. (It takes one to know one!)

Great work! Thank you

i also have one. good to know how it works now. thank you

thx,it really do lots of help for me.im designing a multifunctional elec tester.

Helpful information

These are useful devices. Way back in the early 1980s I bought a device which I still use about once a year to program a couple of fusible link ROM chips. It is a HiLo model ALL-01 Universal Programmer - from Taiwan I think. The programmer is a box containing pin driver, pin sense and power supply circuits for the 40-pin ZIF socket. This connects to a dedicated AT expansion board in the PC via a 25-pin cable. The software runs in DOS and needs a CPU running at 8 or 12 MHz. To operate the programmer I keep a dedicated 386 12MHz PC running Novel DOS-7 on a CF card pretending to be a hard drive. Another feature of the ALL-01 that I didn't seriously use is that it came with software that makes it a universal chip tester, at least for the limited range of chips from the early 1980s - mostly TTL from memory. With modern microcontrollers with analog inputs much less circuitry is needed and we no longer need to be programming and erasing EPROM chips to make our projects work.

Thanks again, Andreas!

8:40 there is actually one more possibility: using internal pullup (or even pullups in combination with these external resistors)

THis is a great tool. Beautiful

Super vidéo ! merci

ON SO MANY LEVELS >> Thanks So Much !!

Fünfter ist auch nicht übel. Danke für deine Verlässlichkeit! Richtig schweizerisch... Sehr interessantes Video mal wieder!

Thanks for the info. i've always wondered how they work. Now i know..

Danke Andreas für das tolle Video! Auch die Erwähnung der echten Entwickler - hätte mich auch gewundert, wenn diese Entwicklung aus cn wäre 😉. Ich hatte mir mal vor einem halben Jahr auch ein paar bestellt - 2 monochrom und 2 mit Farbdisplay - sie messen relativ genau und für den Preis unschlagbar.

I really need to get one of these; but, I keep procrastinating. In a pinch I just use my DMM. I even sometimes use the diode test mode for transistors. With my eyesight not as good as it once was, I find myself using the DMM more and more and the color code less and less. BTW, if I was making one of these, I would use the non-linear behavior of semiconductors as a first check for classification. This might have been a nice opportunity to introduce linear vs non-linear devices; but, I also appreciate that you are keeping you videos short.

I like how you gave credit to inventors. Salute

I have one of these with the ZIF socket and it’s great. But since I don’t have a 3D printer and didn’t buy one with a case I had the problem of the corners of the little LCD screen snapping off when I tossed it in my luggage when moving flats. Hence only half the rows on the LCD work anymore, so I have to infer where a decimal place is on a value, and sometimes have to swap components to be across pins 1 and 3 to get the value at the right height to not be obscured. So I would recommend getting or making a case for one of these. I’d buy another one, but ever since I got an oscilloscope I’ve been using that with a capacitor and resistor to measure inductances, and I’ve been putting a bit of work into being able to use the XY mode as a curve tracer, so I doubt I’ll be using my part tester for characterising 2-pin components anymore.

Nice video! Thanks!

A nice insight Andreas, and all credit to the creator of the project, but it appears it was something of a 're-inventon' of the existing DCA55 Transistor Analyser, which uses the same efficient micro port techniques you described here.

Thanks so much Andreas, I didn't even know that these tester existed ! I will for sure buy one. But could you tell me which one is "the best" in terms of fucntionalities ? Thanks JP

He put the design online for anyone to use. I think that was very cool of him to do that for all our benefit. It's a must have devise for any electronics hobbyist to have. I blow the main chip in my one by connecting it to a fully loaded capacitor like a fool. I was checking zener diodes on a board with the little hook leads that came with it, and the I checked some normal diodes that were unfortunately open and the hook leads were still in the zener section of the tester which can put out up to 30 volts. And that's how the capacitor was charged up. Oh well ya learn from you mistakes. Need to get a new one!! I have my eye on the one he showed in this video at 19:45 the GM 328A that has the PWM and signal generator built in. Looks nice. I'll just make a zener tester up from scratch. Kasan tv channel shows how to make a nice little one if any is interested in making one!!!

Love the comment, "If you are interested in accuracy, RTFM". I remember my technical instructor saying that nearly every day. "Go and RTFM", LOL

Excellent exploration ! TNX 4 the upload! 73 N8AUM

I knew the mikrocontroller.net thread and article for a long time but I learned from you, that I can buy this for cheap from chinese sellers like aliexpress :-)

Great video. Hopefully those guys get credit in the history books of Electrical Engineering. They may not have gotten money for their work, but it sure is one hell of a resume.

I saw this tool for the first time in 2014, do not hesitate to buy it, it is very effective for diagnosing components quickly, but I still have my component testing guidelines as in the old school. It seems to me that this device gets dizzy with the triacs according to the position placed, it happened to me on one occasion.

In-depth knowledge

Arduino accuracy can be increasing by adding a Voltage reference to the AREF pin, with a lower voltage you increase the precision, for example if you add 1V to AREF, 1024 value would be 1V instead of the default 5V, so you gain 0,00098V per step instead of 0,0049V (from the 5V default reference ) But of course you''ll not be able to read more than 1V, but in this situation you probably don't need to. BTW you can update the firmware on those testers (with the original one) and get more features like the counter and individual testing components, pwm generator and so on.

Thank you, very interesting! Just ordered one again, the previous one did not survive a charged capacitor... For me serial output instead of a display would be sufficient.

Recognition of the original authors is very important. Either useful and interesting video!

Grandios! Zwei Fragen: - Welches Programm verwendest Du für die Skizzen auf dem Bildschirm? - Welches Programm für die (animierten) Schemas? Danke!

Dear Andreas, great video as always. Could you please check the link for the component tester on AliExpress? Did not work for me. I was looking for the tester with rotary encoder. Thanks!

I've got one of these its great, a hobbyists wet dream!

I also love this device! If i must repair a device, i idenify the prossible fault part, test them with this tester and most of the time i found the fault!

Great video, thanks for sharing some of the ‘black magic’ hidden in these testers. Just wondering if you might have considered doing a sort of buyers guide for digital oscilloscopes (not a massive survey with recommendations) but just explaining the features and which may be worth looking out for. Just a thought. Many thx

You have function gen etc on your model too, just hold the button down and you will enter menu, then press to go down and hold to select. ;)

It's criminal that the inventors aren't credited and earn royalties from such a brilliant invention.

I have one, it is really good component detecter and useful measurement device for such a low price. It was invented like 10 years ago, riight? do you know is there are projects and does it worse it to replace atmega by some more powerful chip with more accurate ADC or use more precise voltage reference. It is so good that I am curious is it possible to improve it and produce version 2.0 ?

Dankeschön, Du 'guy mit dem swiss accent'. So viel Herzblut in den Videos und genau so viel Fachwissen. Man lernt in jedem Video etwas Neues. Hast Du schon mal Annex Wifi-RDS ausprobiert? Ich halte es für ein ausgezeichnetes Projekt, mit dem sich alle möglichen DIY-Lösungen mit ESP8266 in Windeseile erstellen, testen und modifizieren lassen. (btw: 'accurate' and 'accuracy' are both stressed on the first syllabus in contrast to 'developers' - sorry about that....)

Danke, noch einmal. I too find the tester extremely impressive, and I made a career of creative designs. And to think the genius who invented was 16 at the time! Did you ever double-check your BS108s? Say plug in only the "gate" and one other pin and see if it reports a diode? I have received several fake parts from China, and the tester has revealed them. It's in fact one of the principle uses I have for the tester.

I love the component tester for it is almost as sci fi high tech gadget from star trek.

Hallo Andreas, danke dafür, das Du die Köpfe hinter diesem tollen Gerät noch mal bekannt machst. Ich wußte es auch schon, aber Du hast hast eben eine viel größere Reichweite. Das wird die beiden bestimmt freuen?

A device such as this is on my wish list. However, in this case, I prefer to buy from the original makers. It is a great gesture of you to give them credit.

Thanks a lot... 😊

If I'm not mistaken, the creator of this device commented on a EEVblog's video similar to this one

Thank you

Hi Andreas...what is the name of the conference you are presenting at in Hyderabad, India

Can you put a LC combo, either series or parallel, to find resonance?

I was looking to buy one. And I was sure the Chinese didn't design those and was thinking to find out the real story . That was like 3 days ago. And there you go u did everything I thought of doing :)

Super interresting video. I always wondered how they worked. Now i know what genius person invented that to be able to make them for the lowest price. Its sad that the real creator dont get credited....

You have to be quite careful with the 5V to I/O on modern chips as the ESD protection diode can burn from constant >200µA current in the long term. Those aren't as robust as old ones and some chip's don't tolerate any current over the diode drop. But in hobby use it is usually OK but I've seen this in production use and failures will happen sooner or later when the datasheet absolute max is violated.

bought the banggood tester and 6 leads. I knew it was a good purchase because the total was 12.34

Really interesting! I bought a tester on Aliexpress, and brought it to work. After some time the display had an accident and broke, so I bought an identical new one, so I have two testers now, but only a display. It's a really good device, and I'm glad to have heard it's history. Thanks!

I also think so when I use mine.

Today i learnt that legs are of crucial importance in electronics. I also learnt that Chinese ones are different from Dutch or German ones. Touching the wrong one might get an electric shock, a fire or in the worst case wrong side of the law. Chinese legs are universal but might not fit well in the machines. On the other hand in my country there is a great amount of diversity so I m kind of stuck there without getting the full picture. And recently a few rats entered my high security storage area and cut the boxes for my 3d printer electronics board. As usual, I touched some wrong legs in wrong place in the RAMPS and the mega voltage regulator was fried. I had a Chinese 7805 with different legs because it was flexible. I bent the legs but the one Chinese works ok although doesn't look beautiful. Anyway thanks for suggesting this tester. It saves the hassle of looking into datasheet (which never matches the real one). One addition I would like to have is to have hanging "prongs" so that it can inspect different legs without disturbing them and finding out how good they are and how they might they behave in different circumstances. And of course, wifi enable this tester with paramerters logged somewhere which can be stored in the rfid tags of the container storing the chips. And we can always add the weight sensor like in the cat food video. And add one nfc reader in the cupboard attached to esp8266 which stores all the data over the "cloud" Real difficulty is making the software which plugs everything smoothely. But I want such a system to make life easy with so many small legs.. Needless to say bigger legs attract more and easier to work with. And thanks for suggesting magic mirror software. Its written in ugly node JavaScript like the node js but gets the job done. Maybe I will buy a cheap mirror from the marked make a 3d printed case add the pi+display behind it. Maybe add Bluetooth receiver+wireless charging+battery bank over that..but rgb matrix has its own charm.