Too few hours in the day //Jafoca.com

In addition to the stuff from NKCelectronics I got in the mail yesterday, I also received a box from Mouser. It seems like Mouser and DigiKey both have similar things, but there are always parts that you can find at one and not the other, as was the case with the digital multimeter I wanted – the Extech EX330.

So – why did I choose this DMM?  Well, unlike some other people I know, I do not have ‘all too easy’ access to $400 Fluke MM’s a work.  I wanted something good enough for most everything, but I didn’t really want to spend a LOT of money on it.

After consulting the EE buddy, Nick, he said that the one nice feature I should look for on a low-mid range MM would be frequency.  The EX-330 has that, great.

It also has a couple of nifty features that are a bit more unusual for a DMM in this price-range - temperature probe and a non-contact voltage detector (for high voltage, above 100v).  That was pretty cool.

And of course, a more qualatative measure took a bit of weight in the decision process – I thought this model of MM looked nicer than some of the others in this segment.

I was perhaps a bit wrong on that estimation – I thought the MM was red and black.  As is plainly shown in the photo at right, they opted for a much more orange and green scheme which is a bit off IMHO – ahh well, they aren’t racing stripes so the performance will not be affected.

Aside from the DMM, the other parts I got from Mouser are not too exciting – yet.  The list includes some higher power n-fets and a couple of ICs for driving high power LEDs.  Hopefully these will be in action soon.