MyGoodLadyWife told me recently that she would like to assemble another electronic device kit of some sort. How could I say no? A quick trip to Ebay resulted in the purchase of an absurdly cheap little transistor tester kit including a clear plastic case. Even if it didn’t ultimately work I could probably re-use some of the parts in other projects.
A few days later, the package arrived and ended up on the G7IVF workbench readyfor MGLW to have fun with…
MGLW then set about inspecting all the parts of the kit for any damaged items that might need replacing. Although an IC and its corresponding socket looked like they had been trodden on, thrown across the room, thrown back and finally trodden on again, MGLW was confident all would be well after some TLC applied with some suitably small pliers.
Next up, MGLW sorted the components and checked against the parts list downloaded earlier for correct values.
Assembly proceeded quickly – MGLW was pleased with the quality of the circuit board. Here’s how things looked after all the resistors had been placed.
Very soon after, the main board was fully assembled and ready for the display to be fitted.
Once the screen was in place, a suitable 12 Volt DC supply was hooked up and… it lives!
Now we knew the tester was powering up, we fitted a 150nF capacitor and ran the self-test and calibration program. After a short while, all the tests had passed and the device reported the capacitor was measured as a 140nF device. That’s less than 10% off… not bad!
Build and test complete, it was time to case up the unit. Here it is!
We finished up by picking a random transistor from the junk drawers and ran a test. It passed!
I was very impressed with this little tester. It was very cheap to buy and simple to build and MGLW had great fun assembling it for me. I suspect there will be another order for a different kit very soon…