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Episode: 2014
Title: HPR2014: A first look at the Owon B35T Part 2
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2014/hpr2014.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 13:20:14
---
This is HPR episode 2014 entitled, a first look at the OMB 35D Part 2.
It is hosted by Enable and in about 22 minutes long.
The summary is more clicking on things, blue to happen, things are taken apart.
This episode of HPR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
Get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15.
That's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
Hello, this is NY Bill and I'm back with Part 2 of the review of this OMB 35T.
Where I left off on Part 1 was I was having trouble pairing the Bluetooth in the meter
to my phone.
And I tried everything I could.
The normal way you go to Android settings and you go into Bluetooth and you scan for devices
and I scanned and B35T shows up and I clicked to pair with it and the pair failed every
time.
So I tried with my old Motorola droid, my current Samsung Galaxy 4 which is kind of getting
long in the tooth.
I like these new sevens that are out.
And they're not a phone guy.
Bigger and better and faster is better.
I might go phone shopping soon.
So what I found out was you don't pair with Android's pairing.
You actually go into O1's application here and when you do, you'll see at the top of
the screen no device, no device.
What this looks like, it looks like you could have two of these meters and be pairing
to both of them and have the two of them doing different things.
O1's voltage and the other is current or however you want to set it up or two different
voltages on two different parts of the board, that actually would be handy.
So here you go.
I got the app open.
Let me take a picture of, yes, we're still doing this all live.
I'll take a picture of what it looks like, turn the meter on, put it to hold down Bluetooth.
It goes to Bluetooth.
Your camera dial is in the wrong position, okay, fix that.
So that is that first picture, it'll show no input, no input, no device, no device.
So what you do is you click on either of these no devices.
So I've done that.
And then it shows up all on B35T and it gives its MAC address.
So you long hold on that.
I suppose if you had multiple meters, you would see all of them in there.
And then after a short pairing, boom, it's up, here we are.
It shows my on B35T.
I don't know if I could possibly change that so you could go like meter one and meter
two, meter ones on the left, meter twos on the right.
What I'm actually going to do in a minute is get rid of this second no device that's not
going to show me any output and just have this meter full screen on my phone.
Let me turn on the power supply.
So I can send some voltage readings to my Bluetooth phone.
There we go, 18.38 volts and 18.38 volts.
It shows right up, need a better way to prop my phone up, make profit up between probes.
This is real professional.
So there it is.
If I go up and down on my voltage on the bench power supply, I'm at 23 now, the phone
tracks right to 23.
It follows it, there's very little lag.
So that's a quick connection.
Now, let me see how I did go to full screen.
I press the middle button, which looked like I square with some lines around it.
You press that button once and it shows your meter reading in the center of the screen.
And then around the outside are select range, duty, minimum, maximum, relative, hold, auto.
So can I change that?
What if I press hold?
Oh, if I press hold on the phone, the meter holds.
Oh, that's cool.
I just dropped the meter.
The bell wasn't clicked.
This is pretty neat.
You can control the meter from your phone.
Range?
Yeah, I'm changing the range of the settings.
This is quite neat.
The beeps you hear are the phone, but I'm doing it from my phone.
Or, yeah, let me say that again.
The beeps you hear are from the meter, but I'm controlling it from my phone.
Change the range back to 13.3.
I'll take a picture of this so you can see what the app screen looks like when you're
in the full meter, when you have the full meter up and you can control it from here.
Let's see.
So far, I really think this Bluetooth stuff is pretty cool.
Up here, it says you can give it voice commands.
I've never talked into my phone, so except to talk to humans, I'm not going to try that.
How do you get to the logging?
This can do data logging.
Oh, look at that.
I just pressed a button that looks like an up arrow going on a graph, and it's just
slowly logging.
It's we're up to 423 logs since I started recording.
Let me turn the voltage up and down.
Yep, you can watch the voltage go up and down in your log.
I'm supposed, oh, and then there's a graph here.
It's graphing out the voltage I need to.
How can you minimize the graph?
You can zoom in on the graph.
So I'm sure all this can be exported if you need to put it in another up on your computer.
Watch some voltage or amps or whatever you're doing.
Watch it over a period of time, and then you can export all this and use the data to trend
the plot line or see where things are going wrong.
So yeah, this is really cool.
I know when I did the review of the Unity, I was mentioning that that has a data logging
feature as well and how I never planned on using the data logging feature.
When I haven't yet, I got in a conversation in the comment section of that episode where
I think it was with Mike Ray and we talked about, you know, it's a clunky interface and
it goes to RS-232 and then I was talking about, there's a USB cable for it and I ordered
the Unity USB cable and it did come in and it, you know, I stuck it in the Unity but,
you know, it wants to use Windows once again.
So I put their software into wine on Arch and it was just, you know, what was it, VMware
or whatever I used, VirtualBox something.
That didn't want to use USB yet, you needed some special, it just, it wasn't worth the
hassle.
I'm not going to be data logging and I didn't want to go through all that hassle but this,
if you need the data log, you just bring your phone in this meter.
This is, if I ever need the data log, this is the way I'm going to do it.
This is really cool.
And my phone just, yeah, I got to go back in, turn it off.
Yep, it's just slowly here, data logging.
Since I talked a minute ago, about 400 and something, now we're up to 628 readings and
they've all been at 17.2 volts right where I left the power supply.
So here you go, here's a very inexpensive way to data log with a $35 meter and the phone
you have right in your pocket.
So I think the Bluetooth data logging and even the control, I like the control of it.
That is a pass for this meter.
The next thing to do with it is, oh, and I should say, I made little notes for myself
last night.
Yeah, I don't know when you're going to hear this second episode, it might be like weeks
and weeks went by but actually in real life, just 24 hours have gone by.
It's the next day.
It does not auto shut off.
I left it running and running yesterday and there's no auto shut off so that's kind of
a bummer, especially that you just have two 1.5 volt double A's in there.
How quick are you going to run those down?
I'm sure they had that light feature, when you turn on the light, it turns off within
10 seconds.
I'm sure they're doing that to save batteries.
Why wouldn't they implement a auto shut off as well?
I don't know if the cheap chips that they're buying don't support that but I would think
that just the manufacturer is going to make one digital multimeter chipset and then you
just activate the features but maybe I'm being naive or maybe there's three or four
different chipsets that give you better accuracy.
That's probably more likely.
Anyways, the next step for this little review is to take this thing apart.
So let me turn it off, plot the probes and it's to the screwdriver, where are the screw
holes?
There's two on the bottom.
Here we go.
I might cut out the silence or you might get to here like banging and clunking of screw
drivers.
Oh, the battery cover retention is into a brass insert.
That's good.
Instead of plastic with a screw that every time you screw it back in, it's going to cross
the red and ruin the plastic over time because I imagine with just two double A's you're
probably going to burn these up quickly.
The screws to get into the meter itself, these feel like they might go into plastic.
And I don't see any screws on the top.
Oh yes, I do.
Close the bail and there's two more.
It's the sound of a screwdriver by NY Bill.
So pop these screws out of here, is it retained by, can I just, no, just pull it and boom,
it opens up.
Wow.
Okay, a couple things straight off the bat.
I like the, the way the batteries connect to the board, I'm going to have to get that
spring back through there.
They are two plates that stick out of the back of the board and those go up through the
back, the plastic of the back and connect to the battery.
That's better than having like a little nine volt like lead thing that's going to flop
around.
Oh, I can see the Bluetooth module on the, I should probably take a picture.
The Bluetooth module is in the upper left-hand corner.
There's multimeters these days, they look very sparse inside because I think they've got
everything just crammed onto that one big master chip.
I mean, multimeters these days, they're just like a computer, they are a computer.
So it's not like you need staging and relays with resistors and different networks going
on.
Oh, the, I was having trouble putting in the black probe.
And I figured that the banana jack sockets on this, oh, on must be solid sockets which
is, gives a good solid connection and you expect the, the male part of the banana probe
to have the relief in the spring and it not inside the meter, but these are split barrel.
So let me get the, that probe while I have this open, they're split barrel, but they're
sitting in very heavy plastic which gives good stability for your probes, but it's not
going to let that split barrel spring out.
I don't know what I did with those probes, I don't think I'm going to be using it anyway.
I have like probes just cast around me, it's the left and the right from yesterday.
So one of you can come clean this room when we're done with this.
Let me see, look from the inside while I try and insert this.
Yeah, it's these, it's the probes that they come with.
I don't know if I could get a really tight shot of this inside of the probe, but there's
no spring to it.
How would I explain that?
Like there's four sections that meet like with a cross in the metal, four different sections
of metal, but they're not separated by anything, there's no way that they can get any closer
together, so it's like there's no spring to them at all, if I hold it up and, no, too
dark.
Turn on a light.
Maybe compare it with another, yeah, if I can get a close up shot of this, I can,
yeah, if I can get a close up shot of this, I will.
Here's another probe, yep, that might do.
This shot, this shot I just took, you can see my thumb and finger holding it.
At my finger is the Owen probe, and at my thumb is a probe that I think came from unity.
If you look inside, the upper one is a fatter piece of metal inside.
On the bottom, it's a little bit thinner piece of metal.
On the top, with that fat piece of metal, there's no room between where the cutouts for
it to, you know, crush and, you know, change its form.
On the bottom, there's just a little bit of relief between the cuts, and it has some
room to spring.
I don't know if this black probe, just in manufacturing, didn't get cut properly.
I don't know how they manufacture them, but the red one worked fine, and this black
one is just unusable, so I feel a little bummed out with that, because I liked the threaded
retention system on the probe itself.
Anyways, you can look in the show notes for the last episode, and you can see the inexpensive
probe set I like to use anyways from X-Tech, if you're interested in a decent probe set.
Okay, back to this meter, the fuse is, this fuse, I don't know how you get it out of
the back here.
Oh, you can access one fuse without opening the kit right up, kind of.
One amp at 220 volts, but it's just a little glass fuse.
There's nothing too beefy, and then there is a sealed fuse below, don't say what size
that is.
Anyways, the fuses are, they're looking a little, I don't, again, with that, what was it?
20 amps at 250 volts, you're taking a chance, trying to use this for like big electric.
The shunt trip looks big and beefy though, that's probably the 20 amps, the shunt trip,
it's just a solid bar.
It looks like they did take time to, like, crimp it slightly to get it towards 20 amps,
but, and then they put a glob of solder on it because they would have crimped too far.
Anyways, again, this is an inexpensive meter that I would recommend using for electronics,
like low voltage stuff, don't go sticking this inside a 480 panel, don't go running
current through this at 20 amps at 250 volts like this, that you can do for, what was it?
For 10 seconds, and then let the meter cool down for 15 minutes.
Other than that, inside, it's nice and clean, it's a cool color blue, I don't know what
else to say about it, but, anyways, there we go, there's the beeper, okay, there's the buzzer,
there's a buzzer feature, this is going to be interesting trying to get the spring part
of the battery back through, this is nothing you need to hear from the podcast, but it's
done.
I'm going to put this back together, and this meter will not replace my unity as a, as
my electronics meter of choice, probably nothing's going to replace this unity until I can
scalp the Fluke 189, which I've been trying to scalp on eBay for, like, months, but they
always, at the end, they go for a high price.
To me, the unity 61E is kind of trying to be what the Fluke 189 was, and the Fluke 189
is an older meter, it's been superseded by the Fluke 289, there's also a 187, and a 287,
the 7 doesn't have internal memory and logging, and the 9s do.
However, the Fluke 289, this has nothing to do with this podcast, but I'm just giving
my thoughts while I put these screws in.
The Fluke 287 and 289, when you turn them on, they actually have a boot sequence, and
it's even more computer-ish, and they go through a splash screen, and you've got to wait
for, like, I don't know what it is, but six or ten seconds, just to, you know, take a quick
reading, I don't want a computer for a meter, I would rather go with the 187 or the 189,
which is going to do all the readings I want to do for, yes, distracted, putting
in screws, for electronics work, and be the quality meter that I don't have to worry
about safety with it, however, I don't really expect to be using my unity in any situation
where I have to worry about safety anyways.
So far, this unity has been, like I said, in one of these podcasts, I don't know what
it is, but I have two now, one that I leave in my hacker bag, and one that I keep on
the bench, so that it was just, they're so inexpensive, why not by two, and that I don't
even have to unpack the hacker bag, I just bring that to the lug, or I bring that to the
2600 meeting, and I have the same exact meter up here on the bench, and when I want to
use them, it's all, I like having two, I lost the screw to close the battery in, it is.
Oh, there it is, I think this episode is probably a lot shorter than the other one,
because there wasn't much to do except try and figure out how to do the Bluetooth part,
and open it up and have a look inside, so there we go, we got Bluetooth going, and we
looked inside the unit, and you can check out the pictures I'm going to put up if you
want to see any of that, and for 35 bucks, if you need that a logging, this is the way
to go, I would say, you're not going to really use the probes unless I just got a bum set,
maybe they just had a bad run of probes that day, but that data logging on Bluetooth to
the phone, that's pretty cool, you don't have to carry a computer with you, the phones
are already in your pocket, you just bring this little meter, and you can data log all
day long, come home, stick it up on a computer.
So pretty cool, overall I'm happy, I'm a little bit of a multi meter nut, I don't know
why, but when I'm doing like 90% of the time, I'm reaching for a meter, not in a scope
and not some other piece of the test equipment, you just need a meter, you just need to do
some continuity, or I just need to do some continuity, check some voltage somewhere, figure
out what size a cap is that you can't read the side of it.
So this is a keeper, I thought I'd just check it out, and by the specs of it, I thought
I wouldn't keep it around because I'd rather the 22,000 count of the unity, but I think
I'm just going to, I'm going to keep this around, and if I ever need to do data logging,
this is the way I'm going to go.
So I've blabbed on about enough about this, and if you want to look into one, I just
checked Amazon when I was doing the links for the last episode, and there's still 35 bucks,
so maybe the prices come down, maybe they found their competitive edge that they're going
to start selling these things out.
So the choice is up to you, if you want one, go get one, oh, right before at the very
end, here is the temperature probe, and it has the same, nope, the temperature probe, I was
going to say it had the same crimping problem that the black lead did, but now these have
some relief in the gaps between the four, it's kind of like a clover shape, the male
end of the probe, it looks like a clover, and the metal can spring, and that's where
you get your attention, anyways, there's a little side at the very end, so if anyone wants
to talk to me, GNU Social Identity Cush, NY Bill at sn.gummoginet.net, email is NY Bill
at gummoginet.net, and as always we can have a chat in the comment section if you'd like,
so, until next time.
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