Episode: 1846
Title: HPR1846: UNI-T UT61E Review
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr1846/hpr1846.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-18 10:04:04

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Hello, this is Enwai Bill and I thought I'd do a quick episode, a quick review of the
multimeter I mentioned in my last episode, Multimeter Mods 1, the Unity UT-61E. I just
heard that episode today and I post my episodes like two weeks apart so I don't get too
many out there once you guys get sick of hearing at me. However, by the time I do hear
back my own episode enough time has gone by it's like new to me and I can pick up all the
little mistakes and edits and things like that. One thing I said in that episode I called
this meter cheap and that was unfair, that's just the wrong word for it. So I'll go through
the meter a little in a little more detail and go through the functions. This is my go-to
meter for electronics work now, I use this thing all the time. First of all it's 50 bucks,
40, you can get it on sale sometimes. It's a true RMS meter which for 50 bucks that's,
you don't find that. Usually a 50 dollar meter is going to be an averaging meter. Now the
difference between that is an averaging meter if you plug it in the wall or you test something,
it takes the peak voltage and it assumes on AC. This is, it assumes that the waveform is
perfectly sinusoidal. So it averages out and it tells you you have let's say 60 volts AC.
However, that may not be the case. You might have noise, you might have some type of peak or a
frequency issue where the voltage is ramping up to 60 and then ramping, dropping off quickly
right back down. That is not really 60 volts worth of power that you have there because you have a
weak curve coming in and you have a weak curve going out. So you're only getting that 60 volts at
the peak. The averaging meter is going to tell you there's 60 volts there but a true RMS meter
will go through the actual sine wave that's developing and give you a root mean square and it'll
tell you, you know, you're supposed to have 60 volts here AC. You think you do but you're only
getting 42 or 38. So true RMS is a nice thing to have in a meter and you don't see that for 50
dollars. Usually that jumps right to 150 dollar meter and you go up from there. The other nice
feature is this is a 22,000 count display. I'm not really sure how the count relates to
what I'm going to mention in one minute though but you see like 4,000 count meters, 8,000 count meters,
12,000 count meters. This is 22,000 count. But what that refers to is how many digits are on the
display and most meters you'll get 0.00. That's what I usually see in most meters. So if you stick
it on 9 volts DC you're going to see 9 point and then you might see 0.32 or whatever
is after the decimal. 22,000 counts gives you a resolution for digits after the decimal.
So that can come in handy if you're doing any calculations with electronics. Until you get up
to 10 volts you're going to see like 9.3562 I'm just making up a number. But for digits of resolution
that'll help you if you're going to get out a calculator and do anything, you know, the better
you know where your voltage is the better your calculation is going to come out. Once you get
above 10 volts the decimal point drops back one so then you're going to have 10.000 or three
places of resolution. So that is also a handy feature and you don't usually see that much resolution
on a meter of this in this price range. So when I was saying cheap which is not really the
the way it's, how do I describe it? It's not built like to an industrial and a safety
type of robust build. There's got to be a word I'm looking for and I just can't think of it.
So looking inside like inside my fluke everything is in its own like little blast shielded
compartmentalized areas within. There's plastic in plastic and all the plastic meshes together.
You're going to be holding this thing in your hand and you don't want it to blow up.
Fluke has big heavy duty fuses and they actually make cutouts in the PCB. So if something did go
wrong with that fuse a spark is not going to be able to gap over and ruin more sensitive equipment
and basically kill the meter and they have big heavy duty shunt trips. The unity has small just
like little like glass. Well they're not glass actually. They're decent enough. I want to amp
into 10 amp and a small shunt trip but you can just tell the build quality isn't up to what the fluke
is at. The banana plugs. The banana plug sockets on a nicer meter are going to be a nice heavy
duty metal and bolted right to the PCB. You're going to be using this thing a lot daily plugging in
and out dropping it. You don't want those banana plug sockets coming on done from the PCB board
and then you go to check something and it looks like there's no voltage there but really your
like in the case of this unity here this solder could break off. The banana plug socket is just like
a piece of crimped metal a circle that your probe is going to go into and off that metal it just
bends off a piece of like it's like a 16 inch piece of metal that's just thin like two sheets of
paper and then that's soldered onto the board so it's just that little solder break point there.
I've dropped my fluke. I was like three years ago. I had to in this building I had to climb up
this it was like a structure but I had to get up to this like crane thing. Actually it's a place
where they store steel you're going to call an order you need so many Ibeams or whatever for
your building or your project and they store all the different gauges steel and sizes and rounds
and squares and they put them in this big pans and then this big giant machine goes through this
well a guy gets in the machine and it's a long skinny machine that's up on a crane rail
just describing this because it's an interesting machine I've never seen one only at this place
and he will go into the appropriate aisle he knows where the steel is he needs to pick and he
might need to go into like aisle six and then go down to row 27 and then his whole entire machine
will come up with him and he might need to go up 20 pans high and then like fork bars come out
of the side of his machine pick up a pan and then bring it down where the guys can sort it cut it
and get it ready for the customer so it's kind of like a big human driven pick and place machine I
guess anyways I needed to go up to the top of that to the the controls of the crane part something
wasn't working and I get all the way up to the last pan I must be 35 feet in the air and my fluke
was in the big pocket of my winter coat and that last movement just was enough to flip the meter
out of the coat and it dropped 35 feet down and right onto concrete that was three years ago and
the meter is right next to me and it's been running fine since I don't think if I drop this unity
from that level there would be much left to it I'm sure all these banana plug connections
would bust I'm sure the case would crack who knows what else would go wrong but the fluke it just
it busted a little plastic piece on the back near the battery holder so now I only have one screw
to hold my battery in but other than that it's been working fine ever since so that's what I mean
just by like building a robust build quality and then building the safety features for the
operator human that's going to be using this thing don't seem to be up to snuff with this unity
however for electronics it does everything I need in electronics and it does it pretty well it does
it well so having said all that and looking into the board of this thing I don't know how they're
giving it a category 4 rating of 600 volts and a category 3 rating of a thousand volts
which is also what my fluke is and I'm looking around it fluke has the different
uh you well testing labs and I think across the pond you guys have CE I'm not sure what that
stands for but testing labs take equipment and put it through like rigorous testing to make sure
it does what it's supposed to do it stays within voltage it doesn't blow up in the guy's hand
uh the unity does have a CE mark on the front that is just paint which I don't trust much it's
not engraved into the thing anymore I don't see any UL listing which is a underwriters laboratory
for America I don't even think you could use this in certain situations or labs that require
UL tested equipment labs that send all the equipment out to be calibrated you know periodically
and they they need to know that these things run to spec you don't know if you can trust the unity
in that situation I doubt it but so I can quickly go through the functions here and uh
tell you what it does you got voltage of course DC and AC the nice thing with the unity
is it defaults to DC most meters go to AC first and you have to have the function button to go to
DC unity is the opposite and being this I use this for electronics it's nice that it just goes
right to DC and you know just a little time saver that's a nice touch uh next function
milli volts AC and DC next function ohms let me uh get the probes here the probes are decent enough
they feel a little little more plasticky then like a nice silicone probe points are sharp enough
sharp points are good for you if you if you got to get in and uh especially surface mount stuff
you need a real tight probe say we're in the ohms function and then the blue button changes the
function of whatever you're in in the uh selector switch so ohms you press it once and you go to
continuity this is another nice feature of this meter most inexpensive meters well I might be
able to demonstrate that with that little pocket meter I have hang on
cheaper meters tend to have scratchy or slow laggy
continuity I'll show you that here if you can hear this this is that this is a cheap little
it was like 19 dollars it's pocket meter can you hear the scratch
that is a pain in the butt if you are going through a board somewhere and you're looking for a
short and you're gonna probe like a hundred things if the continuity is going scratchy you have to
just spend it doesn't sound like a lot you know if you have to spend an extra second on each probe
but if you have to do a hundred or two hundred of them you can see that having a quick fast
crisp continuity is nice so this is nice quick it's got slight bit of scratchiness to it
but it's it's quick and fast enough that it doesn't annoy me
so another night that's another plus for the unity uh next button is oh diode testing
this is another I keep saying nice feature but um I guess I'm just going over the features that
I think are a plus with this it has a diode test and it puts out enough voltage to actually light
up an LED so like a couple of lugs ago a buddy gave me he got a whole bunch of LEDs and assortment
mixed and he just gave all the electronics people in the group like 20 or 30 of them in a little
envelope but they're all clear however in the mixed you know there was a red one and there was
green ones and yellow ones and orange ones so it was nice to be able to just take this meter
stick it to diode and go through all the LEDs and be able to sort them and put them all in their
own separate little envelope so that's a plus you don't have to get out of battery and a resistor
to test the LED next function capacitance here you can now well check capacitors I use this the
other day the unity comes with this I thought it was uh kind of a joke at first well until I
actually used it it comes with this little I guess I'll take a picture and put things in a show
it's a little adapter you take your probes out and it goes into voltage and
milliamp microamp and it's got test pads on it for well I have it upside down
it has test pads that you can stick in a capacitor in the middle or a resistor in the middle
and it will tell you nano-ferred picofered what your capacitance is it has a place to put NPN
and PNPN transistors to test those to see if they're good and then it has those pads again in
surface mount so if you had tweezers you can put your resistors or capacitors in the middle
or check your diodes on the side so I use this the other day I bought uh coin envelopes
they're only like three inches by two inches and I started all my capacitors because I had
I think I mentioned that I bought a couple a kit that Jonas kit of capacitors and then I also had
like just my own collection of capacitors over time I went through all the values and put them
all in their own envelopes and sorted them by value and so I was using this
little tester duhickey for a couple hours one day that's what I thought was a bit of a gimmick
to sell the meter ends up being a useful tool next it does hurts microamps acdc milliamps acdc
amps acdc so you can put this meter in line with a circuit and see how many amps are running through
it I don't you I don't do that at work because you can uh blow start blown fuses if something goes
wrong I just have an amp probe a clamp meter you just go around the wire and it tells you how
many amps are in there but for dc you can have this meter in series with your circuit and see
how many how many amps it's drawing if you had a second meter you can put it on there too and then
you can watch volts and amps as your circuit's running so that's a handy feature to use
the meter is also auto-ranging so I didn't mention that in the beginning but I should have
mentioned that back with the tour MS stuff and everything uh you just you just put it to let's say
here I just want the ac it's just sitting at zero stick it in the wall stick it on a battery
or not a battery but stick it on an ac signal and it's going to auto-range up and move the
decimal point for you that's handy non auto-ranging you'll know if you see them you look at the selector
knob and it's not just five or six or ten functions it looks like there's a hundred of them on
there so then you have to you have to know about what you're going to be measuring if you're going
to be measuring dc ten volts you have to have the selector knob in the zero to ten volts range if
you're going to go you think it's going to be 20 volts you're going to have to click your selector
knob so you you have to range in the meter just get auto-ranging it's just much nicer
the other thing this meter does which is handy is has a relative button so you take a reading
let's say I clamp my meter on something and I take a reading and it's ten volts dc and you hit
relative it's going to your meter is going to go to zero then any fluctuations plus or minus
off of ten volts dc that's what it will display for you so it just gets rid of you having to write
things down and you know do some plus subtraction or addition after your reading you can just see
how it's varying off of what you call your baseline voltage so relative is a nice button to have
I don't know why it has a range button I'm looking at it now why do you have a range button
oh you can put it in manual I didn't know that yeah so it's letting me move the decimal place right
now one decimal place four zeros after and then I can go one decimal place I don't know why you'd
want to do this why do you want to get rid of your resolution anyways it has that feature if
you call it a feature so like I said in the multimedia I should stop pressing this so you can
stop hearing that beep like I said in the multimeter mods episode I did find it lacking that it
didn't have a backlight and I would like to have that auto shut off timer put in it and I am still
working on that there will be an episode to follow up with the with that meter and I just call it
that meter because I'm holding a different one yes I like this unity so much for doing electronics
work I bought a second one I hope this doesn't sound like a big pitch for these guys aren't paying me
I just I was on Amazon ordering something oh I think it was when I in the other episode when I
checked the price of this and it was 48 dollars and then later that night I'm thinking maybe I'll
just get a second one because sometimes I'm up here on the desk I'm working on a project at night
and I want two meters so I'll probably you know I want to watch watch voltage and I want to watch
current or I want to watch the voltage going into a circuit and watch it coming out at the same time
and what I would do in the past is just wait till the next day and hopefully remember to bring my
flu comb and then you know use the fluke for the night and then bring it back to work but that
just kind of breaks my flow of the project in the moment there it would be nice to have two nice
meters to just have access to all the time so this second unity will just sit here on the desk
right next to the power supply and that's where it'll stay the other one that I'm modding that's
still going to be my one for the hacker bag that I bring to meetings and that's why I want the
timer circuit and that because sometimes I pull it out and I do something quick and I throw it back
into bag and I'm talking with everybody at the meeting and that's when I'm forgetting to turn the
thing off and I'm killing batteries so that one's still going to get modded this one this new one for
the bench I might still put the I think I will I'm going to put the do the backlight mod on it but
I don't I won't do the timer circuit on it because when I'm at the when I'm at the desk here
everything's on I can see all the lights and then when I stand up I turn everything off so I don't
think I'll be killing batteries in this one but okay that was just a quick review of the unity and
so that you guys didn't get the wrong impression when I called it cheap okay if anybody has any
comments or questions you can leave them on the web page or I am nybil at gunmonkeynet.net and
status net genu social is sn dot gunmonkeynet.net okay until next time you've been listening to
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