Multimeter giveaway for November 2012 - Mastech / Sinometer MS8218 50000 count

[MJLorton]

I will be giving away the Mastech / Sinometer MS8218 50000 count multimeter with PC data logging:

The video review can be found here:
Part 1: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=okLYZaqdklQ
Part 2: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SrdD18ArYfQ

To enter this giveaway (30th November 2012) just post a reply here with:

* Your name:
* The country and city you live in:
* Note one of the issues that was found with the MS8218?
* Note why you would find this multimeter useful?
* Upload a picture of your current multimeter measuring the voltage of a 1.5v or 9v battery (cell)...or your backyard or neighborhood.

You can enter all the competitions and giveaways...but you can't win more than once every six months.

Cheers,
Martin.

[SeanB]

Photo of the neighbourhood then, and the rest to follow when I rewatch the videos.

Sean Beukes
Durban

You had an issue of reference drift with temperature

If I win I would have a nice high resolution meter with a good set of functions, and good enough accuracy for most applications.



Wonder which meter I will use to measure a cell.

The pic is outside looking at the goose that has decided to nest on the roof, sitting on the streetlight across the road. My new morning alarm clock, he starts calling at sunrise, along with the ringnecks living wild around, the Ibis and the Mynahs.

Took a photo of the other multimeter, as the battery was very dead, as I had left it on either by the power switch being pressed or by accident. Used my oldest multimeter, the Hioki 3001, to check the new 9V battery and the old Vinnic that came with the other meter. I have had the Hioki since I was in school, it is still working, and is still in calibration on voltage, though current is a little off, and resistance has always been slightly off.

[vdenich]

Hi Martin,

Vincent Denich (N2XG- Ham Operator)
White Plains, New York

You had several concerns with the meter (the leads did not fully insert into the connectors, there was an issue with reference drift with temperature as well).

I would find this multimeter useful because I have just begun a full-fledged interest in learning about electricity. Of course when I studied for my ham license I learned a great deal, but I am now making this a full-time interest and may switch to a career as an electrician. I only have the very old Radio Shack multimeter shown in my photo that is severely damaged and the wires are frayed. I'd certainly appreciate a meter of this quality. My current meter does not display Amps.

Thank you for doing what you are doing. I have learned a lot from you.

[Benjamin Tan]

 Benjamin Tan

Malacca,Malaysia


The issue found was  the test probe don't go down all the way and the reference drift with temperature.
I would find this multimeter useful because I would have a good, reliable and a high resolution multimeter

Measuring a 9V battery 

[neviemdopice]

Viliam Kubis
Bratislava, Slovakia

I remember the issue you had with this multimeter was that the measurement drifted a lot with changing temperature compared to the fluke sitting next to it. Also in lower ranges, the bar graph is not very useful, because it is laggy and jumps a lot.

I would find this multimeter very useful because my only DMM at the moment is a cheapo DT-830D+ I bought 7 years ago. I've used the hell out of it, but If i want to go into high energy stuff, it's really a no-go. So having a much greater multimeter at home would be definitely great, I'd use it all the time over my current DMM because of added resolution, precision, input protection, CAT rating, general safety and more robustness than my current DMM.

Attached is a picture of my current multimeter measuring a 9V battery.

Cheers and love the great videos!

[fenclu]

Hello

I'm Jakub Felcenloben from Pabianice in Poland

In the Mastech you found the battery cover screws to be flimsy and low quality.

I could use I DMM like this, because I only have an extremly basic lab which I'd like to expand but don't have the money to do it. As you can see I only have a cheap Uni-t UT30D which I hate a lot

Greetings from Poland!

Measuring a 1.5V cell:

[Jason]

Hi Martin,

My name is Jason, the name may sound familiar as I try to comment somewhat frequently on your videos. I am living in Ireland in a lovely town called Dungarvan. To answer your competition question; probably the most annoying issue with the MS8218 was with the update interval of the multimeter at 2 times per second.

Personally I would like to have this multimeter for it's accuracy and it's data logging ability. The reason why I want the data logging ability is so that I can very accurately measure how much energy I can harvest from the Sun with a solar panel here in Ireland. So far I can only judge from irradiance graphs of the approximate amount of energy which is said to be 0.53 Wh/m2 during the winter months in my approximate location (extremely poor performance in comparison to Cape Town which is said to be about 6.5+ Wh/m2 during the winter). I would like to personally log this and see precisely how much energy I can harvest. If I am unable to harvest a healthy amount electricity from the sun then I want to be able to measure and data log how much energy I can harvest from a wind turbine and perhaps set up a small hybrid system and ultimately be able to provide 100% green energy to my tool shed where I like to play with electronics. If I had the MS8218 I would be about 25% closer to buying a marine wind turbine which ultimately cost €2000 on average in Ireland.

I also want to build my own power supply to test and power my projects and it won't be easy with my current €15 Draper DMM7 multimeter, which can't even measure past 200mA!. So as you can see I wouldn't mearly use it as a toy but keep the Mastech busy and using many of the features it provides. My current multimeter might be cleaver, but not that cleaver

Kind regards,
Jason

[steve30]

My entry.

* Your name: Stephen Coates aka steve30.

* The country and city you live in: Rotherham, England.

* Note one of the issues that was found with the MS8218? AC Hertz measurement was not very intuitive.

* Note why you would find this multimeter useful? Capacitance range, frequency measurement and data logging would be useful. I cannot currently do these well. Also I could do with a handheld meter which is better than my current cheap ones.

* Upload a picture of your current multimeter measuring the voltage of a 1.5v or 9v battery (cell)...or your backyard or neighborhood.

In the image attached, I'm having a poke around in my heavily used 10 year old Walkman, which runs off two AA batteries. At 1.3037V it is a little low, but still works fine .

[towz]

John Vera Berrios

Arequipa, Peru

There was an issue with leads not fitting properly into the meter.

I'm currently an EE (Electronics Engineering) student and currently own a very simple multimeter. It's been handy, but there has been times when a more accurate and with more capabilities was needed. I think this multimeter would be quite useful now that I'm close to finishing the career and need to get started on my thesis.



PD. My thanks to Jason, nice way to hold the leads for the measure. Best of luck.

[Michael]

Hi there Martin,

First of all, love your work and I always click the "Like" Thumb on all your videos!  Unfortunately your Amazon store does not support Australia - maybe Ebay might be an option to expand your reach...just a thought...

Anyway I thought I would enter the competition as the meter has some useful features that I would find very useful.

As per your questions...

Name: Michael Gray

Country: Australia (Sydney)

Issue with the MS8218:  The plastic battery cover locking twist screw can come off the cover and is not the most sturdy of fasteners.  The software is also limited in com. port options.

Meter Usefulness:  While the build quality of the MS8218 is not the best and the software is limited, the meter would be very useful for data logging as it is reasonably accurate and the captured data can be exported to a file even though the data capture is a trade off between interval and duration.

The attached photo is the Sydney Harbour Bridge with a meter in the foreground.

Thanks for your efforts,
Michael
Sydney, Australia

[sjoerdjuh]

Hi Martin,

Thank you for another great giveaway!
I think this meter would be very useful because of the data logging capability and great resolution
One of the issues was that the screws on the back are plastic and can break off.

I thought it would be nice to include a photo of my db board since we talked about that on Youtube.

Sjoerd Beukers
I live in Spijkenisse (near Rotterdam) The Netherlands

[willard1961]

Hi! I live in the city of Jordan in the USA. These pics are from a city park two blocks from my house. One issue on the meter was the cheap battery door latches not good at all. Iwould find this meter very useful because I don't have one. Mine was stolen from my vehicle along with my tom tom.

[DaveXRQ]

Hey martin once again! And yeah i come from Singapore ( whom many americans think we are in china ... PFFT, loads of bullshit)


Issues? Quite a few issues there.
Wrongly fitted factory fuses, was supposed to be a 6.3x32 fuses not BS1362 fuse i find in my UT61E that are too factory fitted, but well, i can solder in a 10x38 fuse holder
Slow display, 2 times a second! That's SLOWWWWWWWWWW but only pretty much if you think that is a decent compromise for a great product
Backlight ... that thing turns off after a few secs, no way to make it permanently on

Usefulness? Good for measuring stuff if you are usually beyond 220mV or so on a DAC on the UT61E
(NOTE: I am talking about chinese meters.)
dBm measurement < That's what you don't find in a properly rated 150$ meter! Great for HAMs!
BACKLIGHT! The UT61E does NOT have that! GREAT!
AC+DC! Same saying .. 71E does have it but that meter is a POS
Stability. This meter is on the same ranks of stability as the 287, great stuff.

[HVAC Guy]

Paul Eames

Clifton Park, New York, USA

Leads did not insert completely

Has micro, mili and amps as well as mili volts all on one meter. I can store customers readings in their records file on my computer for history.

I install tankless, solar, and hybrid water heaters as well as condensing boilers and mini splits.

www.cliftonparktankless.com is my website.
 

[valentinc]

  Hi Martin,

  Valentin Calinoaia

  Romania, Bucharest

       One of the issues with the Mastech MS8218 was the update speed of the bargraph, which makes the bargraph function not as useful as it could be. The purpose of that is to see fast variations of the measured value...

       I find this meter useful because it has a uA range (which would help me measure the power consumption of my projects), the very good accuracy combined with the 50.000 counts resolution, AC+DC true RMS is very useful to measure PWM signals