Tools for the Electronics Hobbyist Part 1- Graphical Components Tester

When I started to deal with Chinese electronics suppliers from websites like Alibaba, Aliexpress and Taobao, I discovered that there are huge amount of undiscovered tools from the Chinese market. They are not easily discovered, maybe due to the Chinese language barrier, especially when we deal with a Chinese website like Taobao or maybe because most of us are used to deal with known electronics distributors like Sparkfun.

I also discovered that I can get my stuff from there in a lower price and in most cases of the same quality.
We can’t deny that dealing with known and trusted electronics stores such as Sparkfun and Adafruit is more comfortable and safe, but our proposal is an alternative one.

That doesn’t mean that our series will focus only on tools from Chinese suppliers. We will also explore special tools from Ebay, Tindie and other resources.

This series is weekly, so stay tuned! Please note that when we talk about a tool from a certain store or a supplier, we don’t claim that we guarantee the quality and if the store is trustworthy.

You can reach the posts published in this series using the following link.

Welcome to the first post of our series “Tools for the Electronics Hobbyist”. We are going to talk about graphical components tester, which I found on “91make” store on Taobao and it seems that they’re specialists in graphical components testers.

This tool is used to discover the type and main features (like value and some other electrical characteristics) of the majority of discrete components like transistors, diodes, resistors, capacitors and other components.

This is useful when you have an unknown part. As you know a part with TO-220 package can be a BJT, a MOSFET or maybe something else. It is also useful when you know the basic function of the part in your hand and you need to know some of its characteristics.

Features:

• Can used with npn and pnp transistors, n-channel and p-channel mosfet, diodes (including double diodes), thyristors, transistors, resistors, capacitors and other components.
• Measuring the gate threshold voltage and gate capacitance of MOSFET.
• Amplification factor (gain) of the BJT and the base of the forward bias voltage.
• Getting the pinout of the component.
• Use 9v battery for power supply.

I found a video on Youtube for the same tool tested with a lot of components

It’s available for 40 RMB which is about 6$, and you can see that it’s cheaper than Ebay or Tindie suppliers. You can also read the Hackaday review about this tool.

That’s all for this time , see you on next post.

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