Digital multimeter as in testing voltage, amperage, etc? I used to have a non-contact voltage pen and I found it pretty useful for testing for live wires, mostly when drilling into a wall but also useful for other things occasionally. It was a cheap one off ali express so one day it just stopped working and I never ordered a new one.

It had a screen for the voltage but I only ever used it as a yes or no measurement. I probably wouldn't trust equipment worth a few dollars to be accurate, but I do see that ali express sells digital multimeters for not that much money.

I know nothing about hobby electronics, what sort of situations are they needed?

[–] NoRamyunForYou@lemmy.nz 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Yeah that's the one.

For my usecase, it's mostly been checking that Voltages and Currents align with what I expect them to be, checking components to see if they are what I think they are (e.g., Resistance of resistors, whether Diodes are faulty or not), checking whether two points are connected, checking whether signals into and out of microcontrollers are as expected etc,. Things like that off the top of my head. Though I'm probably only scratching at the surface of what they can be used for.

Doing a bit of a deep dive into some forums, it seems that paying more will get you better accuracy, but the more important thing is that the real cheap ones most likely don't come with a lot of protection, which is okay for when your looking at 5v type stuff, but if you want to look at anything to do with Mains voltage etc, comes into play.

[–] Dave@lemmy.nz 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Yeah if you're testing actual values, and not just live or not, I wouldn't trust a cheap one.

Hell, I wouldn't trust the cheap one for live or not. I always used in in addition to things like turning off the switch and not drilling where there are probably wires.

[–] NoRamyunForYou@lemmy.nz 2 points 7 months ago

Now I'm seeing that they have portable oscilloscopes! Amazing lol. I was thinking about getting a cheapo bench oscilloscope even though ni strictly don't need one at the moment, now I realise it's more attainable than I had thought.