How to Use a Multimeter for Beginners – How to Measure Voltage, Resistance, Continuity and Amps

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pardsa200sl276slmult1f0fs22lang9 fHey How’s it going do it yourselfers, today we
are going back to the basics and I am going to show you how to properly use a multimeter.par
And we will be covering how to measure DC Voltagepar
AC Voltagepar Resistance and Continuety par
and also how to measure Ampspar Plus I’ll show you how you can calculate watts
and amps for any device at the end of this video.par
lets start with DC Voltage, Basically the main source for DC Voltage in devices we use
each day are batteries so pretty much all devices that use a battery run on DC Voltage,
par For example any any device on your car that
runs off the car battery, your wireless drill or any camera that runs on batteries uses
DC Voltage.par and DC Voltage stands for Direct Current and
when using the multimeter to measure for DC Voltage you need to set it here where you
see V for voltage with these straight and dotted lines .par
Next you need to make sure your test leads are in the right location, par
Your black ground or common test lead will always need to be here where it says COM.par
But your red test lead is the one that you’ll need to switch around based on what you are
measuring. par And for measuring Voltage you need to place
your red test lead here where you see the sign for Voltage. par
Next you need to place your Red test lead on the positive or powered side of the device
or circuit you are measuring and the black test lead on the ground side. par
And as far as where to exactly set the dial on your multimeter, you want to set the dial
to the number just above the maximum amount of voltage you are measuring. par
So for this 1.5v AA battery we can set it to 2 volts. par
and as you can see we have _______ volts which means this is a fully charged battery. par
But if you are unsure about how much voltage you are supposed to measure you can always
start higher and come lower to get a more precise measurement.par
And here we are going to measure the voltage on this 12 volt car battery, as you can see
we have ______ volts but we are also seeing a negative sign, basically that just means
we have our test leads on the circuit backwards,par this doesnt hurt the multimeter but is a good
way to find out your positive and ground side when you are unsure which one is which.par
par Next up AC Voltage, par
basically any device that plugs into your wall socket runs on AC Voltage, par
AC Voltage stands for, Alternating current par
and when measuing AC Voltage your red lead stays in this slot, but you need to set your
dial here where you have the Voltage sign but also this wave sign.par
So if we want to see if we have current at a wall socket for examble, we set our multimeter
to 200 in the AC Voltage area, and thats because here in the US we get about 110 volts at the
socket.par Now a word of caution when measuring high
voltage like this you need to be a hundred percent sure of the integraty of your multimeter
and the test leads, plus when you take your measurement make sure you keep your fingers
far from the tip of the test leads and that the leads dont come close to each other at
when you are taking the measurements. For added safety you can always ware glvoes too.
par so next we put in our test leads, first the
ground which goes here where the bigger hole is par
and than our red test lead which goes into the smaller hole. par
and as you can see we have ____ which is good because I was gona stick a nail in there….par
I actually did that as a 4 year old.. dont ask why I was 4… I remember flying after
I got zapped though. par btw this lower bottom one is the wall unit
ground point, and a good way to see if it is grounded is to put your ground test lead
on here and measure voltage as well. par par
Next up resistance, par basically Resistance is the opposition that
any substance has to the flow of electric current.par
so for example this piece of wood is extremely resistant to the flow of electric current,
par where as these wires have next to no resistance
to the flow of electric current. par par
Now different components of an electronic circuit or system are supposed to have a certain
amount of resistance so that the whole circuit works properly and thats where knowing how
to exactly measure resistance is crucial.par when measuing resistance you need to set your
dial to this setting where you can see this sign which is for resistance,par
and your red test lead stays in the same location because as you can see we have the sign for
resistance here as well. par and we will be testing the resistance of this
spark plug wire for this example which is supposed to have about ____ to _____ Ohms
of resistance. And Ohms is the unit of measurement for resistance.par
so we get our multimeter and set it to the next number up which is ______ ohms and the
K here simply represents a thousand.par and as you can see we have ______ ohms which
means this spark plug wire is within spec.par par
now lets go onto the continuity test, continuity basically means checking an electric circuit
to see if current current can flow through it by sending a very small amount of voltage
through it, and on a multimeter continuity is usually verified by a sound of a beep.
par and in order to test for continuity we set
are multimeter here where we see this sign, which also is part of the resistance settings
so our test leads stay in the same locations.par and for this example I will use my buffer
which has recently developed an intermittent problem, when its turned on as it moves in
different directions it stops and starts on its own, making me suspect a wire that is
partially damaged and only works in certain angles.par
so I will first unplug this as you never want to check a HOT Circuit for resistance or continuity.
par than I will remove the cover and attack my
test leads to the power pin and the corresponding wire/pin inside once I hear the beep from
our multimeter telling me we have continuity I will am going to start to wiggle the cable
in different locations to find my damaged wiring, ahh there it is found the problem.par
and if I dont find it on the power side I’ll switch to the ground and repeat the test.
par this is a especially a useful test to check
the continuity on small circuit boards like this as well. par
par Next up measuing ampspar
now when you need to measure amps on this multimeter your need to switch your red test
leads to one of these slotspar first this one that can only measure upto
200 mA or in otherwords .200 Amps par or this one that measure upto 20 A. par
Now on this multimeter this first one is fused which means if you are in this setting and
end up measuring more than 200 mA a fuse inside will blow saving your multimeter, but this
second one is unfused which means your multimeter will blow if you measure more than 20 amps.par
so you need to be careful when measuring a circuit with higher amps. or buy a multimeter
that is fused on this side as well. par par
No when measuring amps you basically need to place your multimeter inside of the circuit
on the power side, par so for example in this basic circuit, you
make a break here on the power side, par grab the red test lead and place it close
to the power sorce, par and the black test lead on the other side
completing the circuit, and than letting your multimeter measure the current flowing through
it.par and as you can see
this small light bulb uses _______ amps of
current. par par
And that’s all there is to it, if you found this video useful please give it a thumbs
up, subscribe if you want to see more like it and also consider checking out some of
my other video’s I’ll put them up on the screen as video links so you can just click on them.
par Alright thanks for watching, see you next
time.par par
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