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Shoutout to the $35 clamp meter that saved me hours on a mystery short
Last month I was chasing a short on a customer's custom gaming rig where the PSU kept tripping. I grabbed a cheap Klein clamp meter from Home Depot for around $35 and found the issue in 5 minutes - the USB header had a bent pin touching the case. It beat using a multimeter and probing each wire one by one. Has anyone else had a cheap tool actually save you a ton of time?
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the_wendy1mo ago
That "5 minutes" part is where I start to push back a bit. A cheap clamp meter is great for finding a live short, sure, but a bent pin on a USB header is usually visible just by looking at it with a flashlight. I've had a $35 meter give me false readings on low current before, so I wouldn't trust it alone for something that finicky. For that specific issue, a quick visual check and a multimeter on continuity mode would have probably done the same job without spending a dime.
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the_thea1mo ago
My buddy spent $60 on a fancy thermal camera to find a draft in his house, turned out his cat door flap was just stuck open.
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lilyp371mo agoMost Upvoted
The "visual check" part gets me. That's the thing with troubleshooting anything now. Everyone wants to buy a tool first instead of just looking. I see it all the time at work. People call me about a leak and they've already ordered a moisture meter off Amazon instead of just checking under the sink where the pipe is obviously dripping. Same with car stuff. My neighbor spent forty bucks on a code reader when his check engine light was on. Turned out his gas cap was loose. Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one.
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