Simple question how to read a multimeter.

[moxicat]

Spent well over a hour on the Internet trying to figure this out and can not find a definitive answer.

Multimeter has setting of 10a, 200m, 20m, 2000u (funny loooking u), 200u

When I take a reading on 2000u it reads 33. What is this is amps? Microamps? I am guessing but want to know for sure that the following are all equal.

200u - 330
2000u - 33
20m- 3.3
200m- .33
10a- .033 Amps or 33ma

Could someone verify this?

Same question on the voltage side. Assume it is the same

20 - .002
2000m .02
200m .2

Which I think is 2 millivolts.

Thanks in advance for any help

[pebe]

Hi moxicat,

Most digital multimeters fall into the class known as 3½ digit. They display 4 digits where the three at the right can show 0 to 9, and the leftmost one can only be either a blank space or a ‘1’, (called a half digit, hence the 3½). So the range of readings would show 000 to 1999. Negative values have a minus sign in front of them, but positive values have no sign. Note that 2000 cannot be displayed and it would show a maximum of 1999. The suffix ‘m’ indicates ‘milli’ and the ‘µ’ indicates ‘micro’.

Normally, the decimal point is put in automatically depending on the range. So your 200µ range should show a maximum of 199.9 microamps, but show as 00.0 when no measurement is being made. That is how both my multimeters read, so I cannot understand how you get a reading of 330 on that range. For the other current ranges you show:

2000µ range. Would display as a maximum of 1999µA. So a reading of 33 would be 33µA
20m range. Would display as a maximum of 19.99mA. So a reading of 3.30 would be 3.3mA
200m range. Would display as a maximum of 199.9mA. So I cannot see how you can read .33
10a range. A reading of 10A shows as 10.00, so I cannot see how you can get .033.

For the voltage ranges:
20V range. Would display as a maximum of 19.99 volts, so I don’t see how you can get a reading 0f .002
2000m range. Would display as a maximum of 1999mV, with no decimal point. So I don’t know how you can read .02
200m range. Would read as 199.9mV, so a reading of .2 would be .2mV or 200µV

I hope you can follow the pattern in these results.