adam savage here in my cave with a tool tip
today it is about electronics now i use electronics in my
work you know i i made these lights a couple years ago they were successful
um but i am not an electronics guy i just want to be really clear like i
understand what a resistor is and what it does and
i can give you that waterfall analogy and water pressure analogy of
amperage versus voltage and stuff like that i kind of understand that stuff but
like i'm not a guy who could design a circuit and i always need help with this
kind of stuff whether it's from jeremy williams or other friends of mine
uh i'm not an electronics guy but i have always worked with wiring i i
don't i mean i understand a lighting circuit i know that if i have a
9-volt bulb and have a 9-volt power supply i know how to wire it through a
switch that's pretty straightforward and the
moment you are doing that kind of operation wiring a light to
a switch you should be the owner of a multimeter
an electric electronic multimeter now this is a
digital instrument that reads all sorts of aspects of
electricity and i want to show you my first multimeter here it is
this is a fluke model 77 i bought this in the early 90s at the foothill college
ham radio electronics swap meet down off the moody drive exit off of 280
and i this was a piece of unobtainium for me in the
early 90s this is probably back then this was like a 175 dollar
multimeter i i that was that was way more money
than i could consider for something like this and i picked
this up at foothill i think for 40 bucks and
it's still actually i think the battery's dead but
it's still operational almost 30 years later
fluke they're i just have a lot of loyalty with fruit
greenlee also makes great equipment something about the yellow of a fluke
meter that just makes me super happy uh and fluke still is making
electric meters um they can tell you things like
how much current is going through uh a piece of electronics you're doing i
want to find out how efficient that motor is this can tell you you want to
find out the value of a resistor that the
markings have worn off on this can tell you want to find out
how much voltage is coming out of the wall whether it's ac
or dc voltage this can tell you again i'm not an electronics guy and i still
use these things all the time but the fact is is that
flukes even fluke's entry-level meters can
still be somewhat expensive so i'm here for a tool tip
of an amazing thing i discovered while making savage builds last year
and that is this fluke makes like a 50 version a little handheld version
of their multimeter this thing is amazing
i would have killed for one of these in the early 90s dude
it's same beautiful color scheme uh runs on uh two aaa batteries
uh again i have a lot of loyalty for fluke because i think i've changed the
battery on this maybe four times in 30 years like
seriously they make efficient tools um notice here this is an artifact of
using this on television see those white dots that's covering
over the name fluke that's the kind of thing you have to do on
on on cable television i as a side note used to drive me crazy
because you when a producer sees a logo in camera
they say hey pa production assistant will you cover over
that logo and the pa usually goes and gets seriously the pa
will solve this problem like this they'll get a piece of tape
and they'll see this logo and they'll put the piece of tape
over the logo like this i'm not kidding i swear to god i've had bas do this to
me so many times and then you can't even see what you're
using the number of bottles that i'm sure are still in
jamie's shop where tate went over the label and jamie doesn't know what's in
that bottle because when you tore the tape off it tore the
okay that's just a total side rant bonus from this tool tip um
this is a fluke entry-level multimeter and i'm here to tell you if you are like
me you like you know you do some basic
wiring and you understand the rudiments of electronics
get this this is amazing um and i will show you
its most useful feature continuity what is that well
if you're working on a circuit and you're trying to figure out why it's not
working
you can tell often that one of the main reasons it shouldn't work
sorry how do i say this let's say you have a circuit and it's a battery with a
wire to a switch to another wire to a bulb to a wire
back to the battery and you wire it all up
and it doesn't work well something's wrong in there
either your bulb is out or the switch doesn't work
or the battery is dead if you make sure the battery is good
and you know how do you determine whether how do you work your way through
that problem with continuity um and it goes like this
continuity is a feature on almost every multimeter
you switch it to this little audio sound and then i think you have on this one
yeah you have to there you go uh so you switch it to the
audio thing you press this button and now
when you connect these two leads
that's called audible continuity and audible continuity has saved my life so
many times so here you go to the switch and
you touch it and you can tell whether the switch
works or not if you get continuity when the switch is
supposed to be on then you know the switch works
with that light bulb if the filament on the bulb is out you won't get continuity
through the bulb you can workshop your way through a
circuit or through your car to figure out where the thing that is supposed to
be connected into the circuit isn't audible continuity might be one of
the i mean one of the most important reasons
to own one of these things that and the beautiful color of yellow
but please don't consider anything that i've
said as in any way properly instructional about
electronics i am a hack uh and not a hacker
i am a hack and i mostly don't know what i'm talking about
but let me tell you audible continuity a 50
fluke meter this is every bit worth putting in your kit
uh thank you guys for joining me for this one day build
i'll see you next time this isn't a one day build i'm on automatic pilot geez
i'm crow thank you guys for joining me for this
tool tip i will see you next time