Arduino Uno Transistor Tester

This project is inspired by ArduTester V1.13: The Arduino UNO Transistor Tester, in fact, hardware is the same and schematic is almost identical.

Why?

I assembled tester using instruction from original project¹, flashed firmware that author attached, but tester did not work very well. Measured capacity was pretty accurate, but ESR does not seem to be ok. ESR was 0 Ohms on all capacitors above ~100 uf, and 20-40 Ohms on all capacitors below 100 uf. Tester stuck when I measured inductors and resistors. It reboots itself when measuring diodes. So I configured latest firmware by Markus Reschke, flashed it and all glitches mentioned above are gone.

Hardware:

• Arduino Uno R3
• 1602 LCD (HD44780)
• PCF8574
• Rotary encoder with button
• Push button
• Resistors:
  • 1k Ohm x1
  • 10k Ohm x1
  • 470K Ohm x3
  • 680 Ohm x3

Remove this two components: pin 13 led and aref to ground capacitor

Firmware

I took Markus Reschke firmware version² and configured config.h, config_328.h and Makefile.

Enabled functions:

• PWM generator
• Inductance measurement
• ESR measurement
• ESR Tool (in-circuit ESR measurement)
• check for optocouplers
• check for Unijunction Transistor
• check for Schottky Transistor (Schottky-clamped BJT)
• R/C/L monitors

Feel free to configure firmware, all instructions are available in original README and in configuration files.

Diagram

The only difference in schematic I made is I moved button from A3 pin to D1, because in documentation it says: "can't be same port as ADC_PORT or R_PORT", so I moved button to PORTD³.

Scheme

Links

Footnotes

1. ArduTester V1.13: The Arduino UNO Transistor Tester ↩

2. Firmware by Markus Reschke version ↩

3. Arduino Uno Pinout Diagram ↩