Fluke fieldsense contactless voltmeter

[Cerebus]

Jeez, you sound like I insulted your romantic interest. I would call him a retard to his face if you gave me his address and a plane ticket, but why? That's why we have telecommunications, dummy. I stopped watching his videos long ago due to the bad info and low-IQ "humor" (mispronouncing words hyuk hyuk). But interesting you would say "non-electronics". That's because you know about electronics and realize, he doesn't know shit about it. Which doesn't stop him from giving products that he doesn't understand bad reviews, or making instructional videos about electronics.

As I thought, all mouth and no trousers. What address do we send the crow to?

[Cerebus]

... It's a bit strange that GE holds it as Fluke's paper talks about them developing the technology. ...

That's probably the marketing department playing semantic antics with the difference between inventing and developing. It doesn't sound quite so slickly self-aggrandising to say that you licenced the technology from GE, assuming they did; if they didn't it sounds even less impressive if they ought to have said "we're hoping we don't get sued".

[orion242]

So did my eyes / ears deceive me?

If its in current mode with the black lead tucked into the meter and you probe with the red lead, isn't there a path from the red lead thru the meter shunt and to the exposed pad on the back?  There must be a high resistance between that pad and the black lead right?  Seems like your asking for a rude awaking if your probing around in industrial gear with the red lead hanging out front and the black lead tucked in the back.

Whole contactless thing looks pretty $hit to me.

Might have to buy one for Dave...

[orion242]

The other issue I see...

Having had live 480v wires fall out of the terminals on VFDs / motor starters due to loose connections, I'm not too keen on wiggling things around on live equipment.  Jamming this meter around and pulling on wires to get a reading seems far more hazardous than just using the probes right to the terminals of live gear.

[Gregg]

Is there some way we could get together and fund one of these for Joeqsmith?  I think of all the members of this forum, Joe would give the most thorough teating and review.  I'd put in $10.00

[Monkeh]

So did my eyes / ears deceive me?

If its in current mode with the black lead tucked into the meter and you probe with the red lead, isn't there a path from the red lead thru the meter shunt and to the exposed pad on the back?

Uh, there's no current shunt. So no, there's no low impedance path between the leads in normal conditions.

[orion242]

Is there some way we could get together and fund one of these for Joeqsmith?  I think of all the members of this forum, Joe would give the most thorough teating and review.  I'd put in $10.00

I'll toss $50 in.

[mmagin]

Is there some way we could get together and fund one of these for Joeqsmith?  I think of all the members of this forum, Joe would give the most thorough teating and review.  I'd put in $10.00

I'll toss $50 in.

Me too.

[Electro Detective]

This latest AIO magic wand, apparently a marketing 'group wet dream' come production/retail reality FAIL, is clearly an intermittent operation dud meter

AvE doesn't claim to be the sharpest cold chisel in the tool box, but if this knowledegable gent can't get it to work, how will the target market of semi-clueless tradies, electricians, 'birthday gift' DIYers
and one beer too many giggling Youtube reviewers in Canuckland get the freakin thing to chooch (?!) and indicate what's going on?

Does DJ need to waste time on this Fluke FLOP? If anything, it will attract Fluke fanboy pretend trolls and a negative vibe come battleground in the Youtube comments 
and perhaps more BS from YT on his channel. Tread carefully Sir! 


FWIW, most open jaw clamp meters I've had the displeasure of using and praying they work, are a PITA and always seem to be temperamental in a switchboard multi wire rig,
either they won't register anything, or readings hop about... on a live wire that I know 100% is carrying 5 amps of continuous AC current! 

I have a couple of these and I no longer think about using the  'works today, didn't yesterday'  open jaw function      

Give me a voltage probe stick, non contact buzzer, TRMS multimeter and  -closing jaws-  TRMS clamp meter any day to get the job done quick,
...and they're not that heavy to cart around guys,
buy a cheap hand trolley and plastic bucket if it's a real drama, works for me lol     


OTOH, if DJ doesn't mind a comment battlefield on Youtube doing a teardown and test of this dud meter, that may or may not fault on the day, good luck      

Best might be to test the sucker first in real world conditions, teardown, reassemble, and run same tests again

Whatever the outcome I won't be buying a T6 at any price,
and I don't like the open jaw T5 either which I always see multiples of gathering dust in pawn establishments...     

   

[joeqsmith]

... It's a bit strange that GE holds it as Fluke's paper talks about them developing the technology. ...

That's probably the marketing department playing semantic antics with the difference between inventing and developing. It doesn't sound quite so slickly self-aggrandising to say that you licenced the technology from GE, assuming they did; if they didn't it sounds even less impressive if they ought to have said "we're hoping we don't get sued".

In another document Fluke states: " Now, Fluke engineers have developed and are patenting a new technology called FieldSense that improves on the open fork functionality by performing not only ac current but also ac voltage and frequency measurements. Voltage and current measurements can be made on one device at the same time, in real time. The Fluke T6 Electrical Tester with FieldSense technology is the first handheld test tool using this new patent-pending technology."


Thanks for those of you trying to pool your resources and offering to pay for one but I am not setup to accept any sort of payments.   

I watched Fluke's latest video and it really didn't help me.  They had "the" guy making the video, I would have expected so much more at that level.    The one thing I go out of it is it sounds like there may be added resistance  built into the battery cover to further limit the current through a human.   The videos posted don't make any sort of basic measurements like this and I could not see anything.  Maybe they are molded into the plastic.  I would assume if you are using the leads, you have proper gear on. 

My interest in getting one would be to get a better idea how the sensor works.  If I buy one, it would be the 1KV split display unit.  Hard to say if people would see this as a problem when comparing it.   Running some basic tests would not be a problem but as far as transient testing it, I'm not really sure of the proper setup.    As I mentioned, I really don't know if you could get the GDT to turn on or even if it presents a path through the touch pad.   A human is not a dead short so I am not sure how I could determine what could happen. 

Attached is the test I would like to see ran but with a real combo generator on the line, not my little low energy ones.  I would suggest checking the other modes as well.   IMO, it's one thing to say its safe but if you really believe it, there should be no problems with Mr. Smitth volunteering to make this video for Fluke.

Assuming that's never going to happen, what's people's thoughts on how to test it?

[drussell]

An example typical circuit model of the human body:

http://www.industrial-electronics.com/elec-safety_5.html

There are also numerous papers on this subject which might be interesting for someone to delve into...

[SG-1]

My company requires me to be gloved up on any ac voltage above 25V or I stand a good chance of being fired.  I am not in any danger of arc flash, just electrocution. Anybody in their right mind working on 480V is going to have 600V rated rubber gloves with leather protectors on over them plus other required PPE while with in the arc flash boundary.  Really, how do they expect anyone in the trade to use this meter ?

My take on the current state of affairs with fluke is this: When Fluke first began & their only business was electrical measurement instruments they were highly motivated to design & build the best.  Now that they belong to a larger diversified company with some bean counter in charge, they don't care about protecting their name.  Same story with Westinghouse, when it started the engineers were in charge, then bit by bit the bean counters took over & the company went into ash heap of history.

[Corporate666]

AvE is a retard. At least half of what he says is flat out wrong. He's really good at seeming to know what he's talking about, but he really doesn't.

Easy to call a man a "retard" behind his back (what a charming line in talk you have), much tougher to actually support your casually flung out assertions. I challenge you to put your money where your mouth is. Pick a random, non-electronics video of his, and come back with the list of what he got right and what he got wrong. You hit less than 50% "flat out wrong", say you haven't got the time, say the dog ate your homework, or deliberately pick a video where the subject matter is obviously just opinion and you get to eat crow. No sauce, no bread, no potatoes, just neat roast crow, feathers optional.

Isn't he the guy that did a video about having to machine out a collet nut because it was machined so badly that it wasn't even close to concentric, and spent a bunch of time shitting on terrible Chinese manufacturing quality, when the problem all along was that he didn't know the collet nut was *supposed* to be machined like that to retain the collet in the nut?

It really made me wonder how many other topics he goes off on without knowing what he's talking about.  I've recalled other times when he's made comments about something being done wrongly or being badly engineered and he was just wrong.  I am not going to go back and watch all his videos and make a list of those times to satisfy your objections, though.  One other time that sticks out in my mind was when the guy from NYC CNC sent him some stuff and he spent a whole video shitting on the thing.  He was talking about binning fasteners and about the design of the part.  He was completely wrong about many of his objections to the part and just flat out had no idea what he was talking about - yet gave an "expert opinion" on the device without knowing the first thing about the subject matter.

He knows a lot about some things (hydraulics and heavy machinery, it seems), and a little about some things (electronics), but he's far, far, far from an expert or even an informed layman on many of the topics he chooses to speak about.  Machining, engineering and design are three of those topics. 

[Cerebus]

AvE is a retard. At least half of what he says is flat out wrong. He's really good at seeming to know what he's talking about, but he really doesn't.

Easy to call a man a "retard" behind his back (what a charming line in talk you have), much tougher to actually support your casually flung out assertions. I challenge you to put your money where your mouth is. Pick a random, non-electronics video of his, and come back with the list of what he got right and what he got wrong. You hit less than 50% "flat out wrong", say you haven't got the time, say the dog ate your homework, or deliberately pick a video where the subject matter is obviously just opinion and you get to eat crow. No sauce, no bread, no potatoes, just neat roast crow, feathers optional.

Isn't he the guy that did a video about having to machine out a collet nut because it was machined so badly that it wasn't even close to concentric, and spent a bunch of time shitting on terrible Chinese manufacturing quality, when the problem all along was that he didn't know the collet nut was *supposed* to be machined like that to retain the collet in the nut?

It really made me wonder how many other topics he goes off on without knowing what he's talking about.  I've recalled other times when he's made comments about something being done wrongly or being badly engineered and he was just wrong.  I am not going to go back and watch all his videos and make a list of those times to satisfy your objections, though.  One other time that sticks out in my mind was when the guy from NYC CNC sent him some stuff and he spent a whole video shitting on the thing.  He was talking about binning fasteners and about the design of the part.  He was completely wrong about many of his objections to the part and just flat out had no idea what he was talking about - yet gave an "expert opinion" on the device without knowing the first thing about the subject matter.

He knows a lot about some things (hydraulics and heavy machinery, it seems), and a little about some things (electronics), but he's far, far, far from an expert or even an informed layman on many of the topics he chooses to speak about.  Machining, engineering and design are three of those topics.

I'm not here to be AvE's apologist. It's one thing to say "he gets some stuff wrong", it's quite another to call him a "retard" etc. What I will say for him, is that when he gets things wrong and someone points it out, he put his hands up to it and corrects himself in the next video, like a grown man should. Many a keyboard warrior could learn from that example. Remember, he calls himself "Uncle Bumblefuck" and never sets out his stall as the knower of everything - indeed it's quite common to hear him say that he doesn't know something, that you "shouldn't take my word for it". At the end of the day he does it, to quote him, "for shits and giggles" and doubtless would be a more comfortable and more entertaining  companion, either down the pub, or on the job, than many of his detractors.

[ModemHead]

My curiousity got the better of me.  I had to see this thing for myself.  This is my first Youtube video, but I think it will show how a bit more clearly how the FieldSense works.

[joeqsmith]

Thanks for the post but I am still wanting more info.   I saw another video but be still did not measure the resistance of it and would not pull it apart.  >500Meg seems like no problem but not sure about this 0.002 uF.   Is the cover water tight?   If not, how do you dry and clean it?   I would really like to see some high voltage across that section and measure that cover with an electrometer.    Is it really just capacitively coupled as you later stated?   

Can capacitors be used as an isolation devices per CE?

https://youtu.be/uPNvw1xR-I0

[ModemHead]

Thanks for the post but I am still wanting more info.   I saw another video but be still did not measure the resistance of it and would not pull it apart.  >500Meg seems like no problem but not sure about this 0.002 uF.   Is the cover water tight?   If not, how do you dry and clean it?   I would really like to see some high voltage across that section and measure that cover with an electrometer.    Is it really just capacitively coupled as you later stated?   

Can capacitors be used as an isolation devices per CE?

It doesn't look watertight at all.  No gaskets.  And I don't see an IP rating.

I'm sorry I don't have the necessary equipment to do high voltage testing.  I probably should have said it "appears" to be capacitively coupled, since I don't know for sure.  And since I intend to use this one, I'm not wild about a destructive teardown either.

[joeqsmith]

Thanks for the post but I am still wanting more info.   I saw another video but be still did not measure the resistance of it and would not pull it apart.  >500Meg seems like no problem but not sure about this 0.002 uF.   Is the cover water tight?   If not, how do you dry and clean it?   I would really like to see some high voltage across that section and measure that cover with an electrometer.    Is it really just capacitively coupled as you later stated?   

Can capacitors be used as an isolation devices per CE?

It doesn't look watertight at all.  No gaskets.  And I don't see an IP rating.

I'm sorry I don't have the necessary equipment to do high voltage testing.  I probably should have said it "appears" to be capacitively coupled, since I don't know for sure.  And since I intend to use this one, I'm not wild about a destructive teardown either.

I fully understand not wanting to damage it.  If it really is not sealed and there is no way to clean/dry, it is concerning.  How would an electrician ever know if the unit had a problem or not?     

Could you please take the time to trace out the front end?  I am really interested in seeing how the clamp works.

Let's assume for not that it is purely capacitively coupled.   2.31 -  0.086, say 2.2nF.  At 60Hz,  Xc is 1.2M but the transients are much faster with sub 2us edges.   At 100KHz, Xc is now less than 800 ohms.      If the clamp can be engaged we are say 1.3K for the PTC and 1K for the resistor and if we can get the GDT to fire, 0 ohms.   

Even with a basic general model of a human, I am not sure what it would take to kill someone with a short pulse.   Will the capacitor degrade over time (start to leak) where even low frequency use becomes a problem?   

I get the meters are brand new on the bench and in normal use would seem safe but I am no safety buff.  Water, age, lack of a way to test it, lack of a way to inspect it, what levels to the parts break down, are the parts certified,  all would seem to play a part of it.   

[EEVblog]

Does DJ need to waste time on this Fluke FLOP? If anything, it will attract Fluke fanboy pretend trolls and a negative vibe come battleground in the Youtube comments 
and perhaps more BS from YT on his channel. Tread carefully Sir! 

Well I turned down a review unit back in November because it's an electrical tool, and well, I'm not into electrical, it doesn't really interest me much.
But now that there is this poo storm about it and so many people asking me to take a look and see if it's all true, I guess I have too 

Anyway, I just checked and I have one waiting at Fluke HQ just around the corner any day I want to pick it up.
But therein lies the first problem, and has been hinted at in a comment thread I made on the latest AvE video. I think that if a say a single positive thing about this meter I'll be branded a "sell out" and a corporate shill 
I suspect if it is half decent (I honestly don't expect it to be magically good in operational terms) and I can prove so, it won't matter to the AvE faithful. The same AvE faithful the EEVblog forum members voted a resounding no to including on this forum when AvE asked if he could use a section here as his official forum 
Then on the other hand as you said, the Fluke fanboys will jump in from the other side.
Probably an unwinnable video even if I add zero personal opinion of my own.

Even if I forked out $380 of my own money for it, I'll still cop the flack either way, so might as well take Fluke's freebie and then bin it? 

Give me a voltage probe stick, non contact buzzer, TRMS multimeter and  -closing jaws-  TRMS clamp meter any day to get the job done quick,
...and they're not that heavy to cart around guys

Yep, horses for courses.
The big jaw on this looks fairly impractical for simple non-contact voltage detection.

[Mr. Scram]

Isn't he the guy that did a video about having to machine out a collet nut because it was machined so badly that it wasn't even close to concentric, and spent a bunch of time shitting on terrible Chinese manufacturing quality, when the problem all along was that he didn't know the collet nut was *supposed* to be machined like that to retain the collet in the nut?

It really made me wonder how many other topics he goes off on without knowing what he's talking about.  I've recalled other times when he's made comments about something being done wrongly or being badly engineered and he was just wrong.  I am not going to go back and watch all his videos and make a list of those times to satisfy your objections, though.  One other time that sticks out in my mind was when the guy from NYC CNC sent him some stuff and he spent a whole video shitting on the thing.  He was talking about binning fasteners and about the design of the part.  He was completely wrong about many of his objections to the part and just flat out had no idea what he was talking about - yet gave an "expert opinion" on the device without knowing the first thing about the subject matter.

He knows a lot about some things (hydraulics and heavy machinery, it seems), and a little about some things (electronics), but he's far, far, far from an expert or even an informed layman on many of the topics he chooses to speak about.  Machining, engineering and design are three of those topics.

You may be thinking of ChuckE2009.

I have to say I'm growing a bit tired of every Youtuber having a group of naysayers because people occasionally get things wrong. Anyone  who does anything technical seems to be suffering from them. I always wonder how many times these people are wrong in their own endeavours and professional life. It's easy to fool yourself if you don't have an audience of hundreds of thousands and your every move isn't recorded.

Of course, I don't doubt Youtubers regularly being wrong. Many of the ones I appreciate regularly feature this in later videos.

[Mr. Scram]

Well I turned down a review unit back in November because it's electrical tool, and well, I'm not into electrical, its doesn't interest me.
But now that there is this poo storm about it and so many people asking me to take a look and see if it's all true, I guess I have too 

Anyway, I just checked and I have one waiting at Fluke HQ just around the corner any day I want to pick it up.
But therein lies the first problem, and has been hinted at in a comment thread I made on the latest AvE video. I think that if a say a single positive thing about this meter I'll be branded a "sell out" and a corporate shill 
I suspect if it is half decent (I honestly don't expect it to be magically good in operational terms) and I can prove so, it won't matter to the AvE faithful. The same AvE faithful the EEVblog forum members voted a resounding no to including on this forum when AvE asked if he could use a section here as his official forum.
Then on the other hand as you said, the Fluke fanboys will jump in from the other side.
Probably an unwinnable video even if I add zero personal opinion of my own.

Even if I forked out $380 of my own money for it, I'll still cop the flack either way, so might as well take Fluke's freebie and then bin it? 

Yep, horses for courses.
The big jaw on this looks fairly impractical for simple non-contact voltage detection.

Internet wisdom tells us that "haters gonna hate". I say they can stick your freebie Fluke where the sun doesn't shine. Idiots shouldn't dictate the discussion, there's plenty to learn for more reasonable folks.

[EEVblog]

I have to say I'm growing a bit tired of every Youtuber having a group of naysayers because people occasionally get things wrong. Anyone  who does anything technical seems to be suffering from them.

And it gets worse the larger your audience gets. The more numbers making up your bell curve, the more outliers you get.

AvE isn't immune to that either, even being famously anti-corporate advertising and is funded entirely by "the people". You can't stop the tall poppy syndrome.

[ModemHead]

I fully understand not wanting to damage it.  If it really is not sealed and there is no way to clean/dry, it is concerning.  How would an electrician ever know if the unit had a problem or not?     

If there's anything sensitive to moisture in there, hopefully it's potted?  BTW, I just noticed that the "battery door" is a user-replaceable part (PN 4944370).  Hmmm... there may yet be an opportunity for a semi-destructive tear-down.

Could you please take the time to trace out the front end?  I am really interested in seeing how the clamp works.

I have some busy days coming up this week, but I'll see what I can do.  I worked late last night making the video, since I had no idea what I was doing either with the video editor or Youtube.  I have a healthy respect for people who make regular video content, it isn't easy.

Let's assume for not that it is purely capacitively coupled.   2.31 -  0.086, say 2.2nF.  At 60Hz,  Xc is 1.2M but the transients are much faster with sub 2us edges.   At 100KHz, Xc is now less than 800 ohms.      If the clamp can be engaged we are say 1.3K for the PTC and 1K for the resistor and if we can get the GDT to fire, 0 ohms.   

Going by the 104Vac reading with a 10Meg DMM, that works out to 1.6Meg left for the T6.  Same ballpark.  So in the worst case, T6 set to Ohms, finger on ground contact, can you connect something to the red probe that would cause the GDT to fire, with this "battery door" component in series?  Interesting question.

To be honest, we're not too far from the old neon screwdriver here.

[madires]

There are some issues with the T6 from a sparkie's perspective. You want a reliable tool, not a finicky one. Grounding is a problem when you wear shoes with nice thick rubber soles (safety foot wear). The fieldsense technology is presumably HiZ and can't be switched to LowZ to deal with ghost voltages. Have you ever seen a typical mains distribution panel or a small junction box? There's no space to use the fieldsense feature. The T6 seems to be a completely useless tool for a sparky.

[nctnico]

Well I turned down a review unit back in November because it's an electrical tool, and well, I'm not into electrical, it doesn't really interest me much.
But now that there is this poo storm about it and so many people asking me to take a look and see if it's all true, I guess I have too 

Anyway, I just checked and I have one waiting at Fluke HQ just around the corner any day I want to pick it up.
But therein lies the first problem, and has been hinted at in a comment thread I made on the latest AvE video. I think that if a say a single positive thing about this meter I'll be branded a "sell out" and a corporate shill 
I suspect if it is half decent (I honestly don't expect it to be magically good in operational terms) and I can prove so, it won't matter to the AvE faithful. The same AvE faithful the EEVblog forum members voted a resounding no to including on this forum when AvE asked if he could use a section here as his official forum 
Then on the other hand as you said, the Fluke fanboys will jump in from the other side.
Probably an unwinnable video even if I add zero personal opinion of my own.

Perhaps but you are leaving the people out who might have a serious interest in this device and at the same time give jack sh*t about some forum fanboys.