OK then at last here is the low down on the meter, I found it on FaceBook Marketplace. I have never really considered looking there for TEA gear but seeing as eBay is basically just full of crap these days, I thought I'd give a go. After looking through some boring old no name meters and other related crap, I searched for "Fluke" to see if that turned up anything of interest, it did but as with Ebay, the name itself automatically carries a premium price as most people are aware of their status in the test gear market. I was just about to give up when I came across this
, and it was local to me, sort of begging me to make an offer on it. Knowing the brand well, I know that it is part of Flir and therefore a good make, so I made an enquiry to see if it was still for sale and if it worked OK. I made on offer below the asking price and was accepted, so made arrangements to pick it up when the guy got home from work.
One of the photos on Facebook was this
which I thought showed it still had the screen protector on, which I now know was not the case. After I polished the screen following the good advice of fellow friends and members it eventually became
so I started to take it apart to give you some TEA pron. While taking a rest from that I did some searching around on the web and came across an in depth review of this meter, and it also has loads of photos of the internals and features, so I provided a link to this here and so my own photos are minimal as there was no point really in re-inventing the wheel. here is the link.
https://www.element14.com/community/groups/test-and-measurement/blog/2018/11/13/extech-mg302-review.I have read the manual it seems that the meter can record upto 10,000 steps both in its own internal memory and also on a PC via its built in Blue Tooth transmitter and plug in dongle (which works very nicely by the way
) That got me thinking that it must be able to disable the auto power off system, and so it proved to be so. Among the user adjustable settings there is a high and low alarm settings (still trying to work out what that is for, manual very helpful). These can turned OFF, APO can be OFF or from 10 to 30 mins, beep on a button push ON/OFF and also the backlight can be set OFF or auto switch off from between 10 and 30 seconds.
An unusual feature is the display can, depending on the function, show 3 separate reading at the same time, so when measuring say AC voltage, it can show the MAX and MIN in the 2 top smaller displays while the main display shows the current reading, thats a nice touch. It has sand filled cartridge fuses which are 1,000 volt rated and the meter is rated at CAT IV 600V and CAT III 1,000V so affords pretty good protection in an accident. It is also IP67 rated and I believe it as well, the case well sealed with labyrinth blast walls all round and a O ring to keep water out.
The seller was asking £65 and I offered £50, I have since seen 2 for sale, not working one at that for £118 each and £17 P&P from Germany and another working one from United Arab Emirates for £252 and £36 P&P, so I'm happy with my purchase, and only the basic meter has been used, the BT and software, temperature probe and croc lead are all still in their plastic bags or sealed etc.