Even upmarket digital multimeters boasting a built-in capacitance meter are useless if you want to check out tiny capacitances like 2.7 pF or 5.6 pF. Usually, you’re tied to a lowest measuring range of 2000 pF, which is a good laugh to RF designers and radio amateurs. Although at 3.5 digits the DMM’s resolution is 1 pF, any measurement below 200 pF or so will produce coarse if not ridiculous results. Pico C does a far better job. Beating many DMMs hands down, this little instrument easily measures capacitances down to fractions of a picofarad.
NOTE:
Since publishing this project in Elektor April 2011, reworked firmware has become available that enables the measurement range to be extended upwards to 500 nF, and menus to be added to enhance the operation of the instrument. We believe the new firmware is a substantial improvement over the older version and currently supply all Pico C kits with Pico C Plus firmware # 110687-41, which is fully compatible with the existing circuit board for Pico C.
EXTRA: Free 1000 pF 1% reference capacitor included.
The microcontroller is upgraded to Pico C-Plus ! see www.elektor.com/110687
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