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Tank Circuit
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Multimeter Has Counts... Why?

08/21/2012 7:35 PM

Lots of places on the internet explain what it means that a meter has 3200 counts or what have you. But why 3200? Is it to do with the processor in the multimeter having maximum word length or something else? Thanks for reading. David in UK.
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Epke
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#1

Re: Multimeter Has Counts... Why?

08/21/2012 10:02 PM

could you be more specific?

maybe the memory is only 32768bits?

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Tank Circuit
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#4
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Re: Multimeter Has Counts... Why?

08/22/2012 2:53 PM

Yes it could be since 32 is a power of two. Some meters have 6000 counts and that does not quite fit.
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jack of all trades
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#2

Re: Multimeter Has Counts... Why?

08/21/2012 10:38 PM

The short answer is that 'count' in this example is just an expressed form of digital (internal meter measurement (%) and discrete displayed digit or 'step' (resolution)) accuracy.

Example explanation Link 1

Example explanation Link 2

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james denoil4
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#3
In reply to #2

Re: Multimeter Has Counts... Why?

08/22/2012 2:40 AM

thanks and nice post
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Tank Circuit
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#5
In reply to #2

Re: Multimeter Has Counts... Why?

08/22/2012 2:56 PM

Thanks for post. That tells me what counts are but not why some meters have 3200 and other 6000 and so on. If a multimeter has 4 digits why is the count of that meter not always 10000?
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jack of all trades
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#6
In reply to #5

Re: Multimeter Has Counts... Why?

08/22/2012 3:53 PM

I think this link explains it a little better

Link

I don't really have a definitive (clear) answer but count also depends on measured range and A/D converter accuracy (for digital multimeters).

From Example Link 1 above....

Counts for a DMM is analogous to LSB for an ADC. A count represents a value that a signal can be digitized to and is equivalent to a step in a quantizer. The weight of a count, or the step size, is called the absolute unit of resolution.

Also note that not all multimeters that have (say) 4 displayed digits display in a range of 0000-9999, some only read and display in a range of 0000-1999 or 0000-5999, etc depending on the range setting (and even auto-ranging meters only have set range bands).

Hope this helps.

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Tank Circuit
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#7
In reply to #6

Re: Multimeter Has Counts... Why?

08/22/2012 5:10 PM

Thats helpful. Thank-you Jack.
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