Date:         Thu, 5 Nov 2015 18:41:20 -0500
Reply-To:     David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         David Beierl <dbeierl@ATTGLOBAL.NET>
Subject:      Re: Multimeters
Comments: To: Anthony Egeln <regnsuzanne@YAHOO.COM>
In-Reply-To:  <1016461315.571103.1446762601162.JavaMail.yahoo@mail.yahoo. com>
Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1"; format=flowed

At 05:30 PM 11/5/2015, Anthony Egeln wrote:
>I've been looking for a good excuse to buy a 
>moderately priced multimeter for quite some 
>time, and I think I may have one now.
>Can you use a multimeter to check household 
>batteries? Â I have a box full of AA, AAA and 9V 
>batteries that my late mother had accumulated, 
>and while they may be out of date I want to make 
>sure they are really done before taking them to 
>our community hazmat pick up this Saturday. Â
>I was going to buy a "battery checker" on Amazon 
>and I started thinking that a multimeter might 
>be able do this just as well and I'd have my excuse to buy the instrument.
>There are a lot of recommendations on the 
>archive for which multimeter to buy, but none 
>very recent. Â I'd love to have a current 
>recommendation for a moderately priced instrument, digital or analog.
>Thanks, Ant

Not really.  To test a dry cell or dry battery 
you have to load it with something approximating 
a working load.  Digital meters in general have 
ten megohms input resistance.  My Radio Shack 
puts a 50 mA load on AAA, 150 mA on AA, C, D 
cells. 3 mA on button cells and I'm not sure on 
the rest.  Ideally you'd dial in your desired 
load and cutoff voltage for your particular applications.

Yours,
David