When you need a multimeter for testing electrical equipment around the home, it's vital to know what all those symbols around the dial mean.

Using a multimeter can be daunting to the uninitiated, but they're not magic. Here's a rundown of the basic functions of the device and what they're used for.

If you know the capacitance per foot of wire, then you can calculate how far it is to the open circuit. To determine the capacitance per foot, take a trip to the hardware store, use a known length of ...

For measuring resonance in circuits, a grid dip meter was also helpful. However, most modern users/operators aren’t accustomed to using that anymore. Report comment ...

For example, a 20 A, 250 V fuse may not be able to clear a fault inside the meter when the meter is across a 480 V circuit. It would take a 20 A, 600 V fuse to clear the fault on that circuit.

For a 45-meter RG-58/U cable, the LED will flash at f1 = 1.67 Hz. When an open circuit is introduced at L2 = 25 meters from the IC, the LED will blink at about f2 = 3 Hz.