Talking Multimeter

[mcrracer]

Hey guys this is Phil I'm asking a question for my dad, Mcrracer. Does anyone know of a company that sells talking multimeters. His eyesgiht is still impaired and he is going nuts because he cant build anything or do any amp work. He would like to be able to at least check resistors and cap values. Thanks

[Cliff Schecht]

I've never heard of that. He might have to get something more general purpose (i.e. a multimeter with GPIB) and find some software that will do text to speech in Labview or Matlab. With Labview it would be pretty easy actually. Unfortunately there are not a lot of blind people (that I know of) who practice amp repair/building so tools like this can't be commonplace. The GPIB solution is nice because he can also talk to the multimeter to adjust the settings on it if we get fancy.

Maybe myself and some other forum members can get together and figure out some way to help out. I usually don't volunteer my free time very much anymore but Mcrracer was a great contributor and knows his Wreck stuff. I would be glad to help him out as I'm sure others would. I'm not the best programmer but I know enough Labview now to be dangerous and could definitely handle any hardware that needs to be developed.

[Jim Mason]

Actually they do exist. I got one about 10-15 years ago from Radio Shack. A google search for "talking digital multimeter" turned up several.

Jim

[LeftyStrat]

Radio Shack sells a pretty decent one that has a serial port on it. Some guys has come up with how to communicate with it here:

http://www.linuxtoys.org/dvm/dvm.html

Shouldn't be hard to convert the result using a text-to-speech program.

I could probably whip up something for a Mac or Linux machine, I don't own any Windows machines.

I'd be glad to help.

[husky]

I have the Extech I think it is this one
You would have to use speech recognition software but it will shoot the data to the computer like every second
http://www.testequipmentdepot.com/extec ... /ex540.htm

[Structo]

That is a neat project and I hate to add any negativity to the project but what I don't understand is if you have very low vision to where you can't read a digital readout, how do you position the voltage probes or see where to measure the voltage?
Seems like that would be very dangerous for the person with the eyesight problems.

[rogb]

Hey guys this is Phil I'm asking a question for my dad, Mcrracer. Does anyone know of a company that sells talking multimeters. His eyesgiht is still impaired and he is going nuts because he cant build anything or do any amp work. He would like to be able to at least check resistors and cap values. Thanks

Tom...

[mcrracer]

My dad says thanks guys he was looking for a simple solution. Thanks for all your suggestions. My son couldn't find any talking meters but I will have him look again.

[Structo]

Hey guys this is Phil I'm asking a question for my dad, Mcrracer. Does anyone know of a company that sells talking multimeters. His eyesgiht is still impaired and he is going nuts because he cant build anything or do any amp work. He would like to be able to at least check resistors and cap values. Thanks

Tom...

Gottcha

Cheers