Inexpensive transistor tester?

[zenless]

What's a good option for transistor tester? Are these things too good to be true? Seems that you can test just about any component?

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-Transistor-Tester-Capacitor-ESR-Inductance-Resistor-Meter-NPN-PNP-Mosfet-/251210970850?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item3a7d5736e2

[upthepunxxx]

Man that would great if it's legit. Let us know if you ends up working out. I would love I have something like that.

[blearyeyes]

I picked up a version of this..I think it's pretty much the same thing.. I'm not sure if it gives you what you need to accurately measure Hfe in transistors as I don't know if it takes into account leakage. Mine tells you what you hooked up to it, what the forward voltage is and the Hfe.. pretty cool. Tonight I was using my meter getting bogus readings off of some caps and switched to using this thing and it read them perfectly... Down side it is mostly in CHINESE on screen...except for the readouts. You are really on your own. YMMV. I like mine but still am not sure of it's real value.

[Blues Healer]

the CHEAPEST method would probably be R.G. Keen's:
http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/fuzzface/fffram.htm

[upthepunxxx]

the CHEAPEST method would probably be R.G. Keen's:
http://www.geofex.com/Article_Folders/fuzzface/fffram.htm

Wait, I'm suppose to read words?!!!

[blearyeyes]

Heck no!

Second picture down on the left!

[gjcamann]

I've been wanting one of these for a while. I think these are all based on an open source project (hardware and software) with an Atmel microcontroller - that's why there's so many people selling about the same thing.
http://www.mikrocontroller.net/attachment/143988/TTester_096k.pdf
http://www.mikrocontroller.net/articles/AVR-Transistortester

I'm temped to build one myself, but for $20...

Anyone else have one of these? How well do they work?

[Blues Healer]

I actually tried to do the smallbear/ R.G. Keen project several years ago, and wasn't really successful, so I ended up getting a Peak tester, since I had a LOT of trannies.

If someone was ambitious enough, I'd suggest looking at analogman's tester that he uses ... I think it's probably based on Keen's, with an added LED readout, such as sold by circuit specialists.