I doubt tony
needs to be told this, for two different reasons, [...]
THe 2 reasons being (a) I
haev a 'scope and (b) I know the trick anyway?
Exactly!
[...] an AC
voltmeter in series with a moderately large capaci-- um,
condenser, for DC isolation. [...]
What you need is that the impedance of the
capacitor at the mains
frequency is small compared ot the input resistnace of the meter.
Well, at the putative ripple frequency. As you point out below, on a
SMPSU one of the possible ripple frequencies is the switching
frequency (and if that's not well above mains frequency you've got a
broken, or at least seriously weird, SMPSU...or something unusual for
mains power; ISTR something somewhere that had a mains power frequency
in the kHz, or at least hundreds of Hz....)
A 1uF capacitor should be fine for most cases. [...]
One advantage
the 'scope has though, is that it lets yo see the ripple frequency.
Actually, if you don't have a 'scope, you can get _some_ idea of the
ripple spectrum by trying multiple different cap values, with known
resistors in parallel across your meter if it's particularly high
impedance (like the >10M tony mentioned). You likely will have to do
some arithmetic, though.
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