5 April 2020

Advantages and disadvantages of digital voltmeter

The Digital voltmeter displays the voltage readings of a circuit numerically. It measures AC or DC voltage and displays the value directly in numeric form instead of pointer reflection. A Digital voltmeter was introduced which gives the numerical display of voltage with accuracy. This article gives information about the advantages and disadvantages of digital voltmeter to better understand this topic.

Advantages of digital voltmeter:

  • Digital voltmeter is more stable and reliable.
  • The digital display of the output eliminates the human reading error.
  • A Digital voltmeter is void of parallax errors.
  • Digital voltmeter has an automatic range selection.
  • A Digital voltmeter provides better resolutions.
  • It is a smaller size and cost-effective.
  • DVM can measure both AC and DC voltages.
  • Reading is accurate and fast compared to an analog meter.
  • Latest DVM is built with a microcontroller that stores the readings for further processing.
  • The range can be taken very fast.
  • Various processing features available like RMS, peak capture, relative offset, dB, Time averaging, etc.

Disadvantages of digital voltmeter:

  • Digital voltmeter is prone to damage if the voltage is increased beyond the limit.
  • It is very hard to spot the transient voltage spikes.
  • The Analog to digital converter has a limitation on word length which causes quantization noise giving rise to errors in measured values.
  • This display depends on the external power source or the battery.
  • The speed of operations is limited due to the digitizing circuit in digital voltmeters.
  • When a fluctuation occurs in a circuit the digital voltmeter cannot read and display an error.
  • While measuring the voltage, there are chances of the digital voltmeter getting the heated up. This might output the wrong readings.
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