Testing

Testing anything electrical with a multimeter is an awkward proposition. You need both hands to hold the test leads and then another pair of hands to hold the wires you want to test and if you don't have a bench handy, you need another hand to hold the meter. You need five hands to make the most basic electrical test. Why hasn't someone come up with a better solution? I haven't done it because I've been busy playing solitaire. At the very least we need a pair of pliers that has one lead in one jaw and the other test lead in the other jaw. The jaws need to be long and curved, like fingers, the tips need to be spring loaded so you can push on one forcefully and so bring the second tip into contact with its test point. And the meter needs to be built into the pliers so you can hold the meter and two leads in one hand. You still need another pair of hands to hold the test points. Yes, sometimes the test point is on something that is large and heavy enough that it will sit there while you probe it. I ran into one of those back in '83, or was it '73? What usually happens is you have a bunch of wires dangling in the air, the ends haven't been stripped, so the only available contact point is the bare end of the wire, barely visible at the very tip.

What I really want is a smart probe that can grab hold of the end of a wire, locate the tip of the wire within the surrounding insulation and stab it with the pointy tip of the test lead. You have to stab it because metal, even copper and gold, will tarnish enough in the open air that a low voltage (like you get from a double A battery) will not be able to bridge a casual contact made by just touching the probe tip to the test point.