The engineers at Vion wanted a retooled multimeter for a few different reasons. They felt that the most popular meters were difficult to use, bulky, and unable to keep track of data. With more and more products in our home and office every day requiring power they felt concerned that most people, even engineers, don’t know enough about electricity to diagnose or fix the problems. Their solution was to really look at the design requirements for a multimeter and develop Vion, touted as the world’s simplest Bluetooth multimeter. The team is currently running a crowdfunding campaign on Kickstarter.
Vion is a pair of standalone probes linked to an app on the user’s smartphone that will automatically measure a system and diagnose it as good or bad with voice prompts. The meter doesn’t use a positive and negative probe approach, and no dials need to be turned for correct scale of measurement. My favorite part about the system is the data storage that users can monitor over time.
The meter can measure up to 600 Volts DC and 500 Volts AC, and up to 2,000,000 Ohms resistance. The system works between 30 and 300 Hertz and with an operating temperature between -10 and 50 Celsius. The probes have 20 millimeter pin length, the bodies are 140 millimeters long, and the cord between them stretches up to 1 meter long. Indicators on the end of the probe show blue for alternating and red for direct current, green for resistance measurements and orange when charging. The battery in the probes take a half an hour to charge and is expected to last for around seven hours of use.
Simplifying a tool as ever present as the multimeter is always a tough sell but the Vion probes and app seem like a good system. One thing the campaign video stresses is that any user can adapt the tool into their current needs, from novice users with remote control cars to prototype builders and utility workers. Fifty dollars doesn’t feel like a steep price for a tool that can take the place of expensive multimeters, even when you take into account the fact that discount tool stores sell meter approximations for less than ten dollars. My biggest worry with a pair of the probes would be misplacing them in my disorganized workshop. The crowdfunding campaign has blasted past its modest funding goal and will end on April 27 with first units currently scheduled to ship in June 2018.