Inductance Meter

Personal project · Tool for winding inductors and transformers

A compact inductance meter built to quickly characterize hand-wound inductors and transformer primaries. The meter excites an LC network, measures the resulting resonance frequency, and converts that into an inductance value. Works as a lightweight alternative to a full LCR meter.

TECH: LC resonance, frequency measurement, calibration and error analysis, simple CADing

Gallery

Internal electronics.

Assembled inductance meter with display and measurement terminals.

External veiw of enclosure.

Description

I designed the measurement principle around an LC resonant circuit: by measuring the oscillation frequency with a known capacitor value, the inductance can be computed.

On the hardware side, I implemented the oscillator and signal conditioning, paying attention to component tolerances and parasitics that affect accuracy. The microcontroller (arduino nano) measures frequency, applies calibration constants, and drives the user interface.

This quick project has been especially useful when winding transformers and inductors for my power electronics projects, letting me quickly iterate on turns count and core choices without guessing at inductance.