Fluke - Estroboscopio LED Fluke-820-2 820-2

Poor light, for the high priceArrives without original packageSeems like was a returned item

A very good investment, it does work well and will help identify the real RPM of the moving component. I do agree there could be a backlight but that doesn't take away from the real value of this Stroboscope.

If you are in the need for a stroboscope then we have the item for you! We received this unit in our labs about a month or so ago and have been doing some testing with it. So far, we are very impressed with the capabilities. At first glance, the price may be a bit discouraging but once you start to dissect the features and capabilities of this unit it becomes clear why Fluke has priced this unit at nearly $1,000 dollars! In several other tests we did with stroboscopes we found limitations that were less than desirable such as slow update speeds on the frequency readout, limited runtime and cool down periods, limited features and so on. All of these undesirable features do not exist in this new 820-2 LED Stroboscope. The unit comes in a nice padded Fluke branded hard case with the stroboscope, manual, certificates, 3 AA batteries and the small external trigger 3.5mm adapter plug for use with an external trigger source. The unit is light, feels good in the hand and the button to activate the strobe is easy to manipulate. The unit seems solid as you would expect from a Fluke. The strobe window has 7 very bright LED's arranged in a circle pattern. This is what surprised us the most, the intensity of the light level. Logically, while increasing the speed of the flash does lower this intensity it still remains much brighter than most of the units we have tested in the past.The LCD display is crisp and easy to read for the most part although some of the icons may be a bit challenging for far-sighted individuals. Some of the features include the following:1) Adjustable pulse width in microseconds.2) Adjustable pulse width in degrees.3) 6 digit display including decimal. (00000.0)4) Trigger Positive or Negative (Selectable)5) Pulse divider from 1 to 255.6) FPM or Hz selection.7) Pulse Delay in degrees.8) Pulse delay in milliseconds.9) Low Battery IndicatorThe unit defaults to a 1000 FPM (16.7Hz), 333uS Pulse (2 degrees Pulse), 0-degree delay, external trigger off. You can easily reset the unit back to this by pressing the x2 and /2 buttons together as any time. This helps if you get the unit reset to a factory default if something becomes unusable. The control panel under the display consists of 4 buttons, Power, Setup, x2 and /2. The setup allows you access to all the features so you may configure the unit for your needs. The x2 and /2 buttons will either double the flash frequency or half the flash frequency which is good for determining that you are reading the correct RPM of a rotating device and not a harmonic. The trigger button can be pushed up or down to increase or decrease the frequency of flashes. This uses a progressive speed increment or decrement determined by the length of time you hold the button. Quick clicks of the button will increase or decrease the frequency for .1 FPM or 1 FPM depending on the range setting you are on. Pressing and holding will increase or decrease the unit in larger steps progressively to reach your desired flash frequency quickly.The specifications are very good, much better than other units we have tested. The accuracy is a respectable, .02% from 30FPM to 300,000FPM or .5Hz to 5,000Hz. Resolution at best is .1FPM and at worst 1FPM or .1Hz to 1Hz. Between 30FPM/..5Hz to 999FPM/999Hz has the .1FPM/Hz resolution, anything above that is 1FPM or 1 Hz. The color temperature of the LED's are a blazing white 6500K with a 4800 lux output at 6000FPM at 30c (11.9 inches). Our test of this light output intensity was reading on from 4200lx up to 5400lx with an average right around 4800lx. We have included a graph of a test at 6000FPM (See Photo Attachment). The 820-2 was located about 12 inches from the sensor and we ran the experiment at 3,000 Samples per second over a 50ms duration. The on/off switching of the LED’s were impressive, much better than a conventional flash-tube based stroboscope. We tested the unit on various fans, motors and vibrational materials and each test was accurate and impressive. The external trigger can also be used to sync the 820-2 to a spinning, rotating source which can allow for extremely accurate speed calibration of that source. There are many more applications which can be used with the external trigger which is capable of accepting a 3V to 32V input for the high level and In closing, we believe this is one of the best, most portable and compact stroboscopes on the market. If we had to place any cons on this unit it would be no backlight for the LCD display which in a dark environment may be troublesome and no tripod mount. Either of these two cons don’t appear to be a real issue since most applications will not be used in a dark environment and since there appears to be no locking mechanism for the trigger button then a tripod mount would not be very useful. In our opinion, these are not really an issue since the features rich 820-2 has so many other capabilities.