DON’T Buy a FNIRSI DPS-150 Until You See THIS! (Automotive Review & Test)

Ever been stuck diagnosing a car with no power supply in sight? Well, you either run back to the shop, rig up some wires, or just end up using the car's 12-volt battery hoping for the best. But what if you can carry a fully adjustable power supply in your pocket that can give you the voltage and the current that you need anywhere that you go? At the Near-C DC power supply, the DPS-150, if we take a look here on the back side, it says that we have an input voltage of 5 volts to 32 volts, and it can sustain from 100 milliamps to 5 amps, and then we have an output voltage, excuse me, current of 0 to 5 amps, and 0 to 30 volts that this bad boy can output. So, let's open her up and let's take a look. Alright, so it has pretty nice packaging. Nice protector layer here on the top. Looks like quality assurance. A owner's manual, looks to be in English and I'm not sure, possibly Mandarin or Chinese. Oh, it's upside down. We got our 5-volt, 32-volt jack here. Looks like a USB-C. Looks like we got a switch here, and this is a micro-USB, assuming probably for updates. We got our power switch here, thumb wheel, this might be for voltage adjustment maybe, we'll see. Here's my power, ground, and home menu, a few other buttons. We'll find out as we go along here. As always, we're going to try to make this work without looking at the manual. Looks like we got a positive alligator, ground alligator, and a micro-USB cable for the tool. So, let's get her plugged in and let's run some tests. Alright, so we're going to use USB-C power adapter. You guys can see it powers up. That's cool because it has a little screen that we can lift up here. Again, we're not going to read the manual because we're automotive technicians, nobody reads manuals. Let's try to figure this out. Let's see. Oh, okay, cool. So, this one here moves through the prompts, and let's go back here. We've got a light bulb we're going to test. Okay, so we'll set it to 12.6, our standard battery voltage, and I mean we got a set 5 amps on the box. I'm assuming that's our max. It is. So, max is 5 amps, 150 watts, has a temperature overage, and then 5 volts looks like would be the minimum. Let's see if we can change that. Yeah, so minimum would be 5 volts and assuming if we hit, take this back, there we go. So, we got that there. Okay, so if I hit the power button, it goes to run, so then that means we're going to start seeing data coming out or voltage and current coming out of it. Let's run a couple of checks with the meter and let's see how good it is. All right, so just to make sure that we're going to get some accurate readings, I'm going to be using my test leads. What I'm going to do right here is just check the resistance on it, so this way you guys don't say that there's, so this one has none, no resistance on this one, so go ahead and remove that. We'll set that to the side. Got my blue one here. It's probably going to use this as a ground, so again, we'll check the resistance on it, so this way you guys can see that there's no unwanted resistance there. Cool, so we're good there, and the meter that I'm going to be using today is my trusty snap-on, my EEDM54D. This is a really good meter. I own six of these, so I trust it. I use it a lot, so that's what we're going to be using today. The first thing I'm going to do is we're going to set up our power supply here, and then we're going to set it to 12.6, and then see what we get here on the actual meter, so let's set that up. Again, we're going to be using ground as blue. It does not matter. That's why I like using different colors, because some people say, no, no, no, it has to be black and red. Let's go, and we'll change that to volts DC. We'll hit run, so right now what it looks like, our power supply is at 12.6, and my meter is at 12.59, so the voltage measurement right there looks to be pretty accurate. Not sure what the accuracy on this one would be. There's actually no spec on the box for accuracy, but 12.6 output, 12.9 on the meter, that seems pretty legit. What I'm going to do now is I'm going to use the power supply to power a sealed beam bulb. It should be drawing somewhere around three amps, and then we'll put the meter in series and compare what this measurement says compared to this one, so let's set it up. All right, so just so you guys can see what we've got going on here, I got my power supply. The sealed beam bulb here, and then I am running current or voltage, voltage and current from the power supply to my meter, and then the common is connected to the power feed on my sealed beam bulb, so now that the bulb is actually drawing current, we can see that the power supply is stating that it is pushing 3.334 amps, and my meter is showing 3.353 amps, so it's slightly off on the amperage reading, right? It's nothing too crazy. I mean, I'm not seeing like a whole amp that we're missing here. It is slightly off, but again, when you start using any type of tool or apparatus like this, when you're going to use it in the shop or you're going to use it on a test or anything, we always verify what it's putting out, so this way we make sure that we understand exactly what we're getting ourselves into, and since I do trust this meter, the reading that I'm showing here, right, is going to be just slightly off right here, so it's nothing too crazy like I'm saying, but it is something that we can take into consideration just because of that small reading. It's not like I'm going to tell you this is garbage. Don't use this. Again, everything that I'm going to apply is going to be automotive related, so in the automotive industry, if I'm using this to power something up on the bench or something like that, this is not going to be a killer, so again, voltage was spot on. The amperage was the one that was a little bit different, and again, my sealed beam, you guys can see, is firing right now, so that right there is okay. All right, so as you guys can see, we're still at 12.6 here, and I set my scope up to volts AC, and right now, we're getting a measurement, and the measurement that we're actually getting peak to peak is 63 millivolts, so this means that we're bleeding 63 millivolts AC out of a power supply into the actual circuit. Now, again, in the automotive industry, we have a 250 millivolt AC ripple maximum. Now, I'm not speaking for computers. I'm not speaking for anybody who's planning on using this in a laboratory setting. This is automotive specific, so in the automotive industry, if I'm working on a car, and I got over 200 millivolts of AC ripple, that is going to cause a problem. As of right now, I only have 63 millivolts AC, so again, that wouldn't be an issue. I've seen standard car alternators that are putting out about the same, so it is putting out a little bit of AC ripple, nothing too excessive that can cause an issue for me. All right, so what I did here, guys, is obviously when we were looking at it with no load, we were getting about 60 some odd millivolts of AC ripple. What I did now is I'm running my sealed beam, and I'm using my lab scope connected to the sealed beam itself, and what we're seeing right now is we're seeing 193 millivolts of AC ripple. Now, what is that telling us? This power supply might be lacking some of the internal capacitance to absorb some of that AC ripple once we have a load on it. The load we have on right now is drawing 3.3 amps, right? Remember this power supply has a 5 amp draw. Now, again, in the automotive industry, for most of our stuff, it's 200 millivolts AC ripple or less. Now, I can't speak for you guys that are in the electronic space and stuff like that, but for right now, 190 millivolts AC ripple is pretty big. So, if you are going to be trying to use this power supply for something that needs to be very precise, like you're doing a bench program, this might be something you would want to verify before you use it because, again, that ripple is excessively high, and I've learned this from a good friend of mine who's an electronics engineer. In computer jargon, over 50 millivolts can lead to a module being a misinterpreting information because of the actual ripple, right? So, for me, if I was going to be using this in the shop for like bench computer modules and stuff like that, I would want to figure out a way to reduce the capacitance, excuse me, to increase the capacitance so this way we can clear some of this up, specifically when it's under a load. This ripple here is going to be something that I'm going to keep in consideration anytime that I'm going to be using this power supply in the shop or for any projects that I might be working on. So, I hope you guys enjoyed that video, guys. Again, the DPS150, for its small form factor, its small outline, it does a really good job. Now, the one thing that, again, I did show a little bit that I did not like was that we had almost 200 millivolts of AC ripple. Now, as I mentioned during that portion of the testing, in the automotive space, 200 millivolts of AC ripple is max. We were at 190. So, we were still a little bit below. However, you always want to keep in mind that that ripple can affect circuits and it can affect modules. So, again, if you're not in the automotive space, that might be excessive for you or, in some instances, it might not be an issue. Again, if you are going to be using this for precise stuff like bench programming, module programming, you want to be careful with that. You know the limitations of your tools, your equipment, and what that module can take. So, this way, you guys don't end up breaking a module. Now, if I was going to use this for sensor simulation, powering up a sensor to verify if it works on the bench, this will do the trick. I like the small form factor. I have a big bulky one on my soldering bench. This one's going to be put in a case and I'm going to take it with me if I go somewhere for testing or a service call. Other than that, guys, I really enjoyed the tool. Voltage was pretty spot on. And if you guys pick a DPS-150 up, check out my link in the bio and I hope you guys enjoy it. So, there you have it, guys. The NearSee DPS-150 puts a full function power supply in your pocket, making diagnostics easier than ever before. It's going to keep you from dragging those bulky power supplies, no more guessing if the battery has enough juice, and the mobility and precision is all in one unit. If you feel this power supply can make your job that much easier, drop it in the comments and let me know what you think about everything we touched on in this video. Now, if you're trying to pick up your own DPS-150, check out my link in the bio. This way, you can pick up your own DPS-150 and enjoy it just like I am. And as always, guys, this is Oscar Gomez from Master Automotive Training. Bettering the automotive industry one technician at a time. This starts with you. And I'll see you guys on the next one.