Quote:
Originally Posted by mpegjohn
So how would you measure the RMS voltage of the output that is un-smoothed?
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Why would any one want to? Why would someone generate an unsmoothed supply? The only applications I can think of off the top of my head would be for driving DC motors - but it's a very, very long time since I played with model trains!
If I really wanted to be that accurate I can measure the peak-to-peak input and subtract 700mV (or 1.4 volts if it is a bridge rectifier) and calculate it from that.
Modern silicon rectifiers do't go high resistance and deteriorate like older selenium types - if they did the would get very hot very quickly and self destruct! A valve rectifier would be best checked by substitution.
If I really wanted to know the answer to the question you've posed, I thing simply doubling the reading taken with a true RMS meter would be sufficiently accurate but this begs another question - why do
YOU want to measure the RMS output of an unsmoothed DC supply?