How Do I Read A Light Meter?

Question

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Answer 1

Some electrical meters have numbers and some have dials.

The ones with numbers are pretty straight-forward, so I'll describe the kind with dials.

Each dial is like a clock face, with a pointer and with numbers. You read the dials left to right. Each dial is one digit. If the pointer is between two numbers, you round down to the lower number, just like when the hour hand is between two numbers on a clock you read the lower of the two numbers.

Now here's the tricky part. Every other dial reads the opposite direction. One dial reads clockwise and the next reads counter-clockwise. It's not really a problem, though, if you simply look at the two numbers on each side of the pointer and choose the smaller number.

Just write down the digits in order and that is your meter reading. Practice a couple of readings to see how it works. Go out and read your meter. The wait several hours or wait until the next day and read it again. You will see how some of the dials have moved only a little bit while others have moved much more.

Answer 2

The idea behind these meters is much like telling time on a clock with hands, except each hand is on its own dial and the directions of rotation differ from dial to dial. dogsafire's answer is correct as far as it goes but he didn't explain what you do when a pointer rests almost exactly at a number. On a clock, if the hour hand seems to be pointing directly at the hour, you look at the minute hand to see if it has reached 12 or not. If it has, you take the number at which the hour hand is pointing to be the correct hour. Otherwise, you take the next lower number as the hour.

You read a analog watt-hour meter with dials in much the same way. If one of the hands seems to be pointing directly at the number, you look at the dial representing the next lower placed digit to see if it has reached zero yet. If it has, you take the digit for the higher number as read. Otherwise, you take the next lower digit, where 9 is considered to be lower than 0 if it is a zero that the original dial was pointing at.