Pokit Smartphone Current Clamp

Measuring voltage with multimeter or oscilloscope is easy: attach one probe to ground and the other to the electrical contact where you want to know the voltage (while following appropriate safety procedures). Measuring current with such a meter is more difficult, as it requires either a current shunt and some simple calculations, or breaking into the circuit to have your meter measure things directly. There is, however, a non-contact option for current measurement known as the current clamp.

These ingenious devices clamp around a wire and sense the magnetic effects of flowing electricity, allowing them to infer the magnitude of current flow. Of course, these units tend to be expensive, take up space in your toolbox, and aren’t typically found in a wireless/datalogging format. The Pokit Clamp, currently crowdfunding on Kickstarter (actually massively over-funded as of this writing), aims to act as your go-to wireless clamp measurement and logging device, using a smartphone as its interface.

The Pokit Clamp builds on the same interfacing technology that we featured here in the form of the Pokit Pro, but now adds a current clamp to your arsenal of wireless tools. The clamp measures both AC and DC current, up to a whopping 600A, and shows measurement data via its companion app. It can also log data as a standalone device, allowing you connect as convenient and review what happened over the last few days or weeks, up to three months at a time.

The app can connect to multiple clamp meters at once as well, graphing data on the same smartphone display for an overall picture of the system. Since the clamps are wireless, you don’t even have to be in the immediate vicinity, which has some obvious potential safety and convenience benefits.

The device is now available at different pledge levels starting in the $150 range. Various options bump the price up a bit, but may provide a good value. More info is available on the Kickstarter page, or check out the demo in the video below.