What you least expect to find in a multimeter?

An infrared usb interface?

I have this meter, a N56FU from maplin

it has a usb interface to transfer data to pc

I.ve had this meter for a while and never investigated the insides, i was expecting the usual adc's but not this

It's an infrared usb interface, has the usual cp2102 serial to usb chip but why infrared? Then it occured to me that being optically isolated should the meter go boom the pc connected to it won't, I thought this was clever, simple but clever.

I have no plans to hack this meter, it's a pretty good bit of budget kit, pointless post but I thought i'd share it