10:38 am January 6, 2021 By Julian Horsey

    Little Bee has been developed by Weston Braun and built to provide an affordable high-performance current and magnetic field probe. Now available via the crowd Supply website the Little Bee is priced at $149 and will start shipping during April 2021. Worldwide shipping is available from $12 and US shipping from $8. Little Bee is based on an Anisotropic Magneto-Resistive (AMR) magnetic sensor, which gives it performance comparable to current probes based on fluxgate magnetometers and those with hybrid approaches that couple AC current transformers with DC hall effect sensors. But it offers that level of performance at a much lower cost say its creators.

“The behaviour of an electronic device is determined by both voltages and currents. Measuring voltages with an oscilloscope is easy, but current probes are expensive enough to be out of reach for many people. Little Bee is an affordable and high performance current probe and magnetic field probe that will allow you to debug and analyze electronic devices more effectively.”

Each pack includes : One Little Bee B1 Current Probe, with current sensing attachment and an SMA-BNC cable for connecting to an oscilloscope.

“Current probes are especially important for power electronics, which is of rising importance due to electric vehicles, alternative energy, and high-efficiency power supplies. We hope to make the world of power electronics accessible to more people by delivering a much needed piece of test equipment as open hardware and at an affordable price.”

“Little Bee can be used as a sensitive magnetic field (B Field) probe. Unlike normal current probes, B field probes allow for the non-intrusive measurement of current flowing through PCB traces and inductors by measuring the magnetic fields they generate. While non-intrusive current sensing does not measure an exact current amplitude, it does allow you to quickly verify circuit waveforms and identify faults and short circuits.”

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