AC ADAPTER OUTPUT Menards Hobby Shop

No. You have to take the reading with a load on the power supply. Many of those wall worts are not regulated and are designed to put out stated voltage when properly loaded.

cjack posted:

No. You have to take the reading with a load on the power supply. Many of those wall worts are not regulated and are designed to put out stated voltage when properly loaded.

I plugged the building in and the floor lights worked. I do not know how to check the wall wart with a load on.

This is the wall wart purchased with the building. I plugged one of the wires to the building, floor lights worked, then while power was on the building I put the red wire into one of the other plugs and the touched the black wire to outside the same plug. The meter read 9.

Appreciate your help, I 'm just a slow learner

Thanks

Brent

What does your meter indicate if you measure a 1.5V AAA, AA, C, or D battery?  Or a 9V battery?

If you just bought the Menards adapter it should be the model 4006 which AFAIK is a regulated adapter which should ALWAYS have 4.5V on the output independent of what is hooked up to it.  Their previous, now obsolete, adapter (model 4002) was unregulated and would hence indicate a different voltage depending on the number of buildings connected.

If the meter properly reads a 1.5V or 9V battery then I'd say your adapter (presumably the current model 4006) is bad if you're reading 12V DC or so.  Even the obsolete unregulated 4.5V adapter should not indicate 12V DC.

How you measured it, is correct. In that it's a 2 amp wart, the voltage might show higher than it should with only one building. Sounds like it was replaced with a regulated supply for good reason. If it is the regulated supply that shows 9 vdc, then it's defective.

stan2004 posted:

What does your meter indicate if you measure a 1.5V AAA, AA, C, or D battery?  Or a 9V battery?

If you just bought the Menards adapter it should be the model 4006 which AFAIK is a regulated adapter which should ALWAYS have 4.5V on the output independent of what is hooked up to it.  Their previous, now obsolete, adapter (model 4002) was unregulated and would hence indicate a different voltage depending on the number of buildings connected.

If the meter properly reads a 1.5V or 9V battery then I'd say your adapter (presumably the current model 4006) is bad if you're reading 12V DC or so.  Even the obsolete unregulated 4.5V adapter should not indicate 12V DC.

The meter is the 4006.   Reading on a 9 volt is 13 Reading on a AAA is 1 ( a cheap meter)

Thanks

Brent

BReece posted:

...Reading on a 9 volt is 13 Reading on a AAA is 1 ( a cheap meter)

If it's cheap, you're paying too much!   I routinely use the FREE (no purchased required) meter from Harbor Freight.  For measuring DC voltage from a battery or AC-adapter, there is no appreciable difference compared to my professional-grade meter which was several hundred bucks! 

Unfortunately, with readings as you're showing, I'm not sure what to think.

Could be a bad sample of the meter. But you are using the DC range right? Why are you using the 300 vdc range? Doesn't the Harbor Freight meter have a 20 vdc range? If you are on a 300 vdc range, then the accuracy is seriously poor for measuring 4.5 vdc. That's only 1.5 percent of full scale. I'm not surprised that it could be off a couple percent.