what will it do?

It is a multimeter, with capacity for voltage, ampere, and resistance measurements, I also found a circuit for measuring the capacitance of capacitors, making it possible to harvest them from old electronics. It will also indicate by both light and sound the presence of shortcircuits

who's done what beforehand?

In total sum of space and time, no such device has ever existed before, disregard Fluke. /sarcasm.

In all seriousness, there already are multimeter kits people can make on their own. Even greater number of different vendors supplying their own readymade working models.

what materials and components will be required?

AS I looked into the design of the multimeter I found that I needed two chips for it that were not in the lab inventory

DS4305

the DS4305 is a reference regulator, its purpose is to provide a reliable reference value. once calibrated to 5v volts, it will give out exactly 5 volts. The reason for needing this is that it is not given that everyone has high end digital powersupplies to work with, and the internal reference values in avr chips usually rely on the incoming voltage, if it is off the measured values are off. With this reference chip, it is possible to make the measurements reliable regardless of the quality of the powersupply.

Then again there is a question of how high accurate the is the internal measurement of the atmel chips, so is one really necessary.

ACS712

the ACS712 is a halleffect based current sensor, that handles up to 5 amps. Giving the multimeter the capacity to measure currents safely.

Also I need to get me the ATmega32 for running the board, because I made an initial design mistake of using the wrong chip's template in eagle. In the late stage I realized the error I had made, it was easier to buy the proper chip than to redesign the whole board from scratch for the rigth chip, that would have been harder to program.

where will they come from?

In general the digikey inventory has all the things one will need for this, Everything else will be in the lab inventory. I did buy the ATmega32 on my own, as I needed the chip quickly and going through the official channels would have taken too long.

how much will it cost?

Most expensive parts of the multimeter will be the display, current sensor, reference regulator and the chip itself, everything else will be basic giblets found in the lab inventory, and as such cost pennies.

what parts and systems will be made?

The case will be 3d printed, the probes will be cast plastic, the PCB will be milled and soldered. the display covering, exchangeable connector plate and battery compartment door will be laser cut

what processes will be used?

3d printing, computer aided design, electronics design and production, embedded programming, output and input devices, molding and casting, interface and application programming.

what tasks need to be completed?

the circuit board needs to be designed, and eagle doesnt have the part details for some of the components in its library, so I need to make my own library for them. The casing needs to be designed and printed. The probes need to be molded and cast.

what questions need to be answered?

These days the most common feature of the multimeter is the knob in the middle, that you turn to switch features. What it does is that it physically connects the feature you need while separating the other features from the leads, so the question is, Is it possible to integrate the multimeter to a single board, without a turn knob?

Can one build an multimeter by just using the components in the lab inventory? In some parts of the world it can be difficult to get even the basic components, what is the least amout of components one can use to make a functional multimeter.

What is the best chip to use as the core of the multimeter? While ATmega32 is functional I am not pleased with it. The demand for specific pins is what more dictates things.

what is the schedule?

It will take me about a week to design the board, have it milled, stuffed and verified, I hope to reserve atleast 3-4 days for programming it. Designing the case for it is a simple thing and including the printing will take 2-3 days. The probes will take around 3 days to complete, mostly because processed involved are too long to complete during the day. Designing the probes was a minor thing and took a day. Laser cutting the pieces the project needs takes a day to design and cut. In total assuming no problems, +2weeks should be doable.

how will it be evaluated?

The ease of use, safe operation, usefulness, reliabity of the values.