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A caution about reading a pulse with voltmeter: GENERALLY, analog meters will go up and down linearly with pulse width. So, with a 5V signal at 50% duty cycle (50% 5 volts, 50% 0 volts, and note that the actual low signal is likely to be above zero volts), you should read AROUND 2.5 volts, but this is dependent on the qualities of the meter movement.
HOWEVER, digital meters may not react this way, depending on how their internal sampling and averaging algorithms work. Generally, a more expensive meter is going to behave better than a cheap one in this area. Setting the meter to "AC" generally won't work because non-true RMS voltmeters are designed to treat every AC voltage as a sine wave, and adjust downwards accordingly. Real "true RMS" voltmeters, still not cheap, actually try to calculate the area under the curve of the sine wave of utility AC, or the area under the rectangle (a pulse).
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