What did you buy today? Post your latest purchase!

[CatalinaWOW]

Next nice piece of equipment to lab Agilent 53181A
I seen this as not working on eBay but wait pictures shows "SELFTEST PASS" and I couldn't resist:) TEA

And Yes it was broken ... no reading of input signal. Then I open this guy and wohoo part of PCB where BNC is placed is completely broken. Superglue should do the job.

Some superglue and hotglue for strength.

Repairing broken traces.

And wuoalaaa it's working    That's was quick repair:) Some cleaning and job done:) Finally I was lucky like SignalPath several times

Merry Christmas!

I'd call this a win-win.  You got a great cheap instrument.  The commercial lab probably couldn't do the same repair and sell it in good conscience.  They would have had to do the whole board replacement.  Non-economic.  So they got something and you did too.

[lewis]

Nice unit , will we see a teardown...

Hmmmm.... that's tempting......

What is the value of the resistor you are trying to measure?

About 120R, ±20% ish.

I can measure that easily...

Oh, I'm not sure, I bet you can't measure to ±20% quite as accurately as I can.......

[Rbastler]

Got myself a Keithley 181. Reason ? Just because.
Works perfectly. Its just hard to find the right plug for the mV input. I got one, but I want another one. Plus the mV connector on the 181 is gold plated. From what I read in a repair thread for the 181 here, it should be silver plated ?
I will change the filter capacitors, just for good measure and calibrate it. Now I need a KVD....

[Rbastler]

Rest of the pics:

[knapik]

I just backed the icebreaker FPGA dev board as a Christmas present to myself.
https://www.crowdsupply.com/1bitsquared/icebreaker-fpga

[Edison]

An emergency button



Hopefully it's the last time I will deal unsafely with live 220Vac voltages... 

Just remember those contacts in there are not rated for continuous operation at 10A, and also they are not fail safe when disconnecting into a high current. They tend to weld together under heavy load, so best used in conjunction with a sensitive 16A AC1 rated contactor. Those at least will, when paired with the appropriate overload, provide good protection. Hope you also got some LED power on indicators to go with them.

The contactor should not be operated correctly, it is a safety button with locking, these buttons are used to control the circuit breaker trip coil - the most reliable disconnection -   - the coil acts on the circuit breaker locking mechanism

[Edison]

So that is why my box-o-magic has a relay

The contactor is here for the START-STOP function of the stop button in the security design

[julianhigginson]

Wurth 885050 capacitor kit. $140 on a kit of MLCCs .
Normally I would never waste my money in such a way, but this is an exception.
I didn't have time to finalize my calculations, and DigiKey cuts off in 20 minutes for X-mas eve (1:00 PM EDT, as I was told on the phone).
So I have to order an all-inclusive kit just for the one part I need immediately.

Along with $100 worth of other parts, namely some GaN transistors and some passives, and some OPAMPs.
Fast class-D envelope tracking is interesting.

if you buy from digikey, do you still get lifetime free refills?
I love my wurth kits.

[Specmaster]

An emergency button



Hopefully it's the last time I will deal unsafely with live 220Vac voltages... 

Just remember those contacts in there are not rated for continuous operation at 10A, and also they are not fail safe when disconnecting into a high current. They tend to weld together under heavy load, so best used in conjunction with a sensitive 16A AC1 rated contactor. Those at least will, when paired with the appropriate overload, provide good protection. Hope you also got some LED power on indicators to go with them.

The contactor should not be operated correctly, it is a safety button with locking, these buttons are used to control the circuit breaker trip coil - the most reliable disconnection -   - the coil acts on the circuit breaker locking mechanism

Correct, these emergency stop buttons are only rated for the coil current only and should never ever be used as a means of breaking the mains power supply directly, only via a suitably rated contactor

[Terry01]

Rest of the pics:

Those are some nice pics! The older stuff is fascinating I think. I wish I knew enough to be able to fix this kind of stuff. 

[ChrisG]

Hi all, I bought the ZD-8915 and JBC CD-2BE. Yeaahhhhh. The ZD-8915 I ran through some of it's paces and it works, so far, very well! The glass tube is a night mare to take out. Now in search of 1 eurocent coins as we never had those in the Netherlands. A US dime or perhaps some other copper (plated) smaller coins will do the trick as the mid-point stopper and solder catcher. I've now squeezed in from an previous de-soldering equipment (Philips rebranded SEM/FTM technologies). The JBC I did not try yet. Only connected it, played with the super fast heat and sleep mode. And of course updated the software. Very happy so far with these purchases and will definitely try out some other active tips for the JBC from other sources (.... express). Should I post pictures?

[gamalot]

A cheap preheater.

[McBryce]

One of these: Asus 31.5in TFT Monitor, because I was fed up of people telling me how old, dated and small my current monitor looks.

McBryce.

[Vgkid]

What is the value of the resistor you are trying to measure?

About 120R, ±20% ish.

I can measure that easily...
[/quote]

Oh, I'm not sure, I bet you can't measure to ±20% quite as accurately as I can.......
[/quote]
yeah , at worst my Simpson260 is a few percent accurate , everything else is much lower...

[beanflying]

The cheapest nastiest clamp meter I could find on evilbay (allegedly an Australian seller) Way under $10usd and in what I think appropriately LEMON yellow. Will the smoke come out?? Super secret squirrel project for its innards.

[McBryce]

After weighing up the performance vs. price, I decided to get one of these (HTi HT-18 220x160 thermal imaging camera) rather than a secondhand Flir. Hasn't arrived yet, but hopefully it will arrive before/during the Christmas break so I have some time to explore it. I've seen all the hacking options, but I intend to leave this in its original state. If I like it enough, I may get a second one for a hack project. I still have a Lepton sensor from a Flir One here that I never got around messing with.

McBryce.

The camera arrived today and I'm duly impressed. I can highly recommend this to anyone looking to add a Thermal camera to their TEA affliction required test equipment collection.

McBryce.

[Messtechniker]

I can highly recommend this to anyone looking to add a Thermal camera to their TEA affliction required test equipment collection.

McBryce.

A few pics from a working pcb. (motherboard perhaps?) would be nice.

Planning to go the same Ht-18 route.

[McBryce]

I can highly recommend this to anyone looking to add a Thermal camera to their TEA affliction required test equipment collection.

McBryce.

A few pics from a working pcb. (motherboard perhaps?) would be nice.

Planning to go the same Ht-18 route.

A few quick random ones....

The first one is an Arduino Uno R3 taken from approx 15cm. The second one is my new monitor (Asus VA327H) taken from 1.5m. Both taken with the least amount of real video mixed in.
Maybe we need to start a proper thread for the HT-18 (if there isn't one already).

McBryce.

Edit: One more, Arduino with more video blended in...

[Mr. Scram]

Is it a bit noisy or is that just that specific palette mode? I know some appear a lot noisier than others.

[McBryce]

It's definitely noisier when you go below the recommended focal distance (500mm), but at distances that it can focus I'd put it above Seek and around the same as Flir, however, I suspect Flir do some pre-processing trickery before sending it to the screen. And... A Flir (even with lower resolution) will cost a lot more than the €299 that the HT-18 costs.

Bryce.

[Mr. Scram]

It's definitely noisier when you go below the recommended focal distance (500mm), but at distances that it can focus I'd put it above Seek and around the same as Flir, however, I suspect Flir do some pre-processing trickery before sending it to the screen. And... A Flir (even with lower resolution) will cost a lot more than the €299 that the HT-18 costs.

Bryce.

Yes, I remember thinking to myself that the Seek appears to be rather noisy in the images I've seen.

[Cubdriver]

I can highly recommend this to anyone looking to add a Thermal camera to their TEA affliction required test equipment collection.

McBryce.

A few pics from a working pcb. (motherboard perhaps?) would be nice.

Planning to go the same Ht-18 route.

They can be very handy.  This is a photo of a bad cap on a Fluke calibrator - the camera showed what was amiss almost immediately.



-Pat

<edit to add - camera is a Flir One on an iPhone.>

[McBryce]

Looks like there's a thread for the HT-18 here: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/chinese-ht-18-220x160-8-hz-handheld-thermal-camera/msg2073172/#msg2073172

I'll post more pictures there for anyone who's interested.

McBryce.

[tautech]

A few days ago while looking for domestic stuff a a Perth Bunnings outlet, saw this screwdriver set that looks the ‘bees knees’ for those little odd jobs that need obscure drivers....now I’ve got a set with them all in one package. 
For just 20 bucks I couldn’t resist.
https://www.bunnings.com.au/trojan-60-piece-screwdriver-set_p0057163

[Terry01]

A few days ago while looking for domestic stuff a a Perth Bunnings outlet, saw this screwdriver set that looks the ‘bees knees’ for those little odd jobs that need obscure drivers....now I’ve got a set with them all in one package. 
For just 20 bucks I couldn’t resist.
I’ll add a better pic later.

https://www.bunnings.com.au/trojan-60-piece-screwdriver-set_p0057163

For 20 sheets that's a nice little set!