Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mansaxel]

Been taking a break to do something completely different today. Bought a Garmin eTrex 10, an absolute ass end GPS unit. This is because it turns out Openstreetmap actually has some mistakes on it locally. So being a good open source contributor I'm correcting them. Turns out this is quite good fun.

Largely, though, OpenStreetmap is impressive. There's a navigator app for Android that's based on them . Key points are that it is free, the maps are downloaded onto the unit, and therefore it only requires satellite visibility and power to tell you where to go. If you want to, you can augment its search via Google, but that is not necessary.  I've driven all over western Europe using only it as map. It works really well. Map updates are reasonably frequent, and free.

[bitseeker]

Spilling the beans......

After some unexpected PM's from our OP doing his due diligence on certain products it seems he has weakened and come to our side  however I'll let him do the show and tell when he gets his 2nd hand acquisition. 

Yer gonna get folks worked up, Rob.

Reportedly arriving next week...

[bitseeker]

40% of new list for a used EDUX1002 'scope without a picture of the actual 'scope? I think I'll pass...

I asked the seller and it’s with original probes as new condition. Low risk but it’s not a great scope. If it was an 1102A I’d be on it like a seagull on chips.

Of course you don’t know if they’ve lost all the probe hardware or ship it in a cereal box with tape around it…

I attempted to snipe a DSOX2104A recently. It was still under warranty, too. Alas, a flipper was more bid happy and beat me a couple seconds later. C'est la vie.

[bitseeker]

Tempting ...
Agilent 34401A for 350 Euro

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/agilent-keysight-34401a-digitalmultimeter/1815203242-168-9250

Indeed. Must. Resist. Already. Got. Four. Of. Them.

That's how it usually goes. And then there were five.

[bitseeker]

I had another round of polishing on the Extech screen today and the same marks can still be seen under the right conditions, but the finished result is so much better now and is fully usable as it is.

The marks can generally only be seen if the light catches the screen at just the right angle, and I'm a little concerned, like AVGresponding that if I keep going to take out very deep scratches that it'll leave the screen so weak that it might be prone to cracking if pressure is placed upon it.

I might buy another tin of Brasso and have another quick go at it, but I'm terrified of taking it that stage to far and risk ruining this beast of a meter.

Now this is looking good! Previously, the lens still had a bit of haze. You've got it now.

[bitseeker]

When a fail becomes a win.

Yesterday I showed the results of my attempt to clean the front panel of the Heath V-5 VTVM and the resulting fading of the graphics. I noticed today that the paint was now peeling and failing so I had to do something. Clear coat to the rescue. 2 quick coats. And it restored the contrast on the graphics. Double win.   

Clear coat restores contrast? That's interesting. I'll have to remember that trick.

[Robert763]

There is a lot of work going on looking at running the big marine diesels on ammonia. Big issue is getting a green source of ammonia.

[mnementh]

I've just pulled the trigger on an HP 53132A 225MHz Universal Counter that ought to cost me about £400 in total by the time I've paid VAT and clearance fees (It's coming from the US, I've just coughed up $448USD plus change). It hasn't got any of the fancy OCXO options but I'm not exactly short of OCXOs at the moment and the design of a board to substitute for the HP OCXO board isn't too onerous - there are already some designs out there.

Not as cheap-skate as I'd have liked (Keep quiet you lot in the back row seats) but most of them seem to go for more, a lot more if they've got any of the fancier timebase options - £600+ without fancy, £1000+ with, £1200 or more if they've got the 3GHz input as well (another relatively trivial add-on to make if I later find I need it). So I'm not feeling that I've let the side down too much.

Much through I love my TTI TF930 it is at heart a frequency counter, not a universal counter/timer and while doing the OCXO/GPSDO messing about I've found the lack of any decent time measurement facility has slowed me down a bit (no pun intended). The 53132A will do time measurements with 150ps resolution down to as low as 5ns and up to 100,000s. With that I can use the 53132A as an external instrument to qualify and characterise my GPSDO design rather than "marking my own homework" as I have been so far.

My difficulty has been not having had anything that can measure 1.000 000 000 seconds and be accurate on those last few digits representing nanoseconds to measure the phase error of my locally generated 1 PPS output. The TF930s resolution on that kind of measurement comes in at 20ns resolution for a 1 second aperture, 2ns for a 10 second aperture or 200ps for a 100 second aperture. The 53132A will better the TF930s 100 seconds best on a 1 second aperture and unlike the TF930 won't hide any errors in the 1 PPS signal by averaging it. The same story applies to the frequency realm, with the old TF930 having to do a lot of averaging to get enough resolution to allow me to get into the real nitty gritty.

Looks like my grip on the rim of this rabbit hole has got less firm. I'll see you all at the bottom.

Oh look, there seems to be some kind of sage looking Shifu rabbit down there. I wonder if he can tell me the exact time?

So.... that'll put the count at two universes then...?

mnem
That is, beyond a reasonable uncertainty factor...?

[bd139]

Been taking a break to do something completely different today. Bought a Garmin eTrex 10, an absolute ass end GPS unit. This is because it turns out Openstreetmap actually has some mistakes on it locally. So being a good open source contributor I'm correcting them. Turns out this is quite good fun.

Largely, though, OpenStreetmap is impressive. There's a navigator app for Android that's based on them . Key points are that it is free, the maps are downloaded onto the unit, and therefore it only requires satellite visibility and power to tell you where to go. If you want to, you can augment its search via Google, but that is not necessary.  I've driven all over western Europe using only it as map. It works really well. Map updates are reasonably frequent, and free.

Oh yes extremely impressive. I’m literally fixing corner cases on the mapping and local knowledge which is something that OS don’t even have.

I’m using Apple maps for road navigation here mostly due to the fact that it’s already there and works very well these days. Startlingly good in iOS 15 I understand too. OSM is mostly for walking and hiking. I was using a paid OS Maps subscription for their leisure maps but I’ve found several errors on it and OS aren’t actually actively updating or versioning their maps properly these days. For example the latest OS map sheet I was using was printed in 2011 and even the online mapping doesn’t cover a major cliff collapse and loss of an entire walking route whereas OSM was updated two days after it happened. The OS issue caused a 4km detour which was pleasant but irritating as I needed more food with me 

[tautech]

Spilling the beans......

After some unexpected PM's from our OP doing his due diligence on certain products it seems he has weakened and come to our side  however I'll let him do the show and tell when he gets his 2nd hand acquisition. 

Yer gonna get folks worked up, Rob.

Reportedly arriving next week...

Folks ? 
It's me that gets worked up and after all these years of supplying equipment the thrill of new or new to you stuff never dies.
Must be just some warped trait I inherited from pop from when he did SW radio in his teens before I was even a twinkle in his eye.

Once TEA bites you are lost to it forever which is the reason I hang out here to watch all the goodies that get acquired.
Enjoy that new to you Siglent ******** when it arrives Peter. 

[Saskia]

Tempting ...
Agilent 34401A for 350 Euro

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/agilent-keysight-34401a-digitalmultimeter/1815203242-168-9250

Indeed. Must. Resist. Already. Got. Four. Of. Them.

This is not the DMM you are looking for.
Move on ...

Got no 34401 ... *sigh*

[capt bullshot]

Tempting ...
Agilent 34401A for 350 Euro

https://www.ebay-kleinanzeigen.de/s-anzeige/agilent-keysight-34401a-digitalmultimeter/1815203242-168-9250

Indeed. Must. Resist. Already. Got. Four. Of. Them.

This is not the DMM you are looking for.
Move on ...

Got no 34401 ... *sigh*

If you want one, buy it right now. I'm quite confident it's a good one at a good price tag, and I'm still resisting. Don't have a free space in my shelves for it, and setting it aside would be rather pointless. These things are my daily drivers in the lab.

[Saskia]

TBH I would be tempted, but I really don't need it ...

*sigh*
Sent him a mail about preferred payment while still living thru a shitshow ...

[med6753]

I wake up this morning and find this.  Now you can mock me all you want but this is just playing dirty.  This is like waving a red cape in front of a bull. Or a tied up Ulysses hearing the call of the sirens and nearly going mad. Or the time the batshit redhead creeped into my place and I found her stretched out in her birthday suit on my bed beckoning me to join her. 

What can I do? Must resist. (But not the redhead. I was weak.  ). With all my will power I removed the sign, ripped it up, and binned it. And now I'm going back to bed and pretend it never happen.

I need help. 

         

[Specmaster]

Diesel is nasty shit. Needs to go.

 
The whole world moves on diesel so it's not going anywhere soon.

Some countries are certainly controlling its urban use while newer technology diesels come online just as they are controlling imports of any new diesel powered equipment to help reduce emissions.

Indeed it does. Interested to see how the next few decades play out on this front.

Yep its certainly true, my world moves on diesel  . I think you nailed it there, there will have to some major leaps taking place before they can seriously consider banning ICE transport. What are they going to do with all the world's ships then?

Most very large ships (tankers, cargo ships, bulkers, ROROs, etc.) run on bunker oil. This is the stuff that is one step (in fractional distillation) above asphalt. It must be heated in order to be fluid enough to be pumped. The engines are mostly supercharged two-stroke diesels (ignition is initiated by compression, not a spark plug). There has been a small amount of movement towards running ships on CNG. There has been a tiny amount of interest in using wind power to augment the ICE engines. One of the problems is that many big ships are leased and the owners don't give a flip about green power or fuel mileage, as those costs are borne by the lessees. Being as the cost of leasing a ship has more than doubled recently, there is even less incentive now. Perhaps when shipping cools down a bit in a few years there will be more progress in that direction.

EDIT: Ships have long lives, much longer than most passenger cars. Obviously, battery-powered ships is science fiction. I suspect that it will be decades before we see even 5% of ships powered by anything other than bunker oil.

True and that bunker oil is stuffed ful with loads of nasty contaminates which give some nasty fumes into the atmosphere and our stupid Brexit forcing us to seek trade deals with nations so far away just adds even more pollution to the world 

[tggzzz]

There is a lot of work going on looking at running the big marine diesels on ammonia. Big issue is getting a green source of ammonia.

And, if there's a leak, finding a way of stopping the ship after the ammonia has disabled/killed all the crew through inhalation

[bd139]

There is a lot of work going on looking at running the big marine diesels on ammonia. Big issue is getting a green source of ammonia.

And, if there's a leak, finding a way of stopping the ship after the ammonia has disabled/killed all the crew through inhalation

Ship will sail itself to port quite happily and then someone else can get a shovel 

[Specmaster]

Been taking a break to do something completely different today. Bought a Garmin eTrex 10, an absolute ass end GPS unit. This is because it turns out Openstreetmap actually has some mistakes on it locally. So being a good open source contributor I'm correcting them. Turns out this is quite good fun.

Largely, though, OpenStreetmap is impressive. There's a navigator app for Android that's based on them . Key points are that it is free, the maps are downloaded onto the unit, and therefore it only requires satellite visibility and power to tell you where to go. If you want to, you can augment its search via Google, but that is not necessary.  I've driven all over western Europe using only it as map. It works really well. Map updates are reasonably frequent, and free.

Oh yes extremely impressive. I’m literally fixing corner cases on the mapping and local knowledge which is something that OS don’t even have.

I’m using Apple maps for road navigation here mostly due to the fact that it’s already there and works very well these days. Startlingly good in iOS 15 I understand too. OSM is mostly for walking and hiking. I was using a paid OS Maps subscription for their leisure maps but I’ve found several errors on it and OS aren’t actually actively updating or versioning their maps properly these days. For example the latest OS map sheet I was using was printed in 2011 and even the online mapping doesn’t cover a major cliff collapse and loss of an entire walking route whereas OSM was updated two days after it happened. The OS issue caused a 4km detour which was pleasant but irritating as I needed more food with me 

Haha, that was a bit like driving a EV with almost zero charge left and looking for a charging point then. 

[tggzzz]

There is a lot of work going on looking at running the big marine diesels on ammonia. Big issue is getting a green source of ammonia.

And, if there's a leak, finding a way of stopping the ship after the ammonia has disabled/killed all the crew through inhalation

Ship will sail itself to port quite happily and then someone else can get a shovel 

Getting near the port is relatively easy.

What about the pilot necessary to take account of the tides, windage, and to avoid shifting shoals and sandbanks? Or to compensate for the GPS "displacements" near military installations?

[Saskia]

Mere details. If you want a nitrogen based propellant then just use hydrazine.

[kleiner Rainer]

Been taking a break to do something completely different today. Bought a Garmin eTrex 10, an absolute ass end GPS unit. This is because it turns out Openstreetmap actually has some mistakes on it locally. So being a good open source contributor I'm correcting them. Turns out this is quite good fun.

BD, got an interesting video for you:


sorry, only in german/austrian, but it shows how to replace the internal map with OSM maps of your choice. Size limit is 8MB...

Greetings,

Rainer

[RolandK]

New rule after Brexit: The team which is shooting fewer goals, wins the semi-final.

[bd139]

Been taking a break to do something completely different today. Bought a Garmin eTrex 10, an absolute ass end GPS unit. This is because it turns out Openstreetmap actually has some mistakes on it locally. So being a good open source contributor I'm correcting them. Turns out this is quite good fun.

BD, got an interesting video for you:


sorry, only in german/austrian, but it shows how to replace the internal map with OSM maps of your choice. Size limit is 8MB...

Greetings,

Rainer

Ahha thanks for that - much appreciated! I will definitely have a go at that 

[SilverSolder]

New rule after Brexit: The team which is shooting fewer goals, wins the semi-final.

I thought the game was a good example of European cooperation?   

[med6753]

New rule after Brexit: The team which is shooting fewer goals, wins the semi-final.

OK, for us ignorant and unwashed Yanks across the pond please explain what this is referring to?

I suspect the answer will give me more ammo to tease the Brits.