Hioki LCR 3532-50

[Martin72]

EDIT: Title changed.

Hi,

I have this beautiful unit, a thread about it can be found in the repair section, and I am looking for these documents.
I just can not imagine that really no one but Hioki himself has these documents.
And Hioki consistently gives nothing out.
Repaired I have the LCR meter already in the sense of the main problem solved.
However, the display and especially the touch panel are damaged due to age.
The latter I had bought "new" on ebay, for expensive money from China.
Unfortunately, it was probably just as old, the contacts have dissolved after several plug cycles.
The display itself is also offered and also very expensive, around the 300€...
This is all too much for me, even if you get an excellent measuring device with frequencies up to 5Mhz afterwards.
Therefore, the idea of giving the device a new display with touch input becomes more appealing to me.
But I would need at least the schematic of the controller board.
Therefore the question for the documents - It does not even have to be the 5Mhz variant, because it is about the HMI, which should be the same for all models from the series.

[Martin72]

Hi,
Next week I have a few days off after the holidays and mainly I want to take care of the Hioki, the problems have remained and I don't see the point in spending money again and buying a touchpanel in unknown condition from the China man for almost 200€, not to mention the display.
What's more, the yellowed front panel, which I had managed to get halfway bright after some painstaking work, is as yellowed as before.
So the tasks are as follows.
- New input system
- New front panel
Regarding display/touch panel:
The original system consists of a touch panel with resistive pressure points, which is mounted in front of the LCD display.
The LCD display itself is a monochrome 320x240 in 5.3" size.
Without a schematic it will be very difficult, what I found out is that the display itself is "raw", it expects data in 4-bit parallel format.
This is provided by the Epson chip on the controller board.
This in turn gets its data from the µC, which also processes the input from the touch panel.
It will be very hard to emulate the previous input/output system with today's touch displays.
But my Hioki has a built-in RS232 interface.
Maybe I can "hang on" to it with a new touch display.
The software for reading/inputting from the interface can still be downloaded from Hioki, I'll have a look at it in a few days, I had to buy an adapter first.
Why do I want to go to all this trouble?
Because a comparable device today easily costs €5000 and because I want to work through a "trauma".

[coromonadalix]

only solutionsfor stand alone ...  or unless you convert it to a windows driven machine ?

as you wrote
reverse engineer the protocol / data bus between the mcu side to the lcr side,  you could mimick  touch and controls with other platform  ... BUT you may or would need to imlement all the calculations ...

OR

get some hmi interface with serial port and build your visual interface to send commands / receive values ...  many brands and companies, some have "easy to do" tools, protocols / commands / examples etc ...

you have some Nextion, some arduino compatible  .... lots of choices

in the end you have an head controller and the measurement unit   like Chroma lcr's who goes to 5 - 10 Mhz ...

but in the end  no easy solutions

personally i would try  HMI  route


pc software

https://www.hioki.com/global/support/download/software/versionup/detail/id_159   
lcr403e.zip 

[coromonadalix]

or  try some tablet pc ?  touch screen at 10 "   ??

usb to serial ....  bam    it works   loll

started the pc software on win 11 x64      but since no lcr on com port  ... it closes

[Martin72]

If I get full control and same displaying via the software it won´t bother me to do it this way.
Let´s see in a few days.

[coromonadalix]

want to see that ...   

[Martin72]

Just tried it out - and it worked straight away, I wouldn't have expected it.
Instead of using an adapter, I configured the RS232 cable myself - the 25-pin connector looks so bulky because all 25 pins are screwable instead of having to be soldered.
One of my notebooks has the special feature that although it is still relatively young (i5 cpu), it has a "real" COM port.
Then I installed the software and just let it run - Tadaa, it works.



The test object is a 470nF film capacitor.
Unfortunately, the program only allows 4 parameters at the same time.
Then I played with the graph function, in this function I "only" get up to 1Mhz test frequency, but I was also just playing, I'll really get to grips with it in the days to come.
Tomorrow I'll try to convert the generated CSV files into a graphic, I may have done something like that once at work...
But no matter:
It works, that's the realization for today.

[coromonadalix]

glad and sad a bit  for your problems ....  is it the lcr403e  software ?

[Martin72]

is it the lcr403e  software ?

Yes.
I have separated the values from a column and am looking to see how I can make a graph from them.

[coromonadalix]

i think you could sniff out all the communications to some extent  and you could sript in python  ??


here i include some example stuff,  you have even an excel sheet in VBA...

for some lcr models  ... not necessarly yours ...

[KungFuJosh]

is it the lcr403e  software ?

Yes.
I have separated the values from a column and am looking to see how I can make a graph from them.

Create a new Sheet in Excel and name it what you want (I just do Chart).

Go to the new Sheet, and switch to the Insert tab. On the Insert tab, there's lots of options, I usually use a Scatter plot from the Charts box.


That will create an empty box. Right-click the empty box and click "Select Data..." From there you will select your data.

Here's one of mine:


Here's the data it's reading:

[KungFuJosh]

This is kind of interesting. I've got the 3532-50 connected to my computer now. The "Hioki LCR Sample Program" is a little dated, but works and can send graphs to Excel, which is pretty cool. I did the attached sweep, then changed the chart type in Excel, and hid two of the values to reduce the clutter.

[KungFuJosh]

It's a little odd that the app decides what order to put stuff in. 🤷

[KungFuJosh]

When I do the short correction with the 3532-50, everything on the screen is zeroed out while shorted. This seems like a good thing, but it's the only meter I've seen that does this.

Is this normal or is it weird? Should my other meters do this too, or no?

[shabaz]

I'm speculating unfortunately (I've only used a couple of LCR meters, not Hioki), but I think it's expecting the shorting link to be as-close-as zero ohms, and with almost zero inductance, so it will use that as your zero-ohm, zero-reactance calibration at that push-in socket. Since from the photo you're indeed using what looks like a decent short with such properties, then I think with that short calibration (along with the the 'open' calibration) then you're all set, i.e. I believe this would be normal.
 

[KungFuJosh]

Thanks, that's what I speculated too. But the question remains because of the 3 bench LCRs I've used that same fixture with, this is the only one that zeroed out everything. The other meters only zeroed out R and Z.

[KungFuJosh]

Entertaining myself with the LCR software and Excel... The resistor seems stable enough I guess.

[KungFuJosh]

Here's a WIMA 100pF film cap. I had to create the chart from scratch this time. Excel got weird trying to show the phase and Cs values with whatever was generated.

[KungFuJosh]

Well, this is weird. I didn't think the 3532-50 could measure DCR, but the manual claims in can via both the Rs and Rp modes. Of course, it doesn't say how.

Anybody have any idea how to make the 3532-50 measure DCR?

[coromonadalix]

not sure if its a typo error, copy pasted from other lcr manual

many sites talk about esr  not dcr

[tautech]

not sure if its a typo error, copy pasted from other lcr manual

many sites talk about esr  not dcr

ST42 has 2 resistance tests, one is DCR or if you like RDC.....

[KungFuJosh]

not sure if its a typo error, copy pasted from other lcr manual

many sites talk about esr  not dcr

I dunno if it's an error or not, but they wrote it two times. One time also next to ESR in the Rs section. 🤷

[KungFuJosh]

ST42 has 2 resistance tests, one is DCR or if you like RDC.....

Dude, you know that I know that. 

I have many meters that can measure DCR, but this thread isn't about them. 😉

[Martin72]

LCR = ST42, that must be a reflex...

On to the matter at hand:

Tap one of the four parameter icons on the left side of the screen, and the parameter menu should open.

[KungFuJosh]

LCR = ST42, that must be a reflex...

On to the matter at hand:

Tap one of the four parameter icons on the left side of the screen, and the parameter menu should open.

Now I think you're both teasing me. 😉

DCR isn't listed there. They mention it in the manual I posted, implying it was a sub feature of either Rs or Rp. I think it was a lie, but I'm also curious if it's possible or not.