Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[bitseeker]

You can say that again. It's grown by leaps and bounds. Soon to be #3 thread after only a year.

In other news, after multiple strike-outs thanks to over-zealous bidders, I finally won something. An unknown-condition Keithley 614 electrometer. Wee!

The only problem is a dual-lug Triax cable costs more than my 614 and 220 combined.

[Cubdriver]

200 pages of TEA, 200 pages of madness lunacy and giving booze to alcoholics or in this instance test equipment to test equipment addicts.

Perhaps somewhat significant over 100 pages of my own involvement here.

Hands up who's been here since this madness started ?
 

I've been around for a bit - but I must question my commitment.  Either that, or there is an exceptionally high participation rate from everyone else......

I just checked up on new posts and it took me to page 167.  Then I saw it was up to page 200.   

Get on the stick, Brumby!!   

Slacker...   

 

After successfully resisting the siren call of the 'bay for a few days at least, I fell off the wagon last night and currently have (all 'for parts or repair') an HP 6255A dual power supply, a Data Precision 1450 DMM, and an HP 432C Power Meter (for which I will now need to find a sensor...    ) on order.

And I just checked back - I've been in on the madness pretty much from the beginning of this thread.  Doesn't seem possible that it hasn't even been a year, though.  Yike!   

-Pat

[beanflying]

Test equipment failure during roasting coffee 

Superglue and a squirt of kicker on the diplaced IR LED !@@#$ing /^/@@! Much hotter and I am cracking a beer!


Calmer now  opened and working properly 

[mnementh]

Further investigation of the counter looks like it will be very difficult to provide some lighting to the screen, especially using LED tape as you did. I tried it last night by laying a stretch of the tape across the top of the gap between the front plate and the pcb and the LCD screen is very close to this edge, effect on the screen, nil but plenty of light spill to edges of the bezel.

Unlike your RC module, the counter does not have a secondary window, the LCD is stepped so it fits into the bezel and finishes almost flush with the front panel. This leaves the thinnest of open glass edges to capture the light and channel it through the LCD panel itself. Also when I presented the section of LEDs to the screen in the region of the counting section of the PCB, the counter sprung into life and started counting. This shows that area is very sensitive to spurious signals but that might have been because the LEDs were powered from a wall wart, maybe better smoothing would prevent it. Total gap between front plate and the PCB is 4mm so there is not a lot of space to play with either.

Hmmm... if you were powering the light from an RGB controller, multiple PWM channels would certainly generate some noise the counter could pick up.

It sucks that this display is flush/recessed mount; sounds like your only other option would be to make a diffuser from scratch to go behind the LCD, and this would only work if is is NOT one of those with an opaque reflector. Most are at least somewhat translucent, though.

What are the dimensions of the LCD, and how much gap is there between it and the PCB behind it? I may know of something ready-made that could be cut to fit.


mnem
I'm all out of "pithy" right now.

The size of the LCD is about 103.5mm by 30mm and the space between it and the pcb is 3mm. There are a couple of holes in the pcb directly behind the display and I have shone a light through and it does light up part of the display very dimly and looks milky.

Dang... There were a couple vendors on Aliex with letter-sized sheets of perspex that had been etched as a backlight/diffuser some while back; guess this wasn't a popular product.

I'd suggest one of the LED backlight kits made for the Turnigy 9X RC transmitter; but the active portion of that is 80mm x 40mm. They ARE 3mm thick though, and pretty cheap. You MIGHT be able to butt 2 of them against each other to get the length you need; I've never tried.

You CAN make your own diffuser; all you need to do is cut a piece of clear acrylic to size, then circularly wet buff one side with 1200 grit emery paper until the surface is uniformly hazy. Wrap the back and edges with film cut from a silver mylar balloon and Bob's your Auntie. To get even dispersal of the LED light with end-lighting, make one end about 4-6mm extra-long, then use the round edge of a soldering iron tip to make a roughly hemispherical proportioned D-shaped indentation(s) in that edge for the LED(s) to set into. Pick the flash off that you create with the iron and then proceed to buff, wrap with mylar, etc.

Good luck!

It's good to know someone around here is normal.

I think we all got the Abby Normal brain! 

Abby Normal was my prom date.


mnem
"It's okay sweetie... we'll name the children after all the dead stars."

[HalFET]

Missed this glorious moment while I was vast asleep, dreaming about an HP 3458A as we all do. Can we get to 300 tomorrow for those of us that missed it?

[neo]

We can certainly try.

[Cubdriver]

Missed this glorious moment while I was vast asleep, dreaming about an HP 3458A as we all do. Can we get to 300 tomorrow for those of us that missed it?

We can certainly try.

We can, though I fear that unless we start posting replies one word per post (Burma Shave style), that will be a very tall order...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave

-Pat

[bd139]

Quality not quantity

[tautech]

Missed this glorious moment while I was vast asleep, dreaming about an HP 3458A as we all do. Can we get to 300 tomorrow for those of us that missed it?

We can certainly try.

We can, though I fear that unless we start posting replies one word per post (Burma Shave style), that will be a very tall order...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave

-Pat

The (hidden) one cruised in today for a sip of TEA, that's if anyone noticed, and he'd not be amused with one word replies to get the pages ticking over.

Now where's that LOCK. 

[URI]

Missed this glorious moment while I was vast asleep, dreaming about an HP 3458A as we all do. Can we get to 300 tomorrow for those of us that missed it?

We can certainly try.

We can, though I fear that unless we start posting replies one word per post (Burma Shave style), that will be a very tall order...

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burma-Shave

-Pat

Cool! 

Quality not quantity

Ok,

[URI]

let's

[URI]

go

[beanflying]

seems

[URI]

for 300 pages now!   

Not really, it's a pain waiting 60 seconds before being able to post the next word..      

[beanflying]

pointless

[beanflying]

Time to write a macro. One post every 61 seconds is 1400+ in 24 hours 

[Specmaster]

Whats this 60 seconds or more between posts then all about, I doubt that I can type that quick but I often get a message telling to retry later because my IP address has already posted less then 60 seconds ago etc etc.

[bd139]

Rate limiting. Some spammers like to sign up then flood forums with posts which makes it difficult for the moderators to clear up. They also use multiple accounts so they restrict based on IP address.

[Cerebus]

Whats this 60 seconds or more between posts then all about,

A crude, ineffective rate limit for spam. Crude because it really ought to be rate adaptive. Ineffective because, as someone calculated above, it limits you to a mere 1400+ messages a day - that's a lot of spam.

[bd139]

It’s actually surprisingly effective. It’s quite easy to kill the accounts and posts if you’re receiving one a minute and it puts a load ceiling on spammers as well. The whole point is more that it stops the spam from swamping normal forum activity keeping the signal to noise ratio high, at least long enough for moderators to halt it.

Without active moderation it is useless though.

[beanflying]

The anti spam measures available for SMF are fairly powerful. For a primarily Australian forum I used to look after we blocked China and Russia from being able to see it for a start. Can't be done here for obvious reasons 

On sign up sending an email with a confirmation code got most of the auto spammers and placing newbies on a 1st post moderation got most of the rest 

[tggzzz]

The resistor decade box is definitely top shelf though, scientific grade in good condition and also dead on accurate. It has proven invaluable with all the questionable multimeters i buy.

I only have a couple of decent resistors (and several very acceptable ones). I do my voltmeter testing with a 7 decade KVD like this: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/metrology/teardownjulie_reasearch_labs_vdr1067_vdr307_kelvin_varley_voltage_divider/

It will never be "top shelf" though. Getting it onto the bench is dangerous enough!

[neo]

The resistor decade box is definitely top shelf though, scientific grade in good condition and also dead on accurate. It has proven invaluable with all the questionable multimeters i buy.

I only have a couple of decent resistors (and several very acceptable ones). I do my voltmeter testing with a 7 decade KVD like this: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/metrology/teardownjulie_reasearch_labs_vdr1067_vdr307_kelvin_varley_voltage_divider/

It will never be "top shelf" though. Getting it onto the bench is dangerous enough!

The first fundamental rule of TEA, there will always be better. The second fundamental rule of TEA, the top shelf is not the limit, in either storage or quality.

I think it's top shelf now but if i were to get a meteorological grade decade box of any decade it would become a lot less usefull in comparison 

[Specmaster]

The resistor decade box is definitely top shelf though, scientific grade in good condition and also dead on accurate. It has proven invaluable with all the questionable multimeters i buy.

I only have a couple of decent resistors (and several very acceptable ones). I do my voltmeter testing with a 7 decade KVD like this: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/metrology/teardownjulie_reasearch_labs_vdr1067_vdr307_kelvin_varley_voltage_divider/

It will never be "top shelf" though. Getting it onto the bench is dangerous enough!

The first fundamental rule of TEA, there will always be better. The second fundamental rule of TEA, the top shelf is not the limit, in either storage or quality.

I think it's top shelf now but if i were to get a meteorological grade decade box of any decade it would become a lot less usefull in comparison 

Of course it's never fully top shelf until you have the best makes and the latest models. But in reality it's subjective, someone with cheapo, often free Harbour Freight meter would kill for those you own [emoji23]

[neo]

The resistor decade box is definitely top shelf though, scientific grade in good condition and also dead on accurate. It has proven invaluable with all the questionable multimeters i buy.

I only have a couple of decent resistors (and several very acceptable ones). I do my voltmeter testing with a 7 decade KVD like this: https://www.eevblog.com/forum/metrology/teardownjulie_reasearch_labs_vdr1067_vdr307_kelvin_varley_voltage_divider/

It will never be "top shelf" though. Getting it onto the bench is dangerous enough!

The first fundamental rule of TEA, there will always be better. The second fundamental rule of TEA, the top shelf is not the limit, in either storage or quality.

I think it's top shelf now but if i were to get a meteorological grade decade box of any decade it would become a lot less usefull in comparison 

Of course it's never fully top shelf until you have the best makes and the latest models. But in reality it's subjective, someone with cheapo, often free Harbour Freight meter would kill for those you own [emoji23]

A year ago i was that guy with hazard fraught multimeter 

Traumatized me so much i went completely overboard on quality.