Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[tautech]

this was my last eBay purchase. wasted $400 becasue I have no idea how to repair it and noone here seems to want to help.

Yeah well resurrect your thread:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/fluke-ti45/

Our resident TI expert Fraser is taking a break from the forum as his health is better but he's sure to drop in from time to time so will notice your plea for assistance at some stage.

[Inverted18650]

this was my last eBay purchase. wasted $400 becasue I have no idea how to repair it and noone here seems to want to help.

Yeah well resurrect your thread:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/thermal-imaging/fluke-ti45/

Our resident TI expert Fraser is taking a break from the forum as his health is better but he's sure to drop in from time to time so will notice your plea for assistance at some stage.

I actually email Frasier as well. No reply. (given your statement I understand why) So, that would be great, but doubtful. I even offered to PAY a forum Pro to do it and got zero replies. I would gladly pay someone $300-$400 to fix it but I am cursed with Thermal gear and no one wants to touch me-- maybe I have the 'cheese touch' or 'coodies'

[bd139]

Some progress with OCXO fun. Sunday morning task - one Kicad footprint. Ugh I hate designing footprints.

[med6753]

As of 0400 hours this is what it looks like outside. Been snowing most of the night. Looks like about 6+ inches. Someone came through with a plow and made one pass. Temp is -7 C and no wind.

Forecast is still calling for high winds and freezing rain with ice. But with a temp of -7 C rain can't happen. We'll have to see what happens after daylight. To me so far this "storm" has been a non-event. It's winter...yep...it snows. Big deal and deal with it. 

Looks very pretty though

Here's what it looks like in the day light. Currently not doing anything but the temp is slowly rising. Up to -3 C now. If it rises further that could cause the snow to change to rain. Forecast says it will reach +1 C before plunging well below zero tonight.

I guess I better go take a shower and be dressed because if the plow shows up I'll have to go out and move the CR-V.

[med6753]

Something more TEA related - a recent thread on the antique radio forum has prompted me to excavate and begin working on the ancient Electro Instruments DVM I got a few years ago.  It was basically wrapped in cardboard for shipment, and several of the stepper relays broke free and were trounced around inside, breaking a couple of wires off.  I wasn't certain where one of them was supposed to go and the manual I was able to get was not a 100% match to the instrument, so it got filed away.  A guy over there has a similar model, and was able to look inside his and confirm my guess as to the connection was correct, so now it's back on the bench getting its filter caps reformed.  I'm not sure if I'll be successful, but I figure it's worth a shot.  The first one (a 40uF-40uf dual section) seems to be coming along nicely, it's up to 300V and the leakage has been steadily dropping and is currently (no pun intended) below a half a mA.  The handbook for the Sprague Tel-Ohmike lists 1.3mA as the leakage limit for a new 40uF, 300V electrolytic, so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed.



-Pat

Is it a Nixie readout or a meter?

[med6753]

Sorry but I have submitted to the bay of Evil and added to their wealth. There was a very tidy 20Meg Analogue scope I didn't need to buy but I did anyway

Component Tester base.

Other uses for 20MHz scopes. Connect them into your audio system and the dancing displays impress visitors (and totally convinces them you are wacko in the head) 

[Cubdriver]

Something more TEA related - a recent thread on the antique radio forum has prompted me to excavate and begin working on the ancient Electro Instruments DVM I got a few years ago.  It was basically wrapped in cardboard for shipment, and several of the stepper relays broke free and were trounced around inside, breaking a couple of wires off.  I wasn't certain where one of them was supposed to go and the manual I was able to get was not a 100% match to the instrument, so it got filed away.  A guy over there has a similar model, and was able to look inside his and confirm my guess as to the connection was correct, so now it's back on the bench getting its filter caps reformed.  I'm not sure if I'll be successful, but I figure it's worth a shot.  The first one (a 40uF-40uf dual section) seems to be coming along nicely, it's up to 300V and the leakage has been steadily dropping and is currently (no pun intended) below a half a mA.  The handbook for the Sprague Tel-Ohmike lists 1.3mA as the leakage limit for a new 40uF, 300V electrolytic, so I'm going to keep my fingers crossed.



-Pat

Is it a Nixie readout or a meter?

Pre-nixie.  Edge lit etched plexiglass or polycarbonate panels driven by stepper relays, like the early Non Linear Systems voltmeters.



-Pat

[Martin.M]

amazing instrument, Pat 
please make it in working condition

[mnementh]

Actually, the "Downloads" folder IS where you're supposed to keep all that crap. It was my generation who started making it a default thing in our builds with the first browsers, and the intent was to keep all those stupid zips and rars with confusing as fuck names from cluttering up your normal folders. As such, the Downloads folder became the first default "Archive" folder in Windows; circa the Win '95/'98 transition.

mnem
If we save the whales, where will we keep them?

Well this boy here goes all the way back to days of DOS and Win3.1 so with the intro of Win95 and the explosion of the net I always considered the download folder as nothing more than a convenient place to find what you "downloaded". Once located you disposition it. In case of zip and rar files unpack them and if it's something you want to keep move it to it's own unique folder. If you don't need it, delete it. And keep the download folder as empty as possible.

Of course you unpack them... you unpack them where you WANT the actual files to be. Then you rename the zip, rar, whatever compressed file to identify the contents of anything you feel a need to archive. Anything else you delete. It's called file management. I guess we just differ in our definitions of "Archive"; I don't call my collections of obscure datasheets and service manuals an archive except in the existential sense.

mnem
And you never know when you're going to need that standalone Netscape installer.

[bd139]

Same here

Downloads\keep -> installers
Documents\books -> books manuals and data sheets

[mnementh]

This is because PayPal split from eBay a while back.

Not sure what the problem is. It’s basically them implementing their own payment processor because a third party one is too expensive.

At this point in time I’d like to see something else replace eBay though but for different reasons (fee gouging) but it’s difficult to get enough velocity behind it

Edit: on the subject of windows 10 I’m not hating 1809 as much as the last one. It mostly works

Because with PayPal, you have a third option; let them fight it out with eBay. And they're worth more than eBay now, so they win. They just went with a smaller company out of the Netherlands so they could push the customer around.

They have this dream of somehow becoming Amazon. The problem with that is that while slAmazon has spent its entire existence building a reputation for 1st-Class customer service, fleaBay has spent their entire existence building a rep for being a cesspool.

mnem
*Poke-time!*

[bd139]

They did that with Shutl here in the UK which are a middle man for couriers and a fully owned subsidiary.

Watch what happens when the EU starts kicking their butts. Not that we will be benefiting from it.

As for eBays reputation, yep. They will die. It’s 90% a store front for shit that comes from Alibaba anyway.

[Carl_Smith]

I found Win10 to be "OK" except for Networking. It is extremely fussy and you practically have to beat it senseless to talk to the Win7 machines on my network. But the Win7 machines gladly find it and connect. It refuses to connect to one of the Win7 machines but that Win7 machine connects fine to it's printer. Go figure. The other 2 Win7 machines it has no issues with and connects. 

Geez, don't get me started on file sharing with Windows 10.  Just try and get a Win 10 machine to share a folder with a linux machine.  I made it work once after an hour of playing around and googling things but I haven't been able to figure out how to do it again.  I set a folder to be shared with "everyone" and it looks like the settings are right but a linux machine just gives some sort of error I don't remember at the moment.

If you cave in to the Microsoft way and link your login on all your Win 10 machines to a Microsoft online account (I can hear mnem yelling already) then  you will be able to access any files in your user folder on any machine on which you have that account because Win 10 recognizes your MS account on each machine and makes your whole user folder accessable.  If you set other folders as shared they will work as well.

But I have a Raspberry Pi loaded up with OSMC and connected to a spare monitor, mainly used to just watch YouTube.  But I wanted to share a folder on my Win 10 desktop to the Pi with OSMC and play video files from that folder and I never did figure out how to get that working.   

[bd139]

That’s why I use winscp and SSH between windows and Linux. When in Rome do as Romans do. Or get crucified.

[Martin.M]

I found a place to insert the 141s, at the radio bench 

[bd139]

Looking good 

Do you have a spare room I can rent? 

[Kosmic]

I received the BG7TBL "Low Frequency Converter" last week and finally had the time to play with it this weekend. The device come with all the accessories needed to connect it to your Spectrum Analyzer (cables, connectors).



I decided to take a look under the hood first. The design is straightforward. A mixer is used to upconvert the low frequency signal with the help of the 10Mhz provided. So on your spectrum analyzer 0Hz is now sitting at 10Mhz, 1KHz at 10.001Mhz and so on. 10Mhz input and output are both filtered and amplified.




I did some tests at really low frequency (under 1Khz) and it was working pretty well. I monitored the noise floor of my spectrum analyzer and I could not see any difference with the upcoverter connected or not. So noise seem to be under control.

100hz 112.4mV p-p (-15dBm)


500hz 112.4mV p-p (-15dBm)

[Specmaster]

I'm wondering if anyone uses AF and RF probes to troubleshoot electronics at all and if so what do they use and what has been their experience?

I came across this video from Mr Carlson's Lab and thought to myself that I could use one of these but the problem is it's a build from scratch job using SMD parts and custom made PCBs which kind of scares me. I've never made anything using SMD parts but that would be my first build, but, making of the PCB is what's really worrying me and I'm wondering if there is not an alternative way?

I first saw this video a couple of years ago and since then I have been looking out for either an affordable commercially made probe or a suitable probe shell such as the old Heathkit RF probe that they used to market with their VVTM's but have drawn a blank on aspects so far.

That said however, this tool keeps gnawing away at me to the point that I really now feel that I really want one. Any ideas or help would be gratefully received. 

[Kosmic]

Bought one of those a while ago https://www.ebay.ca/itm/RF-Active-Probe-0-1-1500-MHz-1-5-GHz-analyzer-oscilloscope/332253695460?hash=item4d5bdd0de4:g:CzsAAOSwWlNZzA4E&redirect=mobile

Still in the box it was received 

I need to find a proper metal enclosure before I try it out. I'm thinking of simply trying a piece of copper pipe.

[Specmaster]

Yes, I looked at getting one of those myself, but as far as I'm concerned they have a few things wrong with them,
1) They are purely RF only.
2) I require the probe to work with audio circuits mainly.
3) They require a contact to be made.
4) They still require a suitable probe shell.
5) They need an oscilloscope.
6) I like the idea of the probe being connected to a speaker as in the video, means I don't have to look away to see the results.

I would be interested to discover how you get on with the Ebay one.

[Kosmic]

This guy made one with through hole components

[0culus]

I'm wondering if anyone uses AF and RF probes to troubleshoot electronics at all and if so what do they use and what has been their experience?

I came across this video from Mr Carlson's Lab and thought to myself that I could use one of these but the problem is it's a build from scratch job using SMD parts and custom made PCBs which kind of scares me. I've never made anything using SMD parts but that would be my first build, but, making of the PCB is what's really worrying me and I'm wondering if there is not an alternative way?

I first saw this video a couple of years ago and since then I have been looking out for either an affordable commercially made probe or a suitable probe shell such as the old Heathkit RF probe that they used to market with their VVTM's but have drawn a blank on aspects so far.

That said however, this tool keeps gnawing away at me to the point that I really now feel that I really want one. Any ideas or help would be gratefully received. 

I want to build one of those too, but my current lab space really doesn't support all the PCB making operations, nor do I have room for SMD soldering equipment. Perhaps when I move and am able to grab more lab space.

[beanflying]

There is Gerber files for the PCB's for the SuperProbe so you could always get them made for you?

Not sure if these are Paul's originals and I didn't go looking but down the bottom https://www.instructables.com/id/Carlsons-Super-Probe/

[Specmaster]

Wow, thanks bean, that could be the answer to the problem. I'll look into that a in a bit more detail maybe tomorrow. I think that the probe is such a useful tool, going by Pauls video, it should reduce the time spent of some repairs as it will if used correctly, ensure that the correct faulty area is identified and thus by process of elimination lead me straight to the faulty part 

[bitseeker]

Something more TEA related - a recent thread on the antique radio forum has prompted me to excavate and begin working on the ancient Electro Instruments DVM I got a few years ago.

...

Is it a Nixie readout or a meter?

Pre-nixie.  Edge lit etched plexiglass or polycarbonate panels driven by stepper relays, like the early Non Linear Systems voltmeters.

Looks like a predecessor of the modern Lixie (LED Nixie) display.