Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Specmaster]

In these times, bd139 needs all the encourage he can get.

No he dosen't, all he needs to know is that his friends are here if he needs a prop to lean on from time to time, as we all do at times, thats all 

[tggzzz]

hahaha. RF = dead. Tek = dead.

The next hole is going to be audio when I'm back on my feet. I've always wanted to build a wasteful space heating power hungry JLH class A audio amplifier and some nice speaker enclosures. That gives me an excuse to buy nice old style HP distortion analyser, oscillators, voltmeter etc 

OK, so the mouthbreathing / drooling go-out-and-buy-it hams aren't good company - scarcely earthshattering!

Did you look at any groups where they had to, at least partially, construct their own equipment? The microwavers, UWB and low power arenas look technically interesting.

As for expecting anything better from audiopools... I think you will be, um, disappointed. Uncomfortably hot frying pans come to mind.

[nixiefreqq]

Today I got my RSGB renewal letter in the post asking for the yearly £56. Have shredded it! 

What did I derive from the last 12 month subscription? A pretty weak and lame defence from commercial attack on 2m, a shit rag with whining about people, advertisements, badly written technical articles, adverts from absolute chancers, wrong propagation predictions, hamfest listings which are out of date and 100 sheets of toilet paper a month.  . There have been people subscribed to it for 50+ years apparently. I'm trying to work out why!? Perhaps it has electrolytes.

yep....just let my arrl subscription lapse after 36 years.  they have been guzzling brawndo in newington for a while. (qst should be called "2m jpole journal")

dit dit

[Wolfgang]

Oh so now you're looking to become the domestic version of the mobile high power boom box of bass then. 

In moderation, yes 

May I suggest a suitable tube for your audio endeavours ?
The heating effect is absolutely top of class. 

Mmmmm xrays as well?

If the voltage of the anode plate is above 15kV: very likely

My suggestion of the GMI2B for audio may sound completely crazy, but thats not true (google for GMI2B audio).
Intended as a radar pulse modulator, the key feature for audio is not the kV of anode voltage, but the 45A peak anode current.
You can run the tube at just a few kV (maybe a little more than 1) and it works fine, if you look at the curves. No XRays there.

... and if this still not enough:

[bd139]

hahaha. RF = dead. Tek = dead.

The next hole is going to be audio when I'm back on my feet. I've always wanted to build a wasteful space heating power hungry JLH class A audio amplifier and some nice speaker enclosures. That gives me an excuse to buy nice old style HP distortion analyser, oscillators, voltmeter etc 

OK, so the mouthbreathing / drooling go-out-and-buy-it hams aren't good company - scarcely earthshattering!

Did you look at any groups where they had to, at least partially, construct their own equipment? The microwavers, UWB and low power arenas look technically interesting.

As for expecting anything better from audiopools... I think you will be, um, disappointed. Uncomfortably hot frying pans come to mind.

Completely. I did look at the self-construction areas and they are either as dead as a dodo, require equipment I don't want to afford, are pretty much cults stuck somewhere in the 1950s or boring as fuck. All the good stuff has also been done already. Perhaps if it was 1970-1990 things might be a little different.

As for audiophoolery, I am disinterested. I am interested in measurable results. Class A amplifiers have always interested me because they are quite frankly insanely inefficient but inside the linear region, pretty damn good. Class D also interests me because of the opposite - extreme power efficiency. And of course both need power supplies which are fun to design and build.

yep....just let my arrl subscription lapse after 36 years.  they have been guzzling brawndo in newington for a while. (qst should be called "2m jpole journal")

Hahaha exactly that. The funny thing really is that you hit the nail on the head.

I think the issue is that the commercial equipment is relatively cheap and pretty excellent. The extreme minimalist side of things was the only thing that was interesting to me really (check tggzzz's signature) but the issue with that is you're an ant playing in a swimming pool of elephants. No one wants to even acknowledge a tiny little feep amongst the background noise when you can score a DX from some Italian with an illegal amp and a beam in two seconds or let the computer do it for you. That plus the extreme impracticality of running dipole antennas in the middle of London 

Really there is no challenge. And without a challenge, what's the point?

A point to note on amateur radio though: I am being commissioned as an assembly line worker to build a QCX+ transceiver still by someone who is unable to do so due to Parkinsons so there will be some construction action which I don't mind. It's therapeutic.

[SilverSolder]

The whole field of electronics is evolving.  DIY now works at a "higher level" in the sense that where in the past it would have been a challenge to put together an audio amp from discrete components that did not self destruct from oscillations...  it was a real challenge at the time, working with the components that were available.   Nowadays, you get excellent results from an amp made from a single IC that is extremely well behaved (e.g. LM3886).   

For many analog electronics projects that would have been a challenge in the past, you now reach for an Arduino (a device that is really a minor miracle when you think about what we had in the 80's or 90's) that costs a few dollars,  you write a few lines of code, and boom - you have something up and working before you know it.

Thinking about the future... what will it be like in another 20-30 years?  -  Chips will most likely be crazy advanced and inexpensive,  mind blowing.

A big part of electronics as a hobby has always been to use electronic components to solve some problem (communicating at a distance, for the ham, or watering a plant, or whatever the engineer found interesting at the time).  That part - using technology to solve a problem -  is where amateurs will always have a part to play, it seems to me.  Solving new problems, or finding new ways of solving old problems, is a creative process that "feels good".

[Wolfgang]

hahaha. RF = dead. Tek = dead.

The next hole is going to be audio when I'm back on my feet. I've always wanted to build a wasteful space heating power hungry JLH class A audio amplifier and some nice speaker enclosures. That gives me an excuse to buy nice old style HP distortion analyser, oscillators, voltmeter etc 

OK, so the mouthbreathing / drooling go-out-and-buy-it hams aren't good company - scarcely earthshattering!

Did you look at any groups where they had to, at least partially, construct their own equipment? The microwavers, UWB and low power arenas look technically interesting.

As for expecting anything better from audiopools... I think you will be, um, disappointed. Uncomfortably hot frying pans come to mind.

Completely. I did look at the self-construction areas and they are either as dead as a dodo, require equipment I don't want to afford, are pretty much cults stuck somewhere in the 1950s or boring as fuck. All the good stuff has also been done already. Perhaps if it was 1970-1990 things might be a little different.

As for audiophoolery, I am disinterested. I am interested in measurable results. Class A amplifiers have always interested me because they are quite frankly insanely inefficient but inside the linear region, pretty damn good. Class D also interests me because of the opposite - extreme power efficiency. And of course both need power supplies which are fun to design and build.

yep....just let my arrl subscription lapse after 36 years.  they have been guzzling brawndo in newington for a while. (qst should be called "2m jpole journal")

Hahaha exactly that. The funny thing really is that you hit the nail on the head.

I think the issue is that the commercial equipment is relatively cheap and pretty excellent. The extreme minimalist side of things was the only thing that was interesting to me really (check tggzzz's signature) but the issue with that is you're an ant playing in a swimming pool of elephants. No one wants to even acknowledge a tiny little feep amongst the background noise when you can score a DX from some Italian with an illegal amp and a beam in two seconds or let the computer do it for you. That plus the extreme impracticality of running dipole antennas in the middle of London 

Really there is no challenge. And without a challenge, what's the point?

A point to note on amateur radio though: I am being commissioned as an assembly line worker to build a QCX+ transceiver still by someone who is unable to do so due to Parkinsons so there will be some construction action which I don't mind. It's therapeutic.

I feel the same about ARRL, RSGB and DARC. OK, but  not my focus. I have no interest in commercial stuff, contests, all-digital automated stuff, ragchewing, ...
I want to *learn* something by designing, building and testing stuff *myself*. This was, but no longer is the main point in ham radio. I left ARRL some years ago, and I still have a lot of other fellow ham friends.

[Wolfgang]

The whole field of electronics is evolving.  DIY now works at a "higher level" in the sense that where in the past it would have been a challenge to put together an audio amp from discrete components that did not self destruct from oscillations...  it was a real challenge at the time, working with the components that were available.   Nowadays, you get excellent results from an amp made from a single IC that is extremely well behaved (e.g. LM3886).   

For many analog electronics projects that would have been a challenge in the past, you now reach for an Arduino (a device that is really a minor miracle when you think about what we had in the 80's or 90's) that costs a few dollars,  you write a few lines of code, and boom - you have something up and working before you know it.

Thinking about the future... what will it be like in another 20-30 years?  -  Chips will most likely be crazy advanced and inexpensive,  mind blowing.

A big part of electronics as a hobby has always been to use electronic components to solve some problem (communicating at a distance, for the ham, or watering a plant, or whatever the engineer found interesting at the time).  That part - using technology to solve a problem -  is where amateurs will always have a part to play, it seems to me.  Solving new problems, or finding new ways of solving old problems, is a creative process that "feels good".

Fully agree. Making equipment that used to be rocket science using standard microcontrollers is fun and opens new possibilities in your lab.
https://electronicprojectsforfun.wordpress.com/homebrew-scpi-controllable-instruments-with-arduino-controllers/

[mnementh]

hahaha. RF = dead. Tek = dead. The next hole is going to be audio when I'm back on my feet. I've always wanted to build a wasteful space heating power hungry JLH class A audio amplifier and some nice speaker enclosures. That gives me an excuse to buy nice old style HP distortion analyser, oscillators, voltmeter etc 

Oh so now you're looking to become the domestic version of the mobile high power boom box of bass then. 

Hey... donchoo be raggin' on them young punks and their boom box cars... they helped me put my wife through college. 

mnem
"...now would it peg the meters
if I blew out your tweeters
with this 12-gauge across my knees..."

[med6753]

Why do you think most of my stuff pre-dates 1990 and in fact much of it has those strange orange glowing globes in them? I understand it, I enjoy working on them, and you can get service documentation. Yea, parts can be a hassle sometimes but that's part of the fun. Almost all of today's equipment you can't get service info. Case in point....the Siglent DMM and DSO. If they break it's pretty much into the bin.

[SilverSolder]

The whole field of electronics is evolving.  DIY now works at a "higher level" in the sense that where in the past it would have been a challenge to put together an audio amp from discrete components that did not self destruct from oscillations...  it was a real challenge at the time, working with the components that were available.   Nowadays, you get excellent results from an amp made from a single IC that is extremely well behaved (e.g. LM3886).   

For many analog electronics projects that would have been a challenge in the past, you now reach for an Arduino (a device that is really a minor miracle when you think about what we had in the 80's or 90's) that costs a few dollars,  you write a few lines of code, and boom - you have something up and working before you know it.

Thinking about the future... what will it be like in another 20-30 years?  -  Chips will most likely be crazy advanced and inexpensive,  mind blowing.

A big part of electronics as a hobby has always been to use electronic components to solve some problem (communicating at a distance, for the ham, or watering a plant, or whatever the engineer found interesting at the time).  That part - using technology to solve a problem -  is where amateurs will always have a part to play, it seems to me.  Solving new problems, or finding new ways of solving old problems, is a creative process that "feels good".

Fully agree. Making equipment that used to be rocket science using standard microcontrollers is fun and opens new possibilities in your lab.
https://electronicprojectsforfun.wordpress.com/homebrew-scpi-controllable-instruments-with-arduino-controllers/

That looks very cool!  -  Do you have to "teach" Visa/Labview etc. the dialect of SCPI that you have implemented in the Arduino? - i.e., how does Labview etc. know how to speak the new commands to it?  (I don't use Labview,  I always just hit GPIB "the hard way" as most of my collection of boat anchors predates even SCPI! )

[bd139]

Why do you think most of my stuff pre-dates 1990 and in fact much of it has those strange orange glowing globes in them? I understand it, I enjoy working on them, and you can get service documentation. Yea, parts can be a hassle sometimes but that's part of the fun. Almost all of today's equipment you can't get service info. Case in point....the Siglent DMM and DSO. If they break it's pretty much into the bin.

No no no no put them on eBay as “untested” 

[tggzzz]

Thinking about the future... what will it be like in another 20-30 years?  -  Chips will most likely be crazy advanced and inexpensive,  mind blowing.

(Ignoring your points that I agree with).

Let's consider the future, as seen from what I was using a while ago...

35-40 years ago	Now
8-bit micros (Z80)	8-bit micros (atmega328)
ADCs, DACs, TTL	ADCs, DACs, TTL
LED/LCD output	LED/LCD output
programmed in C (Whitesmith's)	programmed in C (gcc, others)
crosscompiled under unix on a PDP11	crosscompiled under linux on a PC
breakpoints and singlestepping via a ICE	breakpoints and singlestepping via JTAG

Depressingly little has changed, hasn't it.

When I came back to this area as a hobby, I was horrified at how little I needed to relearn. Yes, things are  "smaller, faster, cheaper", but that was predicted and hence uninteresting.

A few technological points have changed significantly:

• stunning speed/resolution changes in ADCs/DACs
• nanopower circuits and environmentally harvested energy sources
• multiprocessor - but even there the best current technology is the XMOS' version of the early 80's Transputer/Occam - xCORE/xC
• FPGAs having greated capacity than semi-custom CMOS and PALs
• an even smaller proportion of developers understand the implications of hard realtime, and what is necessary to ensure it

[mnementh]

The whole field of electronics is evolving.  DIY now works at a "higher level" in the sense that where in the past it would have been a challenge to put together an audio amp from discrete components that did not self destruct from oscillations...  it was a real challenge at the time, working with the components that were available.   Nowadays, you get excellent results from an amp made from a single IC that is extremely well behaved (e.g. LM3886).   

For many analog electronics projects that would have been a challenge in the past, you now reach for an Arduino (a device that is really a minor miracle when you think about what we had in the 80's or 90's) that costs a few dollars,  you write a few lines of code, and boom - you have something up and working before you know it.

Thinking about the future... what will it be like in another 20-30 years?  -  Chips will most likely be crazy advanced and inexpensive,  mind blowing.

A big part of electronics as a hobby has always been to use electronic components to solve some problem (communicating at a distance, for the ham, or watering a plant, or whatever the engineer found interesting at the time).  That part - using technology to solve a problem -  is where amateurs will always have a part to play, it seems to me.  Solving new problems, or finding new ways of solving old problems, is a creative process that "feels good".

Fully agree. Making equipment that used to be rocket science using standard microcontrollers is fun and opens new possibilities in your lab.
https://electronicprojectsforfun.wordpress.com/homebrew-scpi-controllable-instruments-with-arduino-controllers/

This "technology in its infancy" aspect and the huge impact that people literally working from their bedrooms have made has been what keeps me involved with my little whirry flying things for the last decade or so; we've come a long way since the days of ArduPilot running on 8-bit Atmegas with a MPU-6000 & MS-5611 on a shield.

Last I checked, the really fast acro boards (FPV/Real-time piloting; NOT autonomous flight) were running dual STMf7xxx (one to run the nested PID loops for attitude control and one for noise filtering of the signal from the accelerometer/gyro)  and combined high-frequency PWM or high-speed serial to 4 ESCs, each running STM32F3xxx or Busybee2 with hardware PWM of its own just to process the motor commutation from those nested PID controllers and... *shiver* ...yeah, the tech is fun. 

You might find it interesting; take a look at diydrones.com, ardupilot.org, librepilot.org & betaflight.com for a good look at the development of the hardware & software. If you MIGHT be interested in acro/FPV flight, check out Joshua Bardwell's channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCX3eufnI7A2I7IkKHZn8KSQ

JB will also be a good starting point towards what is new/current in our little cult of technology; he started out as a complete noob just chronicling his journey into FPV competency. Nowadays he's fairly conservative; usually less than 6 months behind the "cutting edge" as he generally takes a "wait & see" approach to every new startup. Trust me; even today, 6 months is a lifetime; you can literally see 3 generations of hardware/software come & go in that time.

Cheers!

mnem

[bd139]

A few technological points have changed significantly:

That's misrepresenting some of the stuff though isn't it really?

I've got a TFLOP of wumph in my pocket and 5.5 of them in a box next to me 

Edit: gah just found a hole in my rain coat. If only we could throw some of the research money we burned at fabrics that are prickle-bush proof 

[Wolfgang]

The whole field of electronics is evolving.  DIY now works at a "higher level" in the sense that where in the past it would have been a challenge to put together an audio amp from discrete components that did not self destruct from oscillations...  it was a real challenge at the time, working with the components that were available.   Nowadays, you get excellent results from an amp made from a single IC that is extremely well behaved (e.g. LM3886).   

For many analog electronics projects that would have been a challenge in the past, you now reach for an Arduino (a device that is really a minor miracle when you think about what we had in the 80's or 90's) that costs a few dollars,  you write a few lines of code, and boom - you have something up and working before you know it.

Thinking about the future... what will it be like in another 20-30 years?  -  Chips will most likely be crazy advanced and inexpensive,  mind blowing.

A big part of electronics as a hobby has always been to use electronic components to solve some problem (communicating at a distance, for the ham, or watering a plant, or whatever the engineer found interesting at the time).  That part - using technology to solve a problem -  is where amateurs will always have a part to play, it seems to me.  Solving new problems, or finding new ways of solving old problems, is a creative process that "feels good".

Fully agree. Making equipment that used to be rocket science using standard microcontrollers is fun and opens new possibilities in your lab.
https://electronicprojectsforfun.wordpress.com/homebrew-scpi-controllable-instruments-with-arduino-controllers/

That looks very cool!  -  Do you have to "teach" Visa/Labview etc. the dialect of SCPI that you have implemented in the Arduino? - i.e., how does Labview etc. know how to speak the new commands to it?  (I don't use Labview,  I always just hit GPIB "the hard way" as most of my collection of boat anchors predates even SCPI! )

... its like other SCPI stuff. Standard commands are (more or less) common, but specific commands are not, depending on what your instrument does.
I handled this the following way:
- Hardware functionality is done using Arduino shields.
- Implement standard commands on the Arduino as the standard says (a subset only, no syntax variety, ...)
- implement specific commands that make mnemonic sense for the function you want (like :INSTR:POWER:READ?, or :INSTR:ADC:READ?, ...)
- on the PC side, use a Python wrapper to control everything (one library per instrument, I have collected about 20 of them for now, also for commercial
  equipment).
- Use Python scripts to automate, extract data, store and plot results. Using SciPy, NumPy and MatplotLb

Advantages:
- Hardware is dirt cheap
- Software is free
- No problems with multivendor (I have Keysight, Rigol, R&S, ...) environments
- Your instruments are detected and controllable using NI VISA (finding them, sensing commands, reading data) with no action required on the PC side.
  They are found as ASRL:COMxx, you can open, send, write, read, query, ...
- If you really need, you can create an IVI driver for them (not difficult) and use them in LabView, which I dont use. I prefer programming, its more flexible.

[mnementh]

A few technological points have changed significantly:

That's misrepresenting some of the stuff though isn't it really?

I've got a TFLOP of wumph in my pocket and 5.5 of them in a box next to me 

Edit: gah just found a hole in my rain coat. If only we could throw some of the research money we burned at fabrics that are prickle-bush proof 

Yup. I've got more processing power and storage in my pocket than I had on my first 3D gaming rig. My current gaming rig could've been a county-wide server back then, even without the crazy-powerful GPU, which can ALSO now be leveraged into doing compute load for server duty with a simple software switch.

Effing amazing...

mnem
And even THAT is still really "Model T" stage of evolution...

[xrunner]

Let's consider the future, as seen from what I was using a while ago...

35-40 years ago	Now
8-bit micros (Z80)	8-bit micros (atmega328)

...

Depressingly little has changed, hasn't it.

Oh come on now ...

how about this then -

35-40 years ago	Now
Hammers with wooden handles	Hammers with fiberglass handles

Depressingly little has changed, hasn't it.


Really it's more like

Then - hammers with wooden handles

Now - air powered nail guns

Not very good analogies my friend

[Wolfgang]

Thinking about the future... what will it be like in another 20-30 years?  -  Chips will most likely be crazy advanced and inexpensive,  mind blowing.

(Ignoring your points that I agree with).

Let's consider the future, as seen from what I was using a while ago...

35-40 years ago	Now
8-bit micros (Z80)	8-bit micros (atmega328)
ADCs, DACs, TTL	ADCs, DACs, TTL
LED/LCD output	LED/LCD output
programmed in C (Whitesmith's)	programmed in C (gcc, others)
crosscompiled under unix on a PDP11	crosscompiled under linux on a PC
breakpoints and singlestepping via a ICE	breakpoints and singlestepping via JTAG

Depressingly little has changed, hasn't it.

When I came back to this area as a hobby, I was horrified at how little I needed to relearn. Yes, things are  "smaller, faster, cheaper", but that was predicted and hence uninteresting.

A few technological points have changed significantly:

• stunning speed/resolution changes in ADCs/DACs
• nanopower circuits and environmentally harvested energy sources
• multiprocessor - but even there the best current technology is the XMOS' version of the early 80's Transputer/Occam - xCORE/xC
• FPGAs having greated capacity than semi-custom CMOS and PALs
• an even smaller proportion of developers understand the implications of hard realtime, and what is necessary to ensure it

... a bit overly pessemistic. Your right side of the table should rather read:
- Arduino Zero (ARM 32Bit)
- Touchscreen Graphics GUI
- DACs, ADCs, ... yes, but now with a lot more bits and a lot more speed
- Tons of memory
- Better Tools (e.g., VS Code)

but lucky you, C is still there. 

[bd139]

btw if anyone wants an example of a 34401A to run a mile from it's this one:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/383585693167

Early display board going faulty.

[tggzzz]

Thinking about the future... what will it be like in another 20-30 years?  -  Chips will most likely be crazy advanced and inexpensive,  mind blowing.

(Ignoring your points that I agree with).

Let's consider the future, as seen from what I was using a while ago...

35-40 years ago	Now
8-bit micros (Z80)	8-bit micros (atmega328)
ADCs, DACs, TTL	ADCs, DACs, TTL
LED/LCD output	LED/LCD output
programmed in C (Whitesmith's)	programmed in C (gcc, others)
crosscompiled under unix on a PDP11	crosscompiled under linux on a PC
breakpoints and singlestepping via a ICE	breakpoints and singlestepping via JTAG

Depressingly little has changed, hasn't it.

When I came back to this area as a hobby, I was horrified at how little I needed to relearn. Yes, things are  "smaller, faster, cheaper", but that was predicted and hence uninteresting.

A few technological points have changed significantly:

• stunning speed/resolution changes in ADCs/DACs
• nanopower circuits and environmentally harvested energy sources
• multiprocessor - but even there the best current technology is the XMOS' version of the early 80's Transputer/Occam - xCORE/xC
• FPGAs having greated capacity than semi-custom CMOS and PALs
• an even smaller proportion of developers understand the implications of hard realtime, and what is necessary to ensure it

... a bit overly pessemistic. Your right side of the table should rather read:
- Arduino Zero (ARM 32Bit)

That's merely smaller faster cheaper.

I was using bigger faster (than the z80) processors in 1979/80, and a 39-bit processor in 73.

- Touchscreen Graphics GUI
- DACs, ADCs, ... yes, but now with a lot more bits and a lot more speed

You seem to have missed my statement "stunning speed/resolution changes in ADCs/DACs"

- Tons of memory

... little of it put to good use

- Better Tools (e.g., VS Code)

That's arguable, to the point of it being a religious debate. Yes, I was using emacs on (Microsoft's) Xenix. James Gosling wrote that emacs, before he created Java .

There's only one tool which enables me to do things I couldn't do back then: xTimeComposer. That states exactly how long a section of code will take to execute, without executing the code and hoping the worst case occurred.

but lucky you, C is still there. 

Quite the reverse; I was hoping for something better

Fortunately better languages are becoming available, e.g. xC for parallelism and hard realtime, and possibly Rust or Go to supplant C. I'll ignore C++, for reasons of good taste.

[Specmaster]

I just had the fancy for a ultrasonic cleaner thats big enough to accept a PCB of approx 200 x 200 until I saw the prices of those things, geez why are they so bloody expensive 

[mnementh]

Edit: gah just found a hole in my rain coat. If only we could throw some of the research money we burned at fabrics that are prickle-bush proof 

We did. They're called "iron-on patches"; good for repair and preventive maintenance.

mnem
 

[mnementh]

I just had the fancy for a ultrasonic cleaner thats big enough to accept a PCB of approx 200 x 200 until I saw the prices of those things, geez why are they so bloody expensive 

Short version: RMS factoring of the emitter power/driver circuitry required to actually do the job vs volume. Log scale in power, log scale in price vs actual usable volume.

mnem
 

[Specmaster]

I just had the fancy for a ultrasonic cleaner thats big enough to accept a PCB of approx 200 x 200 until I saw the prices of those things, geez why are they so bloody expensive 

Short version: RMS factoring of the emitter power/driver circuitry required to actually do the job vs volume. Log scale in power, log scale in price vs actual usable volume.

mnem
 

What?