Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mansaxel]

Well-fitting chinese (yes, but it looks the part) toggle switch for the 6206B arrived. Will fit tonight, and move on with restoration. The mode selector switch is going to be hairy, but I have hopes.

[tonyalbus]

I’ve got the day off today so I’m taking the kids to school then going back to bed  . This is one of the joys of having lots of holiday left. I’ve literally got to take 14 days off before end of December. Thus I choose Mondays 

Alas that probably won’t happen so I’m going to build some attenuators today.

Edit: actually no I’m not. I’m going to order some bits for a step attenuator

Yes great idea.... reading this, and counting my holidays left...
i planned all coming wednesdays off until new years :-) ..2 breaks in a week sounds good.

[Ice-Tea]

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a change of underwear.

[capt bullshot]

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a change of underwear.

Meh, very little power. Will just tickle a bit.


Edit: No, won't touch it (the HV output) anyway.

[Ice-Tea]

Meh, very little power. Will just tickle a bit.

That's what my mind tells me. As I have already observed at other occasions, my brain is taking the backseat sometimes.

[shakalnokturn]

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a change of underwear.

How much will you be selling that for if you let it go?

[jjoonathan]

I wonder if it's like my PS350 -- it advertises precise current regulating capability but then has a big 'ol capacitor right across the output ready to deliver half a joule to anyone foolish enough to actually trust the current limit 

[nixiefreqq]

no statues of my goombah buddy to tear down here in gburg.  however, am thinking about tying a rope to the hitch on the pickup and yanking that secessionist bastard bobby lee off of traveler.

nixiefreqq - decendent of the 149th PVI (pennsylvania volunteer infantry) and "hell no.....we ain't forgettin' either"

Yea I know, where does the stupidity end? Rip down all statues of Confederate General Robert E. Lee AND erase all references to him at West Point where he graduated in good standing as an officer in the US Army. There are groups who want to do that.

Hell...I say rip all statues down including the Statue of Liberty and throw them in the ocean. 

Where does the stupidity end? 

yeah.  if you read Grants autobiography it sure looks like he liked bobby lee a lot.

but geeeeeeeeze.......the old man bumbled when choosing sides.

[Specmaster]

I know that I have mentioned about my bench LCR meter, the XLW01 which is really accurate and is inexpensive and can user calibrated using the resistors supplied.

This video provides a excellent guide to using it because it may or may not come instructions depending on where you buy it from, but it is superb alternative to the much liked DE5000 which many people here favour but it does a lot more than this unit and not any more accurate.

Edit, it is geared towards power supplies and audio type of work and NOT RF work.

[bd139]

Quick dive in. Gotta love Flukes!

[Specmaster]

Quick dive in. Gotta love Flukes!

I hear ya buddy, all of my Flukes also agree with each other and the calibrator even after all these years of use 

[psykok]

Same at home, even my first 75 is agreeing with the newest ones

[Cerebus]

OTOH: on the hoarding side, an opportunity to double up on crucial equipment just surfaced. I love listings that aren't compatible with the string search in sales platforms, because of speling erorrs. Makes the audience smaller.

Don't we all, don't we all. The only difficulty with this strategy is coming up some of the more creative misspellings that people manage to make. It's easy to do vowel transpositions, adjacent key errors, the commoner errors such as f/ph, but some people's spelling is in another lexicographic universe entirely.

Plumbing update: The water authority just delegated the meter swap to the plumber, and also allowed them to turn the water back on. I have 10+ liters in containers on the kitchen countertop, and a full coffee Zojirushi.

A Zojirushi? Never heard of that, sounds like one of the characters out of Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

[bd139]

OTOH: on the hoarding side, an opportunity to double up on crucial equipment just surfaced. I love listings that aren't compatible with the string search in sales platforms, because of speling erorrs. Makes the audience smaller.

Don't we all, don't we all. The only difficulty with this strategy is coming up some of the more creative misspellings that people manage to make. It's easy to do vowel transpositions, adjacent key errors, the commoner errors such as f/ph, but some people's spelling is in another lexicographic universe entirely.

I actually wrote some de-stemming and idiot simulation code which comes up with creative misspellings based on key proximity and known autocomplete fuck ups based on what I'm interested in. I've done well out of it.

Do you want some HealthKit knobs?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174444372380

[Specmaster]

OTOH: on the hoarding side, an opportunity to double up on crucial equipment just surfaced. I love listings that aren't compatible with the string search in sales platforms, because of speling erorrs. Makes the audience smaller.

Don't we all, don't we all. The only difficulty with this strategy is coming up some of the more creative misspellings that people manage to make. It's easy to do vowel transpositions, adjacent key errors, the commoner errors such as f/ph, but some people's spelling is in another lexicographic universe entirely.

I actually wrote some de-stemming and idiot simulation code which comes up with creative misspellings based on key proximity and known autocomplete fuck ups based on what I'm interested in. I've done well out of it.

Do you want some HealthKit knobs?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174444372380

Why reinvent the wheel when its already been done, unless you can make it better 

http://fatfingers.com/

[tonyalbus]

Quick dive in. Gotta love Flukes!

I hear ya buddy, all of my Flukes also agree with each other and the calibrator even after all these years of use 

Whats the fun in that, then you are done needing more if you have 2 

[Cerebus]

Over the last few years there have been calls to rip down all the statues dedicated to Columbus which has got the people of Italian descent all up in arms because he was Italian working for Spain.   

Of course Columbus was from the Republic of Genoa (Genoan ?) as there was no unified "Italy" in his day, just a bunch of rival city states - frequently warring with each other in Columbus's day. Some of the "Italians" cheering him on probably descend from city states that were bitter rivals of Genoa and, if true to their roots, ought to be cheering on the abolitionists. 

[tggzzz]

Now, if you'll excuse me, I need a change of underwear.

Meh, very little power. Will just tickle a bit.

Edit: No, won't touch it (the HV output) anyway.

What makes you think the 0.6µA is a current limit, rather than the current?

The control at the top tight shows the overcurrent trip is 360µA, i.e. 10W at 30kV.

[Cerebus]

OTOH: on the hoarding side, an opportunity to double up on crucial equipment just surfaced. I love listings that aren't compatible with the string search in sales platforms, because of speling erorrs. Makes the audience smaller.

Don't we all, don't we all. The only difficulty with this strategy is coming up some of the more creative misspellings that people manage to make. It's easy to do vowel transpositions, adjacent key errors, the commoner errors such as f/ph, but some people's spelling is in another lexicographic universe entirely.

I actually wrote some de-stemming and idiot simulation code which comes up with creative misspellings based on key proximity and known autocomplete fuck ups based on what I'm interested in. I've done well out of it.

Do you want some HealthKit knobs?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/174444372380

What was your ultimate goal, replacing the Government with a few hundred lines of Python?

[Kosmic]

I know that I have mentioned about my bench LCR meter, the XLW01 which is really accurate and is inexpensive and can user calibrated using the resistors supplied.

This video provides a excellent guide to using it because it may or may not come instructions depending on where you buy it from, but it is superb alternative to the much liked DE5000 which many people here favour but it does a lot more than this unit and not any more accurate.

Edit, it is geared towards power supplies and audio type of work and NOT RF work.

They also offer DIY kits now 

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001156913695.html?spm=a2g0s.8937460.0.0.56e72e0eaUaFKS

[tggzzz]

Quick dive in. Gotta love Flukes!

3 digit? Meh. That's not far off analogue meter accuracy

My 34410A is currently showing agreement with my Transcell voltage standard (as measured by a PTB hp3458a that had been calibrated the previous day) to 6 digits (9.999577 vs 9.999571).

I wonder how long that will last?

[Cerebus]

I actually wrote some de-stemming and idiot simulation code which comes up with creative misspellings based on key proximity and known autocomplete fuck ups based on what I'm interested in. I've done well out of it.

Back in the day, when I was working with a German sister company for the first time and hence had customers with multilingual names, I kept a separate database table of customer names mapped from a boiled down name using the 'soundex' algorithm. Then if someone entered a name that wasn't a direct match to an actual customer name I could pop-up a "Did you mean..." list based on a loose phonetic match (e.g. Jung and Young both boiled down to the same secondary key). Worked surprisingly well.

[mnementh]

Quick dive in. Gotta love Flukes!

I hear ya buddy, all of my Flukes also agree with each other and the calibrator even after all these years of use 

MAXIM #69: FLUKE sez BAMM!!!

 

mnem
Yes, I fully understand the implications.

[bd139]

What was your ultimate goal, replacing the Government with a few hundred lines of Python?

That's a generous estimate of the utility. I'm sure a random number generator and a double entry accounting system with "tax" and "cronies" could be knocked up in about 50 LOC of python.

Back in the day, when I was working with a German sister company for the first time and hence had customers with multilingual names, I kept a separate database table of customer names mapped from a boiled down name using the 'soundex' algorithm. Then if someone entered a name that wasn't a direct match to an actual customer name I could pop-up a "Did you mean..." list based on a loose phonetic match (e.g. Jung and Young both boiled down to the same secondary key). Worked surprisingly well.

We'd probably be shot by that the moment someone wrong gets paid commission 

3 digit? Meh. That's not far off analogue meter accuracy

My 34410A is currently showing agreement with my Transcell voltage standard (as measured by a PTB hp3458a that had been calibrated the previous day) to 6 digits (9.999577 vs 9.999571).

I wonder how long that will last?

I learned, perhaps way too late, that when you're doing normal electronic design, that the odd 10% here and there doesn't matter that much.

[tggzzz]

3 digit? Meh. That's not far off analogue meter accuracy

My 34410A is currently showing agreement with my Transcell voltage standard (as measured by a PTB hp3458a that had been calibrated the previous day) to 6 digits (9.999577 vs 9.999571).

I wonder how long that will last?

I learned, perhaps way too late, that when you're doing normal electronic design, that the odd 10% here and there doesn't matter that much.

Booorrrrriiiiinnnngggg!

I learned very early on that the real trick is to get predictable operation with components that show hideous parametric variation, transistor h_FE V_be being the canonical examples. And then to extend that to system-level behaviour.

Of course I never selected a resistor's value based on how pretty the colour code looks. Oh no, never ever ever.

Nor have I ever checked a PSU rail's voltage by merely noting how fast an analogue meter starts to move.

The concept of measuring relative charge using an slow moving ammeter is completely foreign to youngsters.