Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[med6753]

Here we go. This one was a bit of a bargain. £63.20 delivered. BIN from an excellent seller. Spot on, fast delivery and well packaged and much cheaper than it should have been 


......snip

Good deal. A Series 1 just like mine. 

[beanflying]

I am avoiding this one as I don't 'need it'  Save me Aussies  eBay auction: #265228594773

[BU508A]

If I should ever stumble over a mint 87V for 50 Euro, then I'd consider buying it. 

[Saskia]

klaxon ... hmmm.

I have a pneumatic horn sitting here, rating is 135 db@1m ....

Do you also have the recommended accessoires?

Whoa! Capt. Bullshot hat die groesste(n) Hupe(n)!

ich hoffe doch sehr, daß ich hier die größten Hupen hab. Sonst läuft hier was falsch ...

[med6753]

I am avoiding this one as I don't 'need it'  Save me Aussies  eBay auction: #265228594773

It must be Fluke 87 Series 1 day. Did anyone get a memo? I didn't. 

Doctor's appointments today. Whoopie. 

[BU508A]

Doctor's appointments today. Whoopie. 

Fingers crossed, have fun. 

[Saskia]

@med good luck

[Specmaster]

Here we go. This one was a bit of a bargain. £63.20 delivered. BIN from an excellent seller. Spot on, fast delivery and well packaged and much cheaper than it should have been 

As arrived with manual and probes.



<snip>

And into the herd it goes



I'll clean up the case later as that will require some scrubbing. It probably won't live in the case to be honest. Probe inspection will happen later too.

Anyway that's the first acquisition post from me for a long time. Finally back on the treadmill 

Looks really grand does that. When you say it probably won't live in the case, I take that you're referring to the yellow bumper?

[Specmaster]

Noticing a lot of sellers on eBay are getting very shoddy with their listings. Many of them state that the devices are untested, but in the description they state

Item specifics
Condition:    
Used: An item that has been previously used. The item may have some signs of cosmetic wear, but is fully operational and functions as intended. This item may be a floor model or an item that has been returned to the seller after a period of use. See the seller’s listing for full details and description of any imperfections.

So which is it, untested or working as intended 

[syau]

They’ve got to the point they only talk to me when they’re hungry. Actually that’s not true. I’m trying to negotiate a truce between two of them at the moment and get them out the door for school 

Delightful, isn't it!

I found it invaluable to be able to distract mine by getting her to do something "dangerous" and interesting. Obviously I chose gliding[1], but something on or under the river might be easier for you.

You'll miss them when they are gone (I'm just going off to help mine before a hygiene inspection next week)

[1] yesterday's news: K13s not allowed to do spinning any more So no more pre-solo training where you deliberately enter a spin at 1000ft, rotate once every 3 seconds, descend at 100ft/s, and have to dive at the ground to avoid hitting it.

As someone who floats like a brick I shall avoid the river. Also somewhat risk averse after a few near misses 

As far as danger goes, we're all going to fly some model rockets shortly. There is a universal interest in things that go woosh and may go horribly wrong 

Currently eyeing this up. Currently placed well above the value as a BIN and the seller isn't fond of low offers but I'm hoping it goes down significantly when relisted...



Appears to be a duff 7474 display driver looking at the schematics, a common problem on devices of that era. However contains unobtanium ADC and  the front end is a hybrid  . But the bandwidth on it is pretty amazingly high. Possibly an opportunity to get creative.

Bough 2, one display driver failed, one hybrid failed. End up to 1 usable unit. 

[bd139]

Looks really grand does that. When you say it probably won't live in the case, I take that you're referring to the yellow bumper?

That was what I was thinking. Mostly so I didn't have to clean the case  . I gave in eventually and sorted it. All done:

[Wolfgang]

klaxon ... hmmm.

I have a pneumatic horn sitting here, rating is 135 db@1m ....

Do you also have the recommended accessoires?

Whoa! Capt. Bullshot hat die groesste(n) Hupe(n)!

ich hoffe doch sehr, daß ich hier die größten Hupen hab. Sonst läuft hier was falsch ...

Not sure. Maybe the dragon ? 

[tggzzz]

Noticing a lot of sellers on eBay are getting very shoddy with their listings. Many of them state that the devices are untested, but in the description they state

Item specifics
Condition:    
Used: An item that has been previously used. The item may have some signs of cosmetic wear, but is fully operational and functions as intended. This item may be a floor model or an item that has been returned to the seller after a period of use. See the seller’s listing for full details and description of any imperfections.

So which is it, untested or working as intended 

I typically put spares or repairs and show it working, with comment "can't test to manufacturer's full spec".

[AVGresponding]

Well the RS Pro PSUs arrived, with the UPS driver having a brain fart and having to come back a few hours later with the second one, I suppose it was buried under other parcels in his van.

The undercover Siglent is clearly used, though in good condition overall. Annoyingly it seems RS have asked Siglent to alter the firmware enough that you can't use Siglent update/upgrades. Other than that it works well with decent accuracy on the meters etc.

The Iso-Tech/Gw Instek clone or whatever it is, is new by the looks of it, with some minor pin-dents in the sides of the case. The display protector is still on. This is the one that the UPS driver had to come back for, so I've not had time to get to know it much, but I will say the controls are not intuitive and somewhat finicky, and the current accuracy is bad, with a 10mA offset meaning it's under-reading by that amount more or less the whole range. That may or may not be fixable, I'll have to RTFM first.

[nfmax]

They’ve got to the point they only talk to me when they’re hungry. Actually that’s not true. I’m trying to negotiate a truce between two of them at the moment and get them out the door for school 

Delightful, isn't it!

I found it invaluable to be able to distract mine by getting her to do something "dangerous" and interesting. Obviously I chose gliding[1], but something on or under the river might be easier for you.

You'll miss them when they are gone (I'm just going off to help mine before a hygiene inspection next week)

[1] yesterday's news: K13s not allowed to do spinning any more So no more pre-solo training where you deliberately enter a spin at 1000ft, rotate once every 3 seconds, descend at 100ft/s, and have to dive at the ground to avoid hitting it.

As someone who floats like a brick I shall avoid the river. Also somewhat risk averse after a few near misses 

As far as danger goes, we're all going to fly some model rockets shortly. There is a universal interest in things that go woosh and may go horribly wrong 

Currently eyeing this up. Currently placed well above the value as a BIN and the seller isn't fond of low offers but I'm hoping it goes down significantly when relisted...



Appears to be a duff 7474 display driver looking at the schematics, a common problem on devices of that era. However contains unobtanium ADC and  the front end is a hybrid  . But the bandwidth on it is pretty amazingly high. Possibly an opportunity to get creative.

Bough 2, one display driver failed, one hybrid failed. End up to 1 usable unit. 

I may be expelled from TEA for saying this, but the RMS math function on a decent quality DSO makes instruments like these redundant. Maybe not quite as accurate, but even -hp- were never able to produce a 1GHz RMS meter

[bd139]

Oh completely. But they’re not as much fun 

[Wolfgang]

What about thermal power sensors ? Keysight has some starting at DC.

[Peter_O]

They found another WWII 250kg bomb some 100 meters away.  Inside a 300m radius they will evacuate 5.500 people today evening before rotating the magic screws.  :-)

I'm happy it's not the building site of our immediate neighbour.
Luckily we're in the warning radius of 500m only. "Stay inside, shut your Windows, keep away from glass, ...".

[Cerebus]

Doctor's appointments today. Whoopie. 

Don't let 'em stick anything in any holes they ain't used already. 

[McBryce]

It must be Fluke 87 Series 1 day. Did anyone get a memo? I didn't. 

Doctor's appointments today. Whoopie. 

Yep, looking forward to tomorrow, when I can show off my Fluke 88 Series 1

McBryce.

[mansaxel]

I may be expelled from TEA for saying this, but the RMS math function on a decent quality DSO makes instruments like these redundant. Maybe not quite as accurate, but even -hp- were never able to produce a 1GHz RMS meter

The 410b is specced to 700MHz (Mega-Cycles at the time..) so yes. This is a limitation it shares with the Marconi high-end VTVM, the TF1041B. 1GHz is hard for everyone.

[mnementh]

Boring Mundane Everyday Print #199: Bicycle Wheel Spoke Protector Disc   

   https://a360.co/3ejgIr8

This is for my spare bike; an older 700C-sized "unisex step-through frame" Road/MTB made by CCM. The cheap freewheel on it crunched up the ratchet, so I'm swapping over a Shimano freewheel from the parts mule bike.

   

This actually is the better of the two spoke discs; the other literally disintegrated into powder and chips just from handling the gear cluster. I already spent more than I wanted to on the tool set to swap the freewheel over (a whopping US$17!!! ), so cost + hassle factor and drive to get one locally made me give this a try so I can put the damned thing together instead of waiting on the slow boat from China.

As usual, for those who care full details and 3DP nerd stats are here on the 3DP thread.

mnem
 

[med6753]

Some Volt-nuttery.

I finally did a one-to-one comparison between the Siglent SDM 3055 and the high and mighty 3456A. Both have been powered up for over 48 hours. I have proven and demonstrated several times in the past that the 3055 on 2V and 20V ranges consistently reads low. This was BEFORE I purchased the 3456A. Well as you can see the 3456A proves once again the Siglent reads consistently low, in the same amounts as I have shown in the past. Now I know in the real world of voltage measurement these results don't mean jack shit. So “can” the comments concerning that. I've heard before, don't need to hear it again.  The point is it ain't right and I'm sure can be improved. 


SDM 3055                    hp 3456A

190.006mV                  .190005V

1.89973V                     1.89977V

18.9982V                     18.9991V

2.5004V                       2.50064V

4.9976V                       4.99794V

7.4996V                       7.50013V

9.9963V                       9.99694V

Tautech, I read through and viewed all the stuff you sent me and the “home” calibration procedure as proposed by Siglent is a complete joke. If Defpom tried and can't be sure he got good results I certainly am not going to try it. There's too much of a danger you could totally screw it up. If Siglent implements the procedure as proposed by Defpom I would certainly give it a try. But as it stands today it's no freaking way.   

[mnementh]

   I think I have bitten off more than I can chew.

OK, not really but I am going to get some chewing practice. I don't have a problem with 0.5mm pitch parts in QFP form, but I've found the 0.5 mm leadless packages a bit intimidating. You've only got to look at that package to figure out why. I've been meaning to find something cheap in QFN that I can get some soldering (reflow) practice with. There are quite a lot of relatively inexpensive MCUs in small QFN packages but none of them are MCU architectures I'm set up to use and I don't really want to set up a toolchain, programming tools etc. just for some soldering practice. The thing is through, you want something you can actually test once you're done.

I finally hit on the ideal part when I was looking to order some 74x595 shift registers the other day. NXP have a 74LVC595 in a 16 pin 2.5 x 3.5mm package (that's it 'dead bug' above). They are £0.097 each + VAT in pack quantity 15, and you're not going to care about scrapping a few 11.64p parts. It's testable as it's easy to daisy chain as many shift registers as you like and the parallel part of the IC is perfectly capable of driving an LED. Just thought I'd mention it in case anyone else is thinking of dipping their toes into the water like me.

   

https://hackaday.com/2020/11/25/smd-challenge-extreme-edition-gets-our-flux-flowing/

https://github.com/ftemperton/smd_challenge_extreme

Oh, come now... That's just huge compared to my iPud Tristar Chip at ~2.6mm²...

Of course... you could try the HAD SMD Misery Edition instead: https://www.tindie.com/products/makersbox/smd-challenge/

mnem
No, I am not that masochistic.

[bd139]

Two words: fuck that