Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[beanflying]

Random arrival this morning from bangemgood while we are looking at torches. I was ordering some woodworking clamps and got a really good deal on one of these torches trying to upsell me so I did I have been carrying my bike headlamp in the truck but this way it can stay on the bike where it belongs.

Not as large as the hands would have you believe on the site but a good solid lump of well balanced Aluminium.

https://www.banggood.com/XANES-XHP50-1800lm-Powerful-Long-Range-Zoomable-Flashlight-Kit-with-18650-Li-ion-Battery-USB-Rechargeable-and-Power-Display-Mini-Torch-Focus-Adjustable-Tactical-Light-p-1749466.html?rmmds=myorder&cur_warehouse=CN

[med6753]

Random arrival this morning from bangemgood while we are looking at torches. I was ordering some woodworking clamps and got a really good deal on one of these torches trying to upsell me so I did I have been carrying my bike headlamp in the truck but this way it can stay on the bike where it belongs.

Not as large as the hands would have you believe on the site but a good solid lump of well balanced Aluminium.

https://www.banggood.com/XANES-XHP50-1800lm-Powerful-Long-Range-Zoomable-Flashlight-Kit-with-18650-Li-ion-Battery-USB-Rechargeable-and-Power-Display-Mini-Torch-Focus-Adjustable-Tactical-Light-p-1749466.html?rmmds=myorder&cur_warehouse=CN

This is a torch. What you have there dear sir is a flashlight. 

[med6753]

Ah, yes .... we remember that fan.

Yea, that fan generated a ton of discussion and controversy when it was revealed that the original, and very loud, AC powered fan was pulling the outside air into the scope and exhausting it through the front panel. Many stated that couldn't possibly be correct but that's how that fan assembly came to me. But I solved the issue and calmed down the masses but ditching that noisy AC fan and installing an 80mm DC fan on a variable supply and set it up to pull the air in through the front panel and into the scope which in turned exhausted to outside air. Even with the DC fan set to almost whisper quiet it was enough to make a remarkable difference in keeping the scope cool.     

[beanflying]

Random arrival this morning from bangemgood while we are looking at torches. I was ordering some woodworking clamps and got a really good deal on one of these torches trying to upsell me so I did I have been carrying my bike headlamp in the truck but this way it can stay on the bike where it belongs.

Not as large as the hands would have you believe on the site but a good solid lump of well balanced Aluminium.

https://www.banggood.com/XANES-XHP50-1800lm-Powerful-Long-Range-Zoomable-Flashlight-Kit-with-18650-Li-ion-Battery-USB-Rechargeable-and-Power-Display-Mini-Torch-Focus-Adjustable-Tactical-Light-p-1749466.html?rmmds=myorder&cur_warehouse=CN

This is a torch. What you have there dear sir is a flashlight. 

Just make sure in that case you don't misspell your Flashlight with an E unless you intentionally need the other 

[BU508A]

Random arrival this morning from bangemgood while we are looking at torches. I was ordering some woodworking clamps and got a really good deal on one of these torches trying to upsell me so I did I have been carrying my bike headlamp in the truck but this way it can stay on the bike where it belongs.

Not as large as the hands would have you believe on the site but a good solid lump of well balanced Aluminium.

https://www.banggood.com/XANES-XHP50-1800lm-Powerful-Long-Range-Zoomable-Flashlight-Kit-with-18650-Li-ion-Battery-USB-Rechargeable-and-Power-Display-Mini-Torch-Focus-Adjustable-Tactical-Light-p-1749466.html

This is a torch. What you have there dear sir is a flashlight. 

I was under the impression, that this is a torch:


and this is a flashlight:


 

[bd139]

Torch is whatever you want to be.

Flashlight doesn’t flash any more thanks to improved technology so stupid word.

Fleshlight is a masturbation aid.

There cleared that up.

[wolfy007]

I thought I was was reading candlepower forums for a moment....   

[AVGresponding]

P.S. could really use one of them exploding cats, to install in this computer  , had lots of problems with it the last few days, it froze shortly after an error appeared and then refused to boot afterwards (not even a beep from the motherboard), it's done this twice now, I suspect a hardware problem. 

It could easily be a windows update (if that's your OS). My laptop started behaving oddly after updating yesterday, the line detection doesn't work properly now and it keeps dropping in and out, with accompanying beep (until I got annoyed and turned the sound off).
Naturally I checked the output from the brick as I thought the high ambient t was making it shut down, but nope. Just windows being windows.   

[med6753]

Torch is whatever you want to be.

Flashlight doesn’t flash any more thanks to improved technology so stupid word.

Fleshlight is a masturbation aid.

There cleared that up.

I was wondering what Bean meant about "substituting an E". Now I know. Thank you for clearing that up. 

[Andrew_Debbie]

Flashlights?  Did somone mention flashlights???    I may have a few. 

Left to right:
BLF LT1, BLF Q8, Manker MK36, Emisar D4S, Sofirn IF25A Lumintop FW3 (copper) and one more.



Copper Convoy S2+


More Convoy lights



I bought this new from a Navy Surplus store in San Diego many years ago.


I've got several more.  Just need to remember where I put them   

[beanflying]

Flashlights?  Did somone mention flashlights???    I may have a few. 

Left to right:
BLF LT1, BLF Q8, Manker MK36, Emisar D4S, Sofirn IF25A Lumintop FW3 (copper) and one more.



Copper Convoy S2+


More Convoy lights



I bought this new from a Navy Surplus store in San Diego many years ago.


I've got several more.  Just need to remember where I put them   

Mmm That larger LT1 is extremely suspect  Seems your Torch fetish prevents space that could be used for Multimeters 

[Cubdriver]

Flashlights?  Did somone mention flashlights???    I may have a few. 

Left to right:
BLF LT1, BLF Q8, Manker MK36, Emisar D4S, Sofirn IF25A Lumintop FW3 (copper) and one more.



Copper Convoy S2+


More Convoy lights



I bought this new from a Navy Surplus store in San Diego many years ago.


I've got several more.  Just need to remember where I put them   

I’ve got a bunch of them, too, but somehow one never seems to be at hand when I need it.  (I think they congregate and hide wherever my tape measures and the 10mm & 1/2” sockets go when they disappear.) This recent discussion did just prompt me to look into LED replacement lamps for my small Surefires; ordered one each for the E1E and the E2E from the bay.

-Pat

[Specmaster]

Looks horrible, far too much going on with that IMO 

I can't resist Aneng meters.   It is like watching a horror movie that is so bad it is funny.  I bought an AN-888s for sheer entertainment value.    It turned out to be a half way decent meter.   I've been using it during lock down because it was the only one at home.

Oh dear, gentlemen (and lady) I do believe we have an unbeliever in our ranks. Only one meter at home? There must be more, even if you're forced to count your pocket, everyday carry, meter as "at home".

Well not any more.   I've got three DMMs within arms reach.   

Phew, that's a relief. I though we were going to have to burn you at the stake, or extract all your electrons, or something like that. We haven't had to deal with any heretics, false believers or backsliders yet, that's why I'm uncertain as to what the ritual would be but I know we wouldn't enjoy it - well except for one or two of us.

Okay, okay ... I promise to get more meters.  So far, each meter has had one more digit than the previously acquired meter.  When will I be done? 

There's no need to increase number of digits each time, that just puts a practical block on your collection, but a good selection of 4.5 and 5.5 digit meters are always required and indeed most welcomed 

[med6753]

What I lack in sheer numbers I make up for in sheer mass and the ability to double as billy club. 

Classic Mag-Lite with LED conversion.

[Specmaster]

Random arrival this morning from bangemgood while we are looking at torches. I was ordering some woodworking clamps and got a really good deal on one of these torches trying to upsell me so I did I have been carrying my bike headlamp in the truck but this way it can stay on the bike where it belongs.

Not as large as the hands would have you believe on the site but a good solid lump of well balanced Aluminium.

https://www.banggood.com/XANES-XHP50-1800lm-Powerful-Long-Range-Zoomable-Flashlight-Kit-with-18650-Li-ion-Battery-USB-Rechargeable-and-Power-Display-Mini-Torch-Focus-Adjustable-Tactical-Light-p-1749466.html?rmmds=myorder&cur_warehouse=CN

Bean strikes again, damm, I just ordered one of those tactical lights, quite impressive.

[McBryce]

Problem: I've just realised that despite owning a reasonable quantity of DMM's, I don't have one with Bluetooth.
Solution: EEVBlog 121GW ordered...

And just for the record, current collection (in no particular order):
Fluke 289
Fluke 87V (My "car meter")
Fluke 88 (which technically should be my car meter)
Fluke 1577
Fluke 8060
Sanwa PM3
Aneng 8008
Ross 144M (vintage analogue - My first meter)
2x Pifco All-in-One (vintage analogue)
Sinclair DM350
Keithley 6500
Keithley 2000
HP3478A

McBryce.

[DH7DN]

I just recently acquired an Agilent Acqiris U1067A-001 8 bit, 150 MHz, 500 MS/s PCI digitizer. It's a mid 2000's 1CH oscilloscope card. The price was "OK" (TEA GAS justification), I needed a fast sampling digitizer for a future project. The card itself was probably taken out of a workstation PC. I suppose some companies throw their PCs away and don't check the insides for treasures...





The card certainly looks well designed: gold plated BNC connectors, large heat spreader and a dedicated fan. The board is EMC shielded in order to deal with noise and emissions inside of a PC housing. The input stage is connected to a mezzanine board, just in case you fry the input attenuator and need a replacement.

Well, after initial inspection, I had to find a suitable PC with a PCI slot to power it up. My victim was a dust-covered Dell Precision T5400. Although it has 2 PCI slots inside, there is almost no room for two heat generating oscilloscope cards. The NI PCI-5105 had to be relocated ;-)




The setup was straight forward: installed the card, powered up the PC, installed the drivers (provided by Keysight), rebooted and "We're in like Flynn". The drivers haven't been updated since 2010 but they still work on a Win10 x64 system. There are drivers availible for Windows, Linux, VxWorks and other systems. The drivers also support LabVIEW, MATLAB and C/C++ programming languages so it should be possible to use a Python wrapper in order to get the data acquisition running.




A quick test was rather sobering: the acquisition software AcqirisLive was very primitive. The waveform windows were fixed and not resizeable, the scaling of the graphs was not possible. The UI wasn't great but it did the job. It felt like it was "built for your Win98 machine just to be viewed on a 800x600 14" CRT monitor". Nevertheless, one can write his own acquisition routines so there is no need for a scope software.




I performed few simple tests with standard waveforms (80 MHz sine, 1 MHz square wave). Everything was fine, nothing unusual. I couldn't test the performance of the card yet because of lack of time/equipment (who would have thought -> I need more Test Equipment!). I hope some experiments will follow in 2022... So many projects (another TEA GUS justification here...)

[bd139]

That’s rather cool that is. I keep seeing various PCI cards on eBay for not much like that. Perhaps I should consider them 

As for torches, I can make phone calls, browse eevblog and buy test gear on mine so ner ner 

[Andrew_Debbie]

Yes but can you light up a post 2 miles away or produce a light so bright it requires sun glasses?   

TBH the Manker MK 36 is too bright on high to be useful.     

[bd139]

I can light a post 500 miles away with mine. But I have to get in the car first 

[Andrew_Debbie]

I'm surprised no one here has a 'white laser'  LEP  light.

[Andrew_Debbie]

An MR conditional flashlight is on my want list for work along with  some of those $79 non magentic  C size batteries.     I have a titanium flashlight  but the batteries are highly ferromagnetic.   It would become a projectile near the scanner.


We have Crylum light sticks  for emergencies.  They are a LOT cheaper, mostly because they don't say MRI conditional on the box.

There is also a battery backed up emergency light above the door.     It provides good exit lighting but I decided  that alone was not enough.  It gets really dark in the scanner room when the power goes out.

[tggzzz]

I can light a post 500 miles away with mine. But I have to get in the car first 

Ah yes, the variant of "Is it within walking distance?" "Yes, if you walk for long enough".

[tggzzz]

I performed few simple tests with standard waveforms (80 MHz sine, 1 MHz square wave).

Looking at the risetime and the 20/40dB breakpoint in the FFT, you need a squarer wave 

Be very careful what to allow the ground lead to touch. But you know that

[DH7DN]

I performed few simple tests with standard waveforms (80 MHz sine, 1 MHz square wave).

Looking at the risetime and the 20/40dB breakpoint in the FFT, you need a squarer wave 

Be very careful what to allow the ground lead to touch. But you know that

Yes  and yes 
soon(tm)

That’s rather cool that is. I keep seeing various PCI cards on eBay for not much like that. Perhaps I should consider them 

As for torches, I can make phone calls, browse eevblog and buy test gear on mine so ner ner 

The PCI technology is slowly but surely dying. I guess in ~10 years it will be very difficult to get this type of hardware running. The PC hardware is getting more and more obsolete, the software and drivers aren't supported anymore and there is a lack of documentation, too. Unfortunately, the Internet forgets, too. I am glad there is such as thing as archive.org. It helps alot to grab almost forgotten PDFs from early 2000's.

For this project, I'll probably buy an inexpensive dedicated PC (dated 2006-2008ish) with enough PCI slots in order to keep those digitizers alive.