Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[Andrew_Debbie]

JLCPCB : thanks people for your feedback ! 

Wow so you can get any shape routed free of charge, I honestly would never have believed it..

Not exactly.   JLC charged me extra  for one of the boards in this photo.   Can you tell which one?    They also will not do anything under 1mm  on a $4.00 board.



They do not charge extra for a simple slot  like the one in on the left side of this little board.

[Cymaphore]

The kids (2-5 years) constantly want to help me with my various work thing. Since it would not be quite reasonable to just let them deal with an open ECU, BMS or productive parts, I often make technology related toys for them.



Since they want to use the "Demeter" and I wanted to get the rust of my PCB design "abilities", I created a toy PCB for them. They can measure around on it and it's good for teaching some first steps in soldering.

[Andrew_Debbie]

und Farben lernen   (and learning colours)   

[bd139]

That’s pretty neat 

All I did was teach mine to zap each other with a relay oscillator 

[BU508A]

Believe it or not:  IT ARRIVED!

Wow! 

Here are some pictures:

Overview:


Copper crocs:


Triax connector (2 lug):

[tggzzz]

That’s pretty neat 

All I did was teach mine to zap each other with a relay oscillator 

On mine I used a Zerostat and an electric fence.

At school I used a PO3000 relay oscillator to disrupt radio comms

[psykok]

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...)

I have one of this card in my drawer.
I definitely  need to start playing with.

I was not aware that Linux was also supported

[med6753]

Believe it or not:  IT ARRIVED!

Wow! 

USPS: "We Deliver".  Eventually and when we feel like it. 

Glad you got it. Finally and in one piece. 

[Robert763]

Yeah .2v which is in spec now 

Have fixed the loose CRT and var knobs now as well. Reassembly in progress.

Robert deserves the jammy git award for that 8640B 

And my eternal envy -- for I desire a 8640B. Or any boat anchor RF gen. When I've got that, all i need is a SA. Or so I think.

Meanwhile, neither the repair queue nor the project stack are shrinking, but it is funnier to put them off and dream of gear...

Did a somewhat deep dive (deep since it did require me swimming in pretty uncharted waters of knowledge) into a 3-phase motor yesterday, for my neighbour. He's had it rewound by a winding shop but it does not work. We tried to find out if the winding shop had put it together correctly or not.

At any rate, it was moot, because something he's done to it -- perhaps as a consequence of faulty rewinding, perhaps not, it is thoroughly roasted. Again. We first tried to make sense of it by measuring ohms, but that did not help. Then I tried inductance (DE-5000  ). Made more sense, but not enough.  Finally, cracked it open, just to reveal a blackened winding.

That is an odd motor configuration. I suspect a faulty contact in the switch or other fault in the installation caused both the original failure and the post-rewind failure.

[beanflying]

Burp. Zero food waste just some additional waist added

[Specmaster]

As a first step we could try to stop dumping 1.300.000.000 metric tons of food every year.

100% agree with that, thats where the APP I use helps, "To Good To Go" it only works on both Android and IOS phones and or tablets, download it from the App store today and start helping to save both the planet and your pocket by rescuing food that shops near to you would otherwise be throwing in the dustbin because of its sell by date is close.

I often use it to get bags of baked items from Gregg's the bakers, Costa Coffee, Pizza shops and country Bakers, but there are green grocers, supermarkets, cafés  etc on the app. It all depends on your location at the time, go on, try it out, what have you got to lose?

Thanks Spec!

That was quite an interesting read, and it is a practical thing that anyone can give a try to make some improvement.
I have never heard of this app before, so not sure how effective it would be here at the moment.  I suspect it needs a certain level of up-take (aka critical mass) for it to start providing benefit.  Of course, it has to start somewhere ... will likely do an install to try it out tomorrow.

Please do, the items in the bags will alter day by day, but the price remains the same and the discounted price is approx 25% of the normal price so is an economical way of trying something new that you wouldn't buy.

[Andrew_Debbie]

I'm stuck at work       I think a longer lunch break is called for. 

[bd139]

Nothing beats this Hermes fuckery. It was collected, then it wasn't?!?!!?



Aaand on to the annoying task of the day. Need to top up RS basket by £3 to get free delivery and I can't think of anything I need.

[beanflying]

Tonight's oddball when a Tek is not a Tek it is a Wilton. eBay auction: #224557178438

[BU508A]

Some nice TE in Germany (NAWTS):

HP 400 FL AC VOLTMETER


WAVETEK 164 30 MHz SWEEP - Generator


Noise Generator RG-1 WANDEL & GOLTERMANN 0 - 100 kHz


HP 410C ELECTRONIC VOLTMETER


VECTORSCOPE 1421 PAL TEKTRONIX


and a little mysterious TE thingie:

[Specmaster]

Nothing beats this Hermes fuckery. It was collected, then it wasn't?!?!!?



Aaand on to the annoying task of the day. Need to top up RS basket by £3 to get free delivery and I can't think of anything I need.

Well, my bleeding scopemeter and function generator was shown on Shpock as being in Dudley, hence why it's being it delivered by Yodel and their tracking program on the web stated that it was at my local depot. This morning I downloaded the app to the phone and ran the same tracking again, and it would appear that the app gives much more detail than their website. Imagine my surprise to discover that the items were not in Dudley at all but in Sevenoaks, Kent, just about 30 minutes from me and that my local depot was supposed to be Maidstone and that it had been dispatched from there at 18:19 yesterday.
The app still shows the parcel as being on route and not yet reached the "out for delivery" stage and the planned delivery date is still Saturday,    Call me confused as I still have no idea where the parcel is, had I known it was Sevenoaks then I'd have elected to collect the items in person 

[Andrew_Debbie]

Wavtek 164 -  Made in San Diego.    Several classmates went to work for Wavtek after graduation.


Long gone --   Wavtek in San Diego,  Beckman in Brea,  Racal-Dana in Irvine -- I'm sure I'm forgetting several.

HP had a plant in San Diego.  They made high speed Pen Plotters there - we had one.   Later on I think they made more mundane ink jet printers.   I'd think that plant is long gone.   

[mnementh]

   Burp. Zero food waste just some additional waist added

And one less Drop Bear to terrorize tourists...

mnem
...or nick your menthol fags.

[mnementh]

...Aaand on to the annoying task of the day. Need to top up RS basket by £3 to get free delivery and I can't think of anything I need.

Solder/solder wick. Flux. Tip tinner to keep your new Metcal tips tip-top. 2N2222s. 78xx/AN1117-x regs. Mini-grabbers. 4mm plugs. BNCs. RG174/RG174 SMA cables. 0603 diodes/LEDs/resistors/caps. Those xxuF/xxV caps you keep forgetting to order for that thing. That thing you keep forgetting to order. 

mnem
"Very helpful... very helpful indeed..." Chibila thought to himself...

[mnementh]

JLCPCB : thanks people for your feedback !     Wow so you can get any shape routed free of charge, I honestly would never have believed it..

Not exactly.   JLC charged me extra  for one of the boards in this photo.   Can you tell which one?    They also will not do anything under 1mm  on a $4.00 board.

I'd guess the one with oversized plated vias/screw holes.

mnem
 

[Cerebus]

I'm stuck at work       I think a longer lunch break is called for. 

Some of our overseas readers may need it explaining that "Llanfairpwllgwyngyll" is not the result of Andrew's cat tap-dancing on his keyboard but is an honest-to-goodness Welsh place name of somewhere that actually exists.

There's more. That's actually a shortened form. The full, official name in Welsh is "Llanfair­pwllgwyngyll­gogery­chwyrn­drobwll­llan­tysilio­gogo­goch". The unbeknowing could, with some justification, think I'm pulling their legs at this point, but I'm not. Here's the local railway station:

[bd139]

...Aaand on to the annoying task of the day. Need to top up RS basket by £3 to get free delivery and I can't think of anything I need.

Solder/solder wick. Flux. Tip tinner to keep your new Metcal tips tip-top. 2N2222s. 78xx/AN1117-xregs. Mini-grabbers. 4mm plugs. BNCs. RG174/RG174 SMA cables. 0603 diodes/LEDs/resistors/caps. Those xxuF/xxV caps you keep forgetting to order for that thing. That thing you keep forgetting to order. 

mnem
"Very helpful... very helpful indeed..." Chibila thought to himself...

This is RS. It's about cost optimisation of min quantities

So I ordered some zeners I needed for £2.43 and 200x 560k resistors for £0.60 which will go straight in the trash 

[mnementh]

and a little mysterious TE thingie:   

It's a under-load cell tester for old-school Lead-Acid batteries with exposed bus bars between the cells. Grand-dad had one; also had such a battery in Miss Allis (old diesel tractor ~110HP or so).

mnem
 

[Cerebus]

Aaand on to the annoying task of the day. Need to top up RS basket by £3 to get free delivery and I can't think of anything I need.

I'm on £1.70 more required ... 

[mnementh]

...Aaand on to the annoying task of the day. Need to top up RS basket by £3 to get free delivery and I can't think of anything I need.

Solder/solder wick. Flux. Tip tinner to keep your new Metcal tips tip-top. 2N2222s. 78xx/AN1117-xregs. Mini-grabbers. 4mm plugs. BNCs. RG174/RG174 SMA cables. 0603 diodes/LEDs/resistors/caps. Those xxuF/xxV caps you keep forgetting to order for that thing. That thing you keep forgetting to order. 

mnem
"Very helpful... very helpful indeed..." Chibila thought to himself...

This is RS. It's about cost optimisation of min quantities

So I ordered some zeners I needed for £2.43 and 200x 560k resistors for £0.60 which will go straight in the trash 

I assume this is after you chop the legs off for the "lazy jumper wires" drawer...? Unless, of course, SMD.

Hmmm... two hunnerd garden variety 1/8W 560k resistors will make 2800 ohms at 25W... could be a fun soldering exercise. 

And of course, the point of the above post was to waste a minute of your time reading it... if it reminds you of something you actually need, well that's just gravy.

mnem
*Impairing productivity since nineteen mumblety-mumble*