Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[mansaxel]

Oh man I just came here to get away from fixing Grafana dashboards. That didn’t work 

If it makes you happier, I only draw graphs in Gnuplot. And I positively _hate_ rrdtool. Destroyer of history, that is.

[mnementh]

Right on brothers! I mean, if it's more than ±100ns from UTC can you really call it a clock? Amiright, eh? 

I'm friends with a bunch of the people who make UTC(SP) and distribute it to the country as "Swedish normal time" (although it's still UTC on the wire, of course).  They scratch the smiley from above. 100ns is a lot of deviation to them.

When I first saw that, I read it as Swedish Fish Time.

mnem
I think I like it better that way...

[Specmaster]

By the time it gets here that’s £45 spent 

I only paid £56.50 for it, so the £45 is 80% of the buying price, not going to happen for a while, yet I'm afraid.

@mnem, I still think you have that wrong, the only jacks that have the 2 connections on are the A and the mA uA jacks, the COM and V jacks have both halves connected together to effectively form a single contact. These meters have a means of testing the current fuses without having to open the body of the meter. Insert a lead into the V jack, select  on the input selector and then touch the probe tip to the top half of the A and mA uA jacks and you get a reading of between 0 and .5  for the A fuse (F2) and between .995k and 1.005k  for mA uA fuse (F1).

[Cerebus]

Right on brothers! I mean, if it's more than ±100ns from UTC can you really call it a clock? Amiright, eh? 

I'm friends with a bunch of the people who make UTC(SP) and distribute it to the country as "Swedish normal time" (although it's still UTC on the wire, of course).  They scratch the smiley from above. 100ns is a lot of deviation to them.

Oh, if you're running a national standard it's a mark of deep shame to be more than about 5ns off UTC - of course you don't find out whether you were or not until the next issue of Circular T in about 2.592 x 10¹⁵ ns later. 

I used to have friends at NPL in Teddington, but that was well before I might have wanted to finagle access to The Volt or a decent frequency reference. I'm sure I used to know a man who could have fixed it, but it'd be a bit of cheek to go back and start cadging favours after not having lifted a glass with the man for 25 years.

[mnementh]

By the time it gets here that’s £45 spent 

I only paid £56.50 for it, so the £45 is 80% of the buying price, not going to happen for a while, yet I'm afraid.

@mnem, I still think you have that wrong, the only jacks that have the 2 connections on are the A and the mA uA jacks, the COM and V jacks have both halves connected together to effectively form a single contact. These meters have a means of testing the current fuses without having to open the body of the meter. Insert a lead into the V jack, select  on the input selector and then touch the probe tip to the top half of the A and mA uA jacks and you get a reading of between 0 and .5  for the A fuse (F2) and between .995k and 1.005k  for mA uA fuse (F1).

Hmmm... I guess you're right and I misremembered; this is the insides of my 189, which is just a rebadged 87-IV. it also has the (+) and (-) contacts both tied together. Ah well; another brain cell that needs to be returned for regrooving. 

I still feel it would be a crime to bodge it when the proper fix is available and takes aboot 15 minutes.

mnem
 

[mansaxel]

Just another orphant rescued: HP3438A
Low cost then, low cost now, 39 Eur.
That's kind of the price of the four original feets only, that are still in place.   
Ah, and an originally printed operating and service manual. 
It's showing heavy use but is complete and working fine. Some cleaning might help too.

Cool! I've got one too -- had to get the manual separately. The Keysight one was a horrible scan. I mean, kudos to them for trying, but please try a bit harder   

Mine is a bit intermittent, but I think it's related to gunk in the range/function switches; if i press them down it starts working.

Now that I've got the European equivalent to Deoxit, PRF 7-78, I'll try to clean it out. 

7-78 saved me from changing a lot of toggle switches in my mixing desk -- they were very intermittent but once I gave them a little squirt they've been faultless and good as new. Mucho impressed.

[Specmaster]

      https://www.ebay.com/itm/262483877746

This one looks like the genuine article; single-piece overmolded red plastic, not multipart grey plastic like the Chinese knockoffs, and I'm pretty sure I recognize the username. Funny, the cheap knockoffs cost more than this guy now. Saw a couple at $50 plus shipping. 

mnem
 

That is the correct one OK, but the price equates to £34.65 with shipping then there is the risk of customs duty to be paid on top, that is more than 60% of the price I paid for the complete 85  As I said, it does work perfectly OK as it is and should continue to do so forever and a day. If my plan comes to fruition, I'll explain how I intend to put that small defect right when it happens. 

Yeah, I tried heat-shrink and CA as well as a bit of semi-rigid spray bottle tubing I found that was exactly the right diameter to fit over the contacts. Nothing stays put. The problem is that the overmolded plastic actually supports the contacts, not the other way around.

I don't know if that guy will ever be able to get genuine [FLUKE] connector bridges again once those sell out. Myself, I'd just suck it up and do the fix right. That meter is worth it.

If you pot the sockets with epoxy such that sleeved leads can no longer be used, the [FLUKE] gods will smite you, and I will cheer.

mnem
 

The meter will be getting the right item I can assure you, but not at that stupid price while I have other options open to me to explore first. Yes the meter is worth it, but adding up the cost of the part plus the meter, I could get myself a 87 almost.

[mansaxel]

Nah, that's not the real thing.

Also, as I commented on the video, a clock that does not talk NTP or PTP (and no %&€&%(#"%€ SNTP, if I may, please. ), or has a GNSS rx, should at least have a 10MHz/1PPS ref input so it'll actually show the time instead of an opinion. Seriously underwhelmed by most such designer efforts.

Fully agree. My (diy) clocks usually understand DCF77 (built-in receicer or input for demodulated pulses), my proprietary CAN "homebus" protocol, GPS PPS + NMEA, or NTP (broadcast by a local server).

Right on brothers! I mean, if it's more than ±100ns from UTC can you really call it a clock? Amiright, eh? 

It just means the display is more than 30m from the clock element (c~=1ns/ft)

And before my inner vision a virtual Grace Hopper appears holding 30cm of wire and exclaiming 'THIS is one nanosecond!'

That's what the RTT calculation in PTP is for. One can get trivial hardware (like network switches) down to offsets within those 100ns  with a bit of DSCP and related queue management (so that PTP packets get strict priority in the departing queues) together with boundary clock functionality.

[mnementh]

The meter will be getting the right item I can assure you, but not at that stupid price while I have other options open to me to explore first. Yes the meter is worth it, but adding up the cost of the part plus the meter, I could get myself a 87 almost.

mmmokaaaaay... I personally don't feel the price is stupid, considering the meter. 

mnem
*stops searching for the special keyboard with a [SMITE] button on it...*

[Specmaster]

The meter will be getting the right item I can assure you, but not at that stupid price while I have other options open to me to explore first. Yes the meter is worth it, but adding up the cost of the part plus the meter, I could get myself a 87 almost.

mmmokaaaaay... I personally don't feel the price is stupid, considering the meter. 

mnem
*stops searching for the special keyboard with a [SMITE] button on it...*

If it was the only meter I had of that quality, I'd be inclined to agree, but with the Brymen and its 500,000 count and dual displays and the Extech with its tri display along with its 40,000 count plus all of my bench meters, and all of my other flukes etc, I'm not going to be stuck any time soon 

It seems that meters are my addiction though, others its counters, or power supplies etc but hey, this is TEA after all 

[Cerebus]

Well bugger me sideways, it only worked perfectly first time!

Couldn't resist, I soldered up one of those boards with the 2.5x3.5mm 0.5mm pitch QFN version of the 74LVC595 on.



It just worked. No pissing about, no having to finagle things, just printed solder paste, placed parts and reflowed with hot air. Worked perfectly first time. Just for a feeling of scale, the other parts are 0603, 0805 and the LEDS are 1206. The tracks are all 0.25mm.

It tested out fine electrically, no shorts, no opens, does what it was intended to.

The evilly small part in close up. Couldn't be happier with the joints.



I was expecting this to be an uphill journey in learning how to do it right and it turned into a walk in the park. I don't know quite what to do with myself now. At least I've got the otherwise identical HASL finished boards coming next week so perhaps I'll get my dose of finagling in on trying to make such a small part work on a HASL finished board (if it will at all).

[Specmaster]

Well done Cerebus, stencil was more likely the key ingredient here, especially at that fine pitch. How much extra was the stencil? 

[Cerebus]

Well done Cerebus, stencil was more likely the key ingredient here, especially at that fine pitch. How much extra was the stencil? 

£5.14 ! It was a full 38 x 28 cm stencil with that little board the only thing on it, sitting in the centre all lonesome.

I've cut stencils at home on my little craft plotter at 0.5mm pitch and successfully used them to solder MSOP-10 packages, but with the precision that a 0.5mm QFN requires in terms of having just the right quantity of solder paste (especially considering there's a pad under the chip) there was no way that a home cut stencil was going to work for this. A useful side effect is that having trimmed it down to a more manageable size I've got a handy stock of 0.1mm stainless steel shim stock for free.

[beanflying]

C-tick of approval. Painless apart from the paperwork 

[Cerebus]

Hold on, isn't C-tick an Aussie spectrum approvals thing? Does this mean that the super-sekret transmitter chip in the injection thing is true? 

(For the avoidance of doubt, of course I'm joking. I may be an idiot but I'm not insane!)

[tautech]

C-tick of approval. Painless apart from the paperwork 

You really do need a haircut Bean ! 

Monday for us. 
Hate needles despite having given many 100's to livestock.

[beanflying]

C-tick of approval. Painless apart from the paperwork 

You really do need a haircut Bean ! 

Monday for us. 
Hate needles despite having given many 100's to livestock.

At least 50% of the population needs a haircut I reckon. The Personal Santa look is full blown keep the cold out for winter thing at least that is my excuse 

Hold on, isn't C-tick an Aussie spectrum approvals thing? Does this mean that the super-sekret transmitter chip in the injection thing is true? 

(For the avoidance of doubt, of course I'm joking. I may be an idiot but I'm not insane!)

Need conspiracy 'evidence' 

[tautech]

Larry Minor responds to a plea for a day's help from previous employer and gets picked up at 5am for the 2hr drive to the job and leaves the tricolor with us to help yard the cattle to be collected at 1pm......trouble is 'er indoors' decided to watch some Clarksons Farm and there was the mutt properly fixed to the TV and not at all interested in 'jobs' when instead there were sheep on TV to keep an eye on. 
Apparently even the sound of the quad bike starting only had her glance at the door then right back to the TV when at any other time she'd have skated out the door to be of help.....square eyed dog !

So tautech had to be the dog again...FFS twice in 2 weeks ! 
At least the truck wasn't an hour early like a fortnight ago. 

[Cerebus]

[Pats Tautech on the head.] "Would ou like bone? Would ou like a bone?"

Bed calls...

[0culus]

Some TWT porn for your viewing pleasure. I like how simple these 490 series amplifiers really are. The RF goes in the front panel, goes through the TWT, and comes out bigger. That's it.

[vk6zgo]

I was going to ask what a Grafana was. Since it appears to be related to IT and software that's OK, I don't want to know. 

I thought it sounded like an Italian ice confection!

[cyclin_al]

https://www.dx.com/p/creative-aircraft-gyro-support-car-air-outlet-mobile-phone-support-mouse-navigation-universal-bracket-2746652.html

OMG... this has to be the height of something... and the nadir of something else. It is the "connected age" equivalent of a propeller beanie; a dash-vent smartPwn holder with decorative propellers. 

There is just a universe of fail here; starting with the egregious pointlessness of it all, leading to the inevitable incapability to perform its basic function and finishing with the fact it is designed such that it will place spinning propellers right over the touchscreen. 

And somebody got paid to design this fucking thing.

mnem

Notice in the photo that the driver has very very small hands.
Even then, they are missing 3 fingers.... 

I think I will pass on that one 

[vk6zgo]

Larry Minor responds to a plea for a day's help from previous employer and gets picked up at 5am for the 2hr drive to the job and leaves the tricolor with us to help yard the cattle to be collected at 1pm......trouble is 'er indoors' decided to watch some Clarksons Farm and there was the mutt properly fixed to the TV and not at all interested in 'jobs' when instead there were sheep on TV to keep an eye on. 
Apparently even the sound of the quad bike starting only had her glance at the door then right back to the TV when at any other time she'd have skated out the door to be of help.....square eyed dog !

So tautech had to be the dog again...FFS twice in 2 weeks ! 
At least the truck wasn't an hour early like a fortnight ago. 

Amazing the financial outlay that went into the changeover from analog to digital TV just so that dogs could watch it!

Joking aside, none of my dogs had ever shown interest in the TV picture, until the present lot.
I can only put it down to analog not working with dog persistence of vision, whereas digital does.

[cyclin_al]

C-tick of approval. Painless apart from the paperwork 

You really do need a haircut Bean ! 

Monday for us. 
Hate needles despite having given many 100's to livestock.

Don't you have any livestock shears that you could lend to bean?

-- looks sideways at the repair queue and the dog clippers that need cleaning

[cyclin_al]

Shipping is a mixed bag of results this week.

Tool Time widda ToolDwagon:
The pliers are GearWrench; like most of their products (evidently, an Apex Tools brand up here), quality is decent and if you can get them on sale you can get a great deal on a tool you'll use for years or even decades. The jaws are ground evenly with a well-centered point, and they meet close enough to pull a single hair off my arm without cutting it.

Earlier this week I received an email from PrincessAuto that they had cancelled the pliers from my order. 
Purolator shows up the day before yesterday with a large box containing all the other items I added to the order in order to meet the threshold for free shipping.
However, I found a lonely pair of pliers hidden underneath all the packing materials 

Purolator returned once again this morning with a rather large and lightweight box.  After removing lots of packing material, I was about to conclude there was nothing in the box.
It turns out hidden in the corner, Princess Auto sent that last set of pliers remaining in stock from the main warehouse. 

Final result is that my toolboxes are very happy:


Purolator also showed up this afternoon, but the driver said that he remembers delivering my box (the pliers) to me this morning.
I am absolutely certain that he has a box in his truck containing a set of leads with 4-wire kelvin clips. 
He left again without giving me my package.
In this case, I believe the tracking information that the leads are on that truck.

Purolator also stopped by yesterday with some RC vehicle parts:

It looks like I received these plastic differential housings.  Totally not what I ordered or need.
What I need is this complete front differential assembly advertised as containing metal gears:

I have contacted the seller, who has asked me to check the box again.
It looks like I may have to get my first experience raising up the issue with PayPal.
The remainder of this particular order is fortunately correct.
The silver lining is that recent events (bashing the other truck) means that I can repair the second truck with these parts:


This is all significant since the Purolator depot is about 60 km from where I live.
I have a feeling Purolator will be coming back tomorrow (if I am lucky).   
That likely comes out to close to 600km, when it could have all been done in a single trip with a slight delay and good planning.
A slight delay of a day or two is negligible after waiting up to a month...

Had to drive into the capital city today.

Stopped by the nearest Purolator depot and picked up my 4-wire kelvin clips.   Sure enough, the paperwork shows a failed delivery attempt July 29th!
Yes, a delivery failure when the truck was in my driveway and I spoke with the driver! 

With other business it was about 140 km round trip.