Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread

[AVGresponding]

Most suspect scope award goes to https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313671287713

Giblets... that is crusty...

[ch_scr]

What bit of kit in your lab doesn't get much in the way of "lab" use, but does get (mis)used? Mine's my HP 6002A 200W 10A 50V bench supply that seems to spend more time as a 12V lead acid battery charger than doing anything properly 'electronics-y'.

(In gemany, raw minced meat with raw onion rings on bun is a well loved treat for e.g. co workers giving a birthday breakfast)
We use our hot air guns to make buns with in-situ baked "burger patty" from the leftovers for lunch...

[Robert763]

I made progress on the little GPSDO NMEA data project. I managed to get some basic stuff  - time and # of satellites printed out the serial monitor (not on the tiny OLED screen yet) at least in a formatted manner. I'm using a neat library that makes it a lot easier - TinyGPS++ here -

http://arduiniana.org/libraries/tinygpsplus/

This is what my GPSDO sends out every second -

$GPVTG,,T,,M,0.128,N,0.237,K,D*2B
$GPGGA,111046.00,3243.81872,N,09728.40863,W,2,12,0.88,242.5,M,-24.8,M,,0000*60
$GPGSA,A,3,21,51,30,03,46,01,07,13,06,22,19,14,1.47,0.88,1.18*02
$GPGSV,5,1,18,01,31,048,28,03,07,093,20,06,26,190,28,07,15,155,28*75
$GPGSV,5,2,18,13,22,255,23,14,64,037,33,15,07,281,11,17,71,337,34*7D
$GPGSV,5,3,18,19,58,266,21,21,11,039,20,22,08,072,22,24,06,321,*74
$GPGSV,5,4,18,28,62,355,14,29,35,295,,30,48,170,31,46,39,229,29*7B
$GPGSV,5,5,18,48,42,224,33,51,50,198,31*7D
$GPGLL,3243.81872,N,09728.40863,W,111046.00,A,D*72
$GPRMC,111047.00,A,3243.81869,N,09728.40858,W,0.105,,160821,,,D*60

At first I was getting the same time stamp sent out from the TinyGPS "gps.time.isUpdated()" twice a second because it legitimately found the time listed two times in two different sentences (shown in bold above). I put in a test so that if the time had the same seconds to not parse it again. But I think now that I am more familiar with TinyGPS I can do it another way. Just started playing with it this morning. I need to see how much I can cram on the little screen. But if I need a bigger one I can obtain it at a reasonable cost.

I thought I'd try out the Arduino IDE Beta 2.0.0-beta11. When it is sent serial data from the running program its serial monitor starts getting real laggy, like maybe you might think you did something wrong (I thought I did a long time ago but that turned out to be an error on my part). Then I used another program to connect to the Arduino serial port and it ran perfectly fine for an hour. I guess that's why they call the Beta IDE "Experimental" 

Probabally bit banging a I/O pin (badly) rather than using the serial hardware on the chip. I once did firmware  for the engineering devlopment of a mechanical wiget that needed a sttere etc and simple Go/Stop control over serial (interface with legacy system). I'm no programmer can't get on with C and used PIC Basic Pro complied Basic. Took me a few hours to write. When the hardware was designed It went to the "proper" programers to write in C. Two weeks latr thay came back and asked for a PIC with more memory  My code used less than 1/4 of the available memory. I was of couse using the USART in the PIC for serial (simple 8 bit PIC with no pin mapping). Turns out they were using some bought in "universal" comms libary that did eveything by bit banging. I talked to them about the USART and they just looked blank.  The wiget went to production with the engineering code. It never needed any updates.

[Robert763]

It's all good fun until he starts asking where he could find a cheap, big klystron. 

Nahhh...klystrons are fairly narrowband. If he asks where he can get a coupled cavity TWT and a BWO to drive it, then I'll worry. 

No, brute force electronic countermeasures is so passe. Stealth is the way. work out what muxes she uses most and how long a noise burst is needed to upset the decoder then just inject that. Much harder to detect.
Beware that she may go to cable though.

[McBryce]

Most suspect scope award goes to https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313671287713

Here's a "so crusty it made itself look steampunk" Hickok Scope, just in case you don't win that auction: https://www.ebay.de/itm/193700185615

McBryce.

[bd139]

It's all good fun until he starts asking where he could find a cheap, big klystron. 

Nahhh...klystrons are fairly narrowband. If he asks where he can get a coupled cavity TWT and a BWO to drive it, then I'll worry. 

No, brute force electronic countermeasures is so passe. Stealth is the way. work out what muxes she uses most and how long a noise burst is needed to upset the decoder then just inject that. Much harder to detect.
Beware that she may go to cable though.

That’s even easier. Ram a pin through the cable and trim it flush

[ch_scr]

It's all good fun until he starts asking where he could find a cheap, big klystron. 

Nahhh...klystrons are fairly narrowband. If he asks where he can get a coupled cavity TWT and a BWO to drive it, then I'll worry. 

No, brute force electronic countermeasures is so passe. Stealth is the way. work out what muxes she uses most and how long a noise burst is needed to upset the decoder then just inject that. Much harder to detect.
Beware that she may go to cable though.

I remember scanning around with an RTL-SDR stick a few years ago and finding an stray narrow FM signal on a few hundred Mhz - not any ISM band I could recognize - that turned out to be audio from a TV. Not sure if they had an wireless headphone transmitter from some weird part of the world or it was blasting out of the TV. If the latter, it should be susceptible in the other direction as well...

[capt bullshot]

Spent some time yesterday diagnosing one of my Anritsu MG3633 signal generators. A few weeks ago, it released a small quantum of magic smoke smell, and the output signal wasn't as stable as expected anymore, but apparently continued working. So I had a closer look at the output now and found it wasn't that good at all - time for repair.

...

So I think about bodging some MMIC in here for further checks until the spare parts arrive to see if there's more damage.

Success!
Found this MMIC amplifier "board" that I had built some time ago for testing purposes and temporarily connected it to the pads of the defective UPD1677.




Of course, this amplifier has a different gain from what the original part does, but it works good enough to see a good output signal, as I'm used to see from these signal generators.



So I'll just have to stash this MG3633 and its guts away for some weeks until the replacement parts arrive, put in a new amplifier, put everything together again and hopefully I'll have a working as normal sig gen again.

[Vince]

Most suspect scope award goes to https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313671287713

Giblets... that is crusty...

Have a couple good ones here as well !

https://www.leboncoin.fr/bricolage/2037590332.htm

and

https://www.leboncoin.fr/collection/2035985058.htm


This one is clean but not so sure about value for money ! 

https://www.leboncoin.fr/collection/1845407573.htm

[mansaxel]

Most suspect scope award goes to https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313671287713

Krusty the Klown, that.

[capt bullshot]

BTW, this is the defective uPC1677 amplifier, one can figure there's a slight damage at the center line at the side of the package where the smoke might have escaped ...

[mansaxel]

Turns out they were using some bought in "universal" comms libary that did eveything by bit banging. I talked to them about the USART and they just looked blank.

They should try writing modern video games using that technique. That'll teach'em.

[Specmaster]

Most suspect scope award goes to https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313671287713

WTF!!

[capt bullshot]

It's all good fun until he starts asking where he could find a cheap, big klystron. 

Nahhh...klystrons are fairly narrowband. If he asks where he can get a coupled cavity TWT and a BWO to drive it, then I'll worry. 

No, brute force electronic countermeasures is so passe. Stealth is the way. work out what muxes she uses most and how long a noise burst is needed to upset the decoder then just inject that. Much harder to detect.
Beware that she may go to cable though.

I remember scanning around with an RTL-SDR stick a few years ago and finding an stray narrow FM signal on a few hundred Mhz - not any ISM band I could recognize - that turned out to be audio from a TV. Not sure if they had an wireless headphone transmitter from some weird part of the world or it was blasting out of the TV. If the latter, it should be susceptible in the other direction as well...

Some years ago, I found such kind of signal in the 860MHz range - it was the elderly neighbours wireless TV headphone, indeed.

[bd139]

Most suspect scope award goes to https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313671287713

WTF!!

My favourite bit is the anode cable clearly hanging out the front.

[Specmaster]

It seems I'm having some luck lately on eBay, just discovered that I'd also won myself this DSA511, not sure why I did it apart from I remember thinking a while back that knobs like that tend to be reasonably expensive, oh well, just have to wait and see what happens when it arrives 

In other news, I got a message to say that the cheap Fluke has been posted already 

[BU508A]

Operating here in bitseeker-catch-up-mode ....     

Where can I find such a utopia? 

Ask Olivia, she'll know. 

https://youtu.be/cLi8fTlDEag

[med6753]

Yesterday it was more "East Enders" and British version of "Law and Order". This morning she wakes up before me and now it's "Doc Martin". When I take her home later today I'm going to have to set up at least 3 bug bombs to completely cleanse the place. 

Edit....maybe I need to set up some kind of jammer. 

 

[xrunner]

Most suspect scope award goes to https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313671287713

WTF!!

My favourite bit is the anode cable clearly hanging out the front.

Oh dear ... just got up to that. 



WTF is the point? Lost the original case I guess, or ... don't ask. 

[med6753]

Most suspect scope award goes to https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313671287713

WTF!!

My favourite bit is the anode cable clearly hanging out the front.

Oh dear ... just got up to that. 



WTF is the point? Lost the original case I guess, or ... don't ask. 

  is right. If I were to make a wooden case for scope it would look 10X better than that abortion. 

[McBryce]

Most suspect scope award goes to https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/313671287713

WTF!!

My favourite bit is the anode cable clearly hanging out the front.

Oh dear ... just got up to that. 



WTF is the point? Lost the original case I guess, or ... don't ask. 

  is right. If I were to make a wooden case for scope it would look 10X better than that abortion. 

... and paint it blue.

McBryce.

[DC1MC]

BTW, this is the defective uPC1677 amplifier, one can figure there's a slight damage at the center line at the side of the package where the smoke might have escaped ...

Use some sharp knife and split it

[AVGresponding]

This and some other crusty old stuff from what looks like a ham having a clearout in Chelford:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284448291325

[BU508A]

My modest report of the Metrology Meeting 2021 in Stuttgart for TEA.

Yesterday I've joined in personal the MM2021 in Stuttgart.
In short: IT! WAS! AWESOME! 
Many many thanks to the organizers of this event, Branadic and his colleague Claudia.
Also a big "Thank you!" to Hahn-Schickard which we were allowed to use their space for this event.

And last but not least many thanks to all the contributors¹. Their presentations were full packed with lots of information,
insights, data and background stories, which were interesting AND entertaining at the same time.

The agenda can be found here.

The speakers in detail are:

- Opening, André Bülau
- Nikolai Beev, CERN
- Guido Weckwerth, wekomm GmbH
- John Pickering, Metron Designs Ltd (one of the founders of Datron)
- Ben Riddle, Keysight¹
- Eric Modica, Analog Devices

This must be some kind of voltnuts heaven ... 

It was also very nice to see some other voltnuts with all their gear, doing measurements, comparing results, discussing details.

I cannot say it in better words than: We had a great time! Looking forward to the next Metrology Meeting!

Other voices about the MM2021 can be found here.

And this is the contribution to TEA: some pictures of all the gear the people brought to the MM.
Btw, we had there two of the 7081 but I missed it somehow to take a picture of the second one. Sorry.



Some quotes during the talks:

Presentation from Nikolai Beev, CERN about an open hardware 8.5 digit digitizer.
Question to Niloklai: "Have you considered to do some software corrections to your ADC?"
Nikolai: "Yes, but we have decided, we don't need that."
Voltnuts auditorium:

wekomm is the company, which has sent Dave some of their high precision resistors. https://youtu.be/dIXbjNb82xk

Guido: "You may remember the resistors we've sent five years ago to Dave from the EEVBlog. Well, those resistors have nothing in common with the ones we are producing today."
Guido: "Well. Except for the case."

Edit:
wekomm is also the company, which did the renew of the analog parts for the black 3458A.

John Pickering told us a lot of stories about how he met once Dave and Bill, founding and running Datron, founding Metron and working together with Nikolai from CERN (ADR1000).

Eric, during the presentation of the ADR1000: "Customers are very happy with the LTZ1000."
Then, he was showing some specs in detail of the ADR1000
John Pickering in the chat: "Now I'm not happy with the LTZ1000 anymore."

Edit:
Forget one from Eric's presentation:
Q: "How did you manage to reduce the noise on about 50% of the ADR1000 related to the LTZ1000?
Eric: "We had luck."

¹ Sadly, the lawyers from Keysight pulled an ugly stunt and called off Ben Riddle, because of NDAs, intellectual properties and other stupid reasons.
Keysight is working really hard to permanently damage their reputation.     

[Specmaster]

This and some other crusty old stuff from what looks like a ham having a clearout in Chelford:

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/284448291325

Nah, thats just normal tarnishing etc that happens when stored in a shed. Most of that will clean up nicely.