Author Topic: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope  (Read 5672 times)

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Offline oh_noTopic starter

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Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« on: September 22, 2020, 07:01:31 pm »
In the video below, what's that device  --to the left of the o'scope --that probe leads (from scope) are connected to?
Brand and model number would be cool! Thx.

 

Offline Benta

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #1 on: September 22, 2020, 07:59:25 pm »
Differential probe to save you from killing yourself. Looks home made..

 

Offline oh_noTopic starter

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #2 on: September 22, 2020, 08:32:47 pm »
Looks home made..
I see a name on the case (brand / model??). Maybe it was re-purposed from another device's case.
Anyway, to measure noise at the sensitivity of that shown in the video (milli-volts, maybe micro-volts), should the diff. probe design be anything special?
 

Offline oh_noTopic starter

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #3 on: September 22, 2020, 08:52:58 pm »
Looks home made..
Anyway, to measure noise at the sensitivity of that shown in the video (milli-volts, maybe micro-volts), should the diff. probe design be anything special?
Well, I assume the tips Shahrirar gives here are a good place to start ....
https://youtu.be/d_Ybe6xnMIg

... now, let's find one that doesn't break the bank, but still provides good, reliable, and repeatable performance.
 

Offline james_s

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #4 on: September 22, 2020, 09:53:58 pm »
Why does every beginner always want to measure mains with their scope? That's not really what scopes are intended to do, and you are not likely to learn much. If you do have a need to scope such things buy a differential probe, there are deals to be had, I have two different ones that I got for around $100 each.
 
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Offline oh_noTopic starter

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #5 on: September 22, 2020, 11:39:20 pm »
That's not really what scopes are intended to do, and you are not likely to learn much. If you do have a need to scope such things buy a differential probe, there are deals to be had, I have two different ones that I got for around $100 each.
Did you REALLY even read thru this thread before you posted this?
 

Offline joeqsmith

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #6 on: September 22, 2020, 11:59:54 pm »
That's not really what scopes are intended to do, and you are not likely to learn much. If you do have a need to scope such things buy a differential probe, there are deals to be had, I have two different ones that I got for around $100 each.
Did you REALLY even read thru this thread before you posted this?
I did and I don't see a reason for you to become defensive about it.    I tend to agree that it is a common theme with beginners.  One thing you may want to consider posting your question under the video you linked.   They may explain where it came from.

I didn't follow what the person in the video was describing with the common mode and digital ICs or what ever they were going on about.   I had made my own LISN.       

At one point I was wanting to look at the mains as well and just tossed a transformer and LEM sensor into  a box.   The transformer is an odd looking metal can (posted about it here) that had enough BW to get me into the 40th harmonic.   A little over sampling and some software to model the DSO and take care of some of the non-linearities.  This video goes over the math and shows it in operation.   


Offline james_s

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #7 on: September 23, 2020, 05:09:48 am »
Did you REALLY even read thru this thread before you posted this?

Yes, and I just read it all again and I still don't see anything that would make me change what I said. What are you getting upset about? Have you not seen the dozens of other posts by noobs wanting to look at the mains with a scope?
 
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Offline tggzzz

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #8 on: September 23, 2020, 07:26:27 am »
That's not really what scopes are intended to do, and you are not likely to learn much. If you do have a need to scope such things buy a differential probe, there are deals to be had, I have two different ones that I got for around $100 each.
Did you REALLY even read thru this thread before you posted this?

Given what you wrote, the response is not unreasonable. Of course none of us can guess what you didn't write!

You really should read and understand the safety and praxis references in
https://entertaininghacks.wordpress.com/library-2/scope-probe-reference-material/
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
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Offline oh_noTopic starter

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #9 on: September 23, 2020, 07:42:37 am »
Did you REALLY even read thru this thread before you posted this?

What are you getting upset about?
I am ENTERTAINED that it is you who is upset by my response.
Quote
Have you not seen the dozens of other posts by noobs wanting to look at the mains with a scope?
No. And there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with wanting to look at mains with the scope .... with the proper precautions. Hence the orig. query. Again ... it might help if you read the orig query a bit more CAREFULLY before posting pointless remarks.
 

Offline oh_noTopic starter

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #10 on: September 23, 2020, 07:45:04 am »
That's not really what scopes are intended to do, and you are not likely to learn much. If you do have a need to scope such things buy a differential probe, there are deals to be had, I have two different ones that I got for around $100 each.
Did you REALLY even read thru this thread before you posted this?

Given what you wrote, the response is not unreasonable. Of course none of us can guess what you didn't write!

You really should read and understand the safety and praxis references in
https://entertaininghacks.wordpress.com/library-2/scope-probe-reference-material/
Your response makes absolutely no sense.
 

Online tautech

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #11 on: September 23, 2020, 07:50:26 am »
And there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with wanting to look at mains with the scope .... with the proper precautions.
And what might those be ?
You need understand this is a worldwide forum with readers from all levels of experience and competence therefore generic advice is to NOT connect a scope to mains.
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Offline oh_noTopic starter

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #12 on: September 23, 2020, 07:53:17 am »
  This video goes over the math and shows it in operation.   


???????????????????????????????????????????????
Not sure why you linked this video ??????????????????????? The one in which you made your own DIY perfboard diff. probe is more topical.
 

Offline oh_noTopic starter

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #13 on: September 23, 2020, 08:01:09 am »
And there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with wanting to look at mains with the scope .... with the proper precautions.
And what might those be ?
You need understand this is a worldwide forum with readers from all levels of experience and competence therefore generic advice is to NOT connect a scope to mains.
Y'all are seeing issues that were never part of my orig queries. Go back to the top and re-read my posts. I did not ask for opinions on safety. And it is a bit presumptuous of anyone to assume  "levels of experience" based on post count or newness to this forum.
If you want to help, see the top post.
 

Offline tggzzz

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #14 on: September 23, 2020, 08:47:15 am »
And there is absolutely NOTHING wrong with wanting to look at mains with the scope .... with the proper precautions.
And what might those be ?
You need understand this is a worldwide forum with readers from all levels of experience and competence therefore generic advice is to NOT connect a scope to mains.
Y'all are seeing issues that were never part of my orig queries. Go back to the top and re-read my posts. I did not ask for opinions on safety. And it is a bit presumptuous of anyone to assume  "levels of experience" based on post count or newness to this forum.

We use our very considerable experience to infer experience and knowledge (and lack of it) from the quality of the writing, the quality of the question, and other aspects.

Quote
If you want to help, see the top post.

If you actually want help, change your attitude.
There are lies, damned lies, statistics - and ADC/DAC specs.
Glider pilot's aphorism: "there is no substitute for span". Retort: "There is a substitute: skill+imagination. But you can buy span".
Having fun doing more, with less
 
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Online Ian.M

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #15 on: September 23, 2020, 09:46:56 am »
The Tripp-lite video linked by the O.P is pure unadulterated bullsh!t and marketing w@nk!  Apart from a stack of multi-socket adapters that would make a fire-marshal wince, the 0.5V  'limit' for ground noise comes from near-obsolete bipolar TTL logic thresholds and has nothing whatsoever to do with noise voltages measured between Neutral and Ground at the wall outlet, which may (or may not) accurately represent common mode noise.

Basically TTL logic chips were built of bipolar transistors, and couldn't pull a logic '0' output right down to 0V due to the low side output transistor's Vce_sat.  This was about 0.3V, maybe a bit lower in ideal circumstances.   The specified logic '0' input threshold was 0.8V, below which any signal was guaranteed to be seen as a '0'.  The actual threshold at which the gate switched would be a bit higher, between the specified logic '0' and logic '1' thresholds, but you couldn't count on the extra margin.  Subtract 0.3V from 0.8V and you get 0.5V, which is the maximum amplitude 'ground bounce' that could be tolerated at the Gnd (0V) pin of a TTL chip with respect to the Gnd pin of any other chip it was connected to.  This is all low voltage 5V DC stuff, nothing whatsoever to do with the power coming from the wall.  There certainly wouldn't be a connection from Neutral to the logic board.  Also, PSUs don't (and never did) contain TTL logic connected between Neutral and Ground on the input side!

The demo in itself is rather suspicious.  Its obvious something is filtering out the 60Hz power-line fundamental frequency from the Tripp-lite 'engineer's scope display.  There shouldn't be very much of it on the Neutral to Ground trace, but I would expect some signs of it.  On the raw Line to Ground signal, there is a whopping great 117V RMS, 331V pk-pk 60Hz sine wave, probably with distorted peaks ('flat-topping') due to other loads in the building and neighborhood consisting of SMPSUs without good power factor correction, with the line noise riding on top of it.  Obviously that's undesirable when you are trying to measure low amplitude noise on top of it as most scopes wont have the resolution to resolve small signals riding on one several orders of magnitude larger.  Filtering or cancelling out the fundamental frequency to a sufficient degree to be able to directly measure noise at the tens of mV level would be extremely challenging.  You've got to attenuate it by over five orders of magnitude without significantly attenuating the noise you are trying to measure.  This would be possible if the mains supply was a fixed frequency pure sine wave, but it drifts slightly with the load on the grid, with up to +/-0.05Hz variation being entirely normal and excursions up to about +/-0.1Hz not unusual.  This makes it impractical to use a high Q notch filter to reduce the fundamental by sufficient orders of magnitude (as you'd have to keep tweaking its tuning to follow the line frequency to get adequate rejection), so either the 'magic box' measurement interface is filtering out *ALL* low frequency signals including low frequency noise, or its doing some very complicated DSP to track the fundamental frequency and its odd harmonics (from the 'flat-topping') and actively cancel them.   In practice, its commonest to simply high pass filter the power line signal and effectively ignore all noise below the filter cut-off frequency.

If I was a suspicious sort, I'd not want to bet that the 'magic box' wasn't entirely rigged, maybe with a high bit rate audio player loaded with tracks of various sorts of noise, controlled remotely by someone off-camera.
« Last Edit: September 23, 2020, 10:00:21 am by Ian.M »
 
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Offline joeqsmith

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #16 on: September 23, 2020, 06:42:27 pm »
  This video goes over the math and shows it in operation.   


???????????????????????????????????????????????
Not sure why you linked this video ??????????????????????? The one in which you made your own DIY perfboard diff. probe is more topical.

Seems like the standard for THD was 40 harmonics up.  Video just shows the math to correct for the scopes errors.   That one differential probe (I showed three) certainly has a higher bandwidth but it may not be good enough for what you want.  These are fairly inexpensive to buy. 

I noticed you had not requested any information from the company who created the video you links so I have asked for you. 


The Tripp-lite video linked by the O.P is pure unadulterated bullsh!t and marketing w@nk!  Apart from a stack of multi-socket adapters that would make a fire-marshal wince, the 0.5V  'limit' for ground noise comes from near-obsolete bipolar TTL logic thresholds and has nothing whatsoever to do with noise voltages measured between Neutral and Ground at the wall outlet, which may (or may not) accurately represent common mode noise.
....
If I was a suspicious sort, I'd not want to bet that the 'magic box' wasn't entirely rigged, maybe with a high bit rate audio player loaded with tracks of various sorts of noise, controlled remotely by someone off-camera.

Any time I have used digital logic, there may be two or more layers of power supplies.  All with a fairly good PSRR.  I was trying to think of why they felt it made a good example.    I didn't get anything out of the video, at least nothing that would suggest I should buy their products.   

I doubt they rigged anything but I did feel I was being trolled by their marketing.
 
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Offline james_s

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #17 on: September 23, 2020, 07:52:19 pm »
Y'all are seeing issues that were never part of my orig queries. Go back to the top and re-read my posts. I did not ask for opinions on safety. And it is a bit presumptuous of anyone to assume  "levels of experience" based on post count or newness to this forum.
If you want to help, see the top post.

Why is it unreasonable to assume that? Your top post contains very little information. None of us know you, none of us know how much you know, none of us have any idea how experienced you are so we can only guess. In the absence of any of this naturally we are going to assume the lowest level of knowledge and given the safety issues involved in anything mains related it should be expected that people are going to warn you of them. Frankly your attitude is going to make things difficult for you here, we are not paid consultants here to serve you, we are not tech support, we are members of a global community consisting of people of all walks of life and experience levels. We volunteer our time to answer questions for each other and discuss engineering related topics, social interaction is a two way street. You don't make a lot of friends by walking into a room full of strangers and getting all bent out of shape when you don't immediately get exactly the support you are wanting. Joining a forum is much like walking into a pub you've never been to, you can't just expect everyone to know who you are and treat you as their friend as soon as you walk in the door.
 
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Offline oh_noTopic starter

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #18 on: September 23, 2020, 08:36:29 pm »
How about this ... an improved AC filtering scheme?
« Last Edit: September 23, 2020, 08:38:16 pm by oh_no »
 

Offline joeqsmith

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #19 on: September 23, 2020, 08:53:29 pm »
I must not be the target audience as I still don't see the point of the filter, or the point of making a video of the filter or the point of posting the video of the filter.... :popcorn:
 
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Offline rstofer

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #20 on: September 23, 2020, 09:20:44 pm »
« Last Edit: September 23, 2020, 09:23:01 pm by rstofer »
 
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Offline Benta

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #21 on: September 23, 2020, 09:30:42 pm »
Why are you all attacking this new poster?
The original question was reasonable.

People, this is the "beginners" section. Cool down.

 

Offline bdunham7

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #22 on: September 23, 2020, 10:47:01 pm »
In the video below, what's that device  --to the left of the o'scope --that probe leads (from scope) are connected to?
Brand and model number would be cool! Thx.

I don't know the exact model they have there, but it is some form of high-pass filter that allows you to see the HF noise without passing any of the fundamental 50/60Hz mains power.  It appears to have three ouputs, but I don't know how they are isolated or any details like that.  It would be similar in function to this:

https://www.bondline.com.au/images/uploads/images/Bondline_OnFilter_AN%20EMI%20Adapters.pdf
A 3.5 digit 4.5 digit 5 digit 5.5 digit 6.5 digit 7.5 digit DMM is good enough for most people.
 

Offline joeqsmith

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #23 on: September 23, 2020, 11:04:17 pm »
How about this ... an improved AC filtering scheme?
Video link removed...

Maybe not!

https://www.dailyexaminer.com.au/news/electricity-time-bombs-dirty-electricity-devices-p/2363843/

That's a nice find.  I can believe both that people would fall pray to it and that the devices could cause damage.   

Online Brumby

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Re: Measuring mains AC noise with o'scope
« Reply #24 on: September 23, 2020, 11:16:58 pm »
Why are you all attacking this new poster?
I don't see attacks.  I see warnings ... warnings that the OP is taking exception to.

Quote
The original question was reasonable.
It may have been reasonable, but asking that specific question demonstrated a fundamental lack of knowledge in that area, which raises the question of safety.

With an absolute lack of knowledge about the background of the OP, do we say something - or do we say nothing and pray they don't destroy equipment/incinerate a building/kill themselves ... or kill others?  (Call me melodramatic if you must - but you know these are possibilities.)

My vote is: to say something.

Quote
People, this is the "beginners" section. Cool down.
Yes, this IS the "beginners" section - which is why certain safety considerations are being brought to the fore.

As I see it, it's the OP that is getting hot under the collar because their expertise is being doubted.  This can be easily remedied by the OP providing some background.  Failing that, we are forced to consider whether this is a case of the Dunning–Kruger effect in play.



Generally, we don't like to see members get blown up one way or another.
 
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