I bought a Sony DPT-S1 e-reader thing. I'd been looking for one for a while, but they are pretty difficult to find (in Europe at least) for a decent price. I have a standard sized e-reader with all my datasheets / docs stored on it, but A4 pages are unreadable without zooming and scrolling. With the DPT I can reference the datasheets a lot more comfortably.
McBryce.
Got myself another oldtimer from Knick, this time it's a mV meter that goes down to 150uV fullscale (yes, i definitely "needed" another mV meter).
Classic case of "well, it looked smaller when i bought it", this thing dwarfs the BM235.
As a follow up to my post
hereI found out the SN-28B isn't "The One" as far as crimpers for the header pins. After more research "The One" is the Engineer brand PA-09. It simply does the job better than the SN-28B crimper you see sold with a lot of sets. Even though the SN-28B does both crimps at the same time, they aren't as perfect as the PA-09. So now I have one.
I really like sensors. Always have. I know well that the accuracy of any sensor depends on your ability to evaluate it against standards. To be sure, a sensor can still have some utility in the absence of such evaluations, but I know that one should never forget the dependency on standards.
Further, I would state categorically that I would not recommend that anyone go cheap with any safety product. That being said, I picked up one of these:
~US$30
https://www.amazon.com/Portable-Natural-Detector-Combustible-Flammable/dp/B08MDX5F1CI tested it out against a gas stove; quick lit and extinguished and held on for a few seconds without lighting. The product has a decent response and that was encouraging.
I tested it with an open bottle of 99% EtOH and it also alarmed.
Close inspection reveals that the sensor is a Winsen device - my guess is a ZP04. Not sure if/when I will break it down.
New IT-M7721 AC Power source.
First impressions:
Fan very high pitch and noisy.
Looks like some damage to Enter switch on front panel.
Remote interface optional. IT7321 (BK9801) had LAN, USB and RS232 as standard.
First impressions:
Fan very high pitch and noisy.
And an uncomfortable buzz during power on. Also, fan quality control is bad, some are quieter, some are noisier when output is enabled but not loaded. We have three of those, and they all sound differently.
Otherwise the electrical performance is good, the size is small, and the price, nothing beats free gears. We got them for free, so nothing to complain about.
Damm, just noticed Power factor is only 2 decimal places, IT7321 (BK9801) had 3 decimal places, the spec I'm working to says I need greater than 0.99 power factor, so 3rd decimal place is important to me believe it or not. Blueskull, do you know if 3 decimal place for PF available through remote interface?
Today I was happy to sort through a big parcel that arrived- some measuring gizmos, and some Photodiodes and Opamps not in the picture.
As I am also doing some work on a breadboard (and an Arduino is also waiting for me) some 4mm to Dupont cables were very nice, so that i can put those directly to my multimeter.
I also got a BNC to dupont cable for connecting that to a scope.
And some small nifty adapters to connect some wire to BNC, that my scope can be happy too
New IT-M7721 AC Power source.
First impressions:
Fan very high pitch and noisy.
Looks like some damage to Enter switch on front panel.
Remote interface optional. IT7321 (BK9801) had LAN, USB and RS232 as standard.
May I ask, how much you paid for this nice AC psu
I ran out of small heatshrink tubing again. So decided to fix that once and for all. Bought 50m (10 x 5m) each of 2mm, 3mm and 5mm dia heatshink from an Aliexpress store. This will be a lifetime supply. No really, it will, I'm 65 and can't imagine I'd use this up.
It arrived today. In a remarkably small package. I wondered how they got it that small. On opening, turns out they tightly rolled each length and stuffed it into a small ziplock bag. Pretty clever way to minimize postage cost.
But... the result is a crimp in the tubes, every few cm. Rats... It's not _important_, the crimps go away when shrinking the tube, but they are annoying when cutting a lot of short lengths and fitting on wires, etc. Oh well. Now I have a lifetime supply of annoyingly crimped heatshrink.
The longer they're left in the little bags the worse the crimps will get, so I unrolled and large-bagged them all. Took a while. I'd have rather paid a bit more for postage, and received it in natural-curve sized rolls.
Nice.
Now you'll want the same size sleeve in different colors !
It never ends !
It arrived today. In a remarkably small package. I wondered how they got it that small. On opening, turns out they tightly rolled each length and stuffed it into a small ziplock bag. Pretty clever way to minimize postage cost.
Only in countries where labour is borderline free will this be a sensible way to get an edge on the competition. Especially since it does nothing for the weight, and I assume that, postal-rately, weight still trumps volume when the sleeve is expanded to its natural circumference.
Food for thought. I am not without guilt -- I just managed to get 50 DPDT toggle switches for 1/4" hole, from China, where buying them from someone like Mouser or even TDM would be prohibitively expensive for my renovation project. Am happy, though, that they evaded the customs fees (of which not the import VAT but instead the handling fee more often is the prohibitive one) somehow.
Another purchase turned up yesterday, 5 T-shirts from the UK. UK mail and parcels get worse handling than China since 2021-01-01, so on top of 2-week delay, was slapped with VAT and import handling.
But it sure must be good for business to be liberated from the tyrants in Brussels. Oh, yeah.
I just fetched a late (1989) HP5335A Counter in nice working condition from 20 km away for 285 Euro.
It runs both, short and long self test without problems and shows the GPIB "Addr." with the ".", meaning it has the newer firmware.
the Pabst fan is roaring like a V8 engine but delivers a substancial airflow.
The power button needs re-gluing but I have it at least. Any tip what glue would be best? Hot glue, epoxy, ...?
Edit 15.03.21: Meanwhile I managed to drill and cut rests of the white bar out of the button. The remaining bar had a short length left to stick into the button. So it was easy to mount with a little hot glue.
The picture shows a 1 kHz sinus signal from Siglent SDG 2042X.
Got a NanoVNA V2_2 S-A-A-2 from Nooelec. I have HP VNAs, but wanted to see what it is capable of. Description said 50kHz-3GHz, but it lets you sweep to 4.4GHz. First glance looks like it will be VERY useful if you:
1. only use the load and short cal pieces (the ones that came with mine are good)
2. skip using the open (I don't understand it. better to leave port1 connector open when doing open cal)
3. never EVER use the "thru" cal piece. ALWAYS use mating connectors for your intertable DUT. If your DUT isn't insertable, make it so by adding an adapter, not by screwing up your calibration.
4. put an attenuator at the end of your port2 cable (the match of port2 isn't great).
New IT-M7721 AC Power source.
First impressions:
Fan very high pitch and noisy.
Looks like some damage to Enter switch on front panel.
Remote interface optional. IT7321 (BK9801) had LAN, USB and RS232 as standard.
May I ask, how much you paid for this nice AC psu
It was $2,776.00 AUD plus 10% GST and $25 shipping. From local agent here in Australia.
I sort of wish I had bought the older model IT7321 (which is the same as BK9801) now. The newer model IT-M7721 has some additional features such as THD measurement and waveform generation, but the PF reading on front panel is only 2 decimal places, remote connection is optional extra and fan noise is terrible. Trying to sort these issues out with the local distributor now.
I went back and had a look at original quote from the local distributor and it says:
"The above products are indent items.
Indent items cannot be cancelled or returned once ordered."
Not much advantage in ordering from these local distributors (with what I'm guessing is a huge markup) if it can't be returned anyway. Not sure what the price is in China, but even items from tequipment.net in the US are often a lot cheaper than the local Australian distributors prices.
Just bought a GU-5B triode, up to 5kV and 110MHz.
A dream for semiconductors....
I've seen a person with a good sense of humor has made an audio amplifier out of a couple of these. I read the spec sheet and thought that one of these would make a lovely electric bass guitar amplifier until I realized that I can't afford the power or cooling to make it class A, so I'd need two of those silly tubes to make it class AB. After this, I let the dream go...
I just received a NanoVNA-H4 from Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B085CFHTBM that had 3 stackable discounts; I paid $62 yankee bucks and thought it would be worth the price for educational purposes.
Thanks to Joe Smith and his wonderful videos for steering me towards this purchase.
10 Playthings for $50AUD delivered. Sort of a random thing but if 1/2 work I am well in front. A few will finish up sitting in my stash of Green Beans and at a few pesos each the others will get thrown around the house/shack Commercial Fridges and yard for fun and a look later. Temperature Dataloggers btw.
Surviving Mars - First Colony Edition
Gosh ... I thought Elon Musk wrote a book.
Ten stainless steel trays, and a bunch of wire in both hi-flex silicone, and PTFE insulation.
Only 5 trays in the pic. They came in two separate packages, and the first 5 are already in use.
The trays are from Aliexpress "001 Cheerful Life Store" So very Chinese name.
35 x 25 x 1.5CM, US$6.13 each. Fairly thin stainless, but they'll do. Current use: sorting out a bunch of mixed components in a static free manner.
A power meter from the bay of evil:
Rode smartLav+ microphone
A SinoPharm covid shot on the first day (today) it was made available to the general public here in Shenzhen.
Single jab or needs a 2nd ?