NanoVNA V3 (6GHz)

[thinkfat]

I doubt people will walk away and buy something else, because, what else would they buy?

I've bought a LibreVNA this week.
It *seems* to cover all my needs... But there is not a lot more of review available... so I hope it will be OK

I'm not a big fan of hacking, but turning a "SSA3021X into a SVA1032X" is still x3 the "500$" price.
The 6GHz is "just" a nice to have as a work around, but help to have a dynamic range of +/- 85dB for frequency < 3GHz !
(https://github.com/jankae/LibreVNA/blob/master/Documentation/UserManual/specsheet.pdf)

If LibreVNA is a "broken" design, I will certainly buy a SSA3021X.

Wasn't there a problem with the LibreVNA's dynamic range above 3GHz? I seem to recall 50dB only. The NanoRFE V2+4 at roughly $200 goes up to 4.4GHz and is spec'd 80dB < 3GHz. In fact, the V2+4 might be the fiercest competitor to the V3, if you don't absolutely need 120dB dynamic range (which is amazing, btw).

[bestel]

I doubt people will walk away and buy something else, because, what else would they buy?

I've bought a LibreVNA this week.
It *seems* to cover all my needs... But there is not a lot more of review available... so I hope it will be OK

I'm not a big fan of hacking, but turning a "SSA3021X into a SVA1032X" is still x3 the "500$" price.
The 6GHz is "just" a nice to have as a work around, but help to have a dynamic range of +/- 85dB for frequency < 3GHz !
(https://github.com/jankae/LibreVNA/blob/master/Documentation/UserManual/specsheet.pdf)

If LibreVNA is a "broken" design, I will certainly buy a SSA3021X.

Wasn't there a problem with the LibreVNA's dynamic range above 3GHz? I seem to recall 50dB only. The NanoRFE V2+4 at roughly $200 goes up to 4.4GHz and is spec'd 80dB < 3GHz. In fact, the V2+4 might be the fiercest competitor to the V3, if you don't absolutely need 120dB dynamic range (which is amazing, btw).

It depend of your needs, 50dB is still usable (and I've read you can use harmonics to go up to 7 or 8 GHz).

[bicycleguy]

It's easy to suggest how to proceed when you're not the one taking the risk.   While I signed up, I think part of the problem was we never heard back what the specs would end up with.  I want that lower frequency, wide dynamic range and while they stated they were looking into it, we never heard back.   Many, rightfully so, will want to see it in action before they pull the trigger.   $500 would be cheap if they could pull it off.

Hi, from a fan of some of your youtube, especially using the Signal Hound BB60C. 

I'm a neophyte with a V2 and curious why the interest when you have a BB60C?

[asis]

Hi,
There is a decent alternative.
https://www.osa103.ru/en/hardware/ 

[joeqsmith]

Hi, from a fan of some of your youtube, especially using the Signal Hound BB60C. 

I'm a neophyte with a V2 and curious why the interest when you have a BB60C?

Hello.   I am not sure why I have such a deep interest in electronics.  I guess I am a bit of an equipment junky.  The Signal Hound is really nice and gets a fair bit of use.  I gave away all my other SAs after getting it.   But we are talking about a spectrum analyzer vs a VNA.  It's like asking me if I have a drawer full of hammers, why do I need a screwdriver.  It's a hobby, so I don't but you get the point.    Maybe the better question is if I own an old PNA which will out perform the V2 Plus 4 in every way, why would I have any interest.   Again, equipment junky.  I don't have a problem with it, my wife does. 

My dive into the low cost VNA world was to help out a friend of mine who was looking to purchase a higher end system.  I have been attempting to provide some guideance by making these videos for them.  They are slanted towards electronics design for a reason.     

[thinkfat]

I doubt people will walk away and buy something else, because, what else would they buy?

i've mentioned one alternative above, libreVNA. and me is at least a one person that is at risk of walking away. you cant guarantee all the people in the waitlist will eventually make the purchase when the product is released for sale. so judging from waitlist count is a bit irrational imho. if i buy librevna now, i might not be the early birdie anymore, i'll wait more and more reviews first to justify for another 6GHz VNA when V3 is released. or maybe wait for their 2nd or 3rd revision. and since there is no update as to what is going on in the RnD progress today, we'll start to doubt it... not wanting to take risk in production cost is a lame excuse for me, Kickstarter is there, bank of PRC is there far better than wallstreet or our bank or whatever i think. at least give us some update. if they wait for more people in waitlist, i think they will also lose some people during the time. about who need it who dont? i dont want to debate, HAM/RC community alone is there bigger than this forum, you dont find them here, you can only see them playing with their drones in youtubes and some unknown chaps also doing reviews on NanoVNA V2 there. ymmv.

In every community you have those who actually create and those who just participate. HAM and RC are no different. I am a licensed HAM myself and I have a fair bit of experience from the days when we were actively building Packet Radio networks in Europe, before the days of ubiquitous internet access and "HAMNET". There were only a handful of people who actively built "digipeaters" and set up radio links, even less who built the actual transceivers and even less who were able to design them. Building a digital 23cm transceiver for a radio link was already out of scope for most. The higher you go up in frequency, the more skill is required to build something and the less people are naturally involved.

[bestel]

Today, there is a huge gap between high-end and low-end VNA.
And we should remember to be happy with that "low-end" if you compare to 10 years ago 

Siglent and Rigol understand that, and full the 1500$ - 5000$ range (more than 3000$ if you don't hack), deserted by high-end company doing high-end stuff.
But there is still the 500$ - 1500$, and the question is, why ?

This range is useful to a lot of tiny company that design IoT or consumer-range product. Today, a lot of designer copy older design, and say "it should be okay".
But what if you want to check your RF path between 100MHz - 2400GHz ? You "need" a VNA.
And if you want to check what you're actually transmitting ? You need a SA.

This is why the 500$-1000$ range is so important : it's a no brainer for small company, even if it's one time of use week per year.

More than 1500$ ? Or 5000$ ? You're gonna argue, "Why now?", "Can we do without?", ... And everyone think you just want a new toy (even in the R&D team).
In my last job I had to wait for some BIG problems (certification failed) to make them buy a signal analyser, and even at this point it was after WEEKS of arguing.

Can't wait to test the LibreVNA, and see how it compare with the NanoVNA V3 next year

[edigi]

I've just found this thread.

At a $500 price point you can expect the preorder queue to fill slowly. This is for a hobbyist already in the "serious money" category. The more money you need to spend on something, the more you're going to question your needs to actually have it.

Yep, $500 price point is already in the territory that most hobbyists wouldn't easily spend on a somewhat specialized equipment (that requires already some know-how) so filling up a reasonable long queue won't happen fast.
On the other hand I understand that it requires quite some investment to create such product, so they wouldn't start with a small batch, especially that copycats simply start immediately creating cheap alternatives after first batch availability without any investment in the development, just purely based on the BOM cost.

The poorer dynamic range (and 50dB is already OK for many cases) and higher low frequency limit plays little role in the buying decision for most hobbyist compared to the price.
For that there is already the V1 as an alternative (and quite many people are already happy with that), but even hobbyist may have gadgets (for example FPV stuff operating in the 5G WiFi band meaning frequencies around 5.8GHz) where occasionally a 6GHz VNA can be handy. Handy however does not imply willingness to invest a lot.

That's also the issue with LibreVNA, and it's just a personal preference but I hate to use that kind of equipments (although I have some like Pluto+) that require the use of a computer. That means a quick check is not a quick check anymore.

So as with any other products it's very simple: Know your customers and know your competitors but at this price point open design is getting counterproductive from profitability point of view, especially that at this price point hobbyist easily start looking for alternatives or just turn away.
(V2 is roughly a 2x jump compared to V1 and V3 is now a 4x jump from V2?)

[thinkfat]

Today, there is a huge gap between high-end and low-end VNA.
And we should remember to be happy with that "low-end" if you compare to 10 years ago 

Siglent and Rigol understand that, and full the 1500$ - 5000$ range (more than 3000$ if you don't hack), deserted by high-end company doing high-end stuff.
But there is still the 500$ - 1500$, and the question is, why ?

This range is useful to a lot of tiny company that design IoT or consumer-range product. Today, a lot of designer copy older design, and say "it should be okay".
But what if you want to check your RF path between 100MHz - 2400GHz ? You "need" a VNA.
And if you want to check what you're actually transmitting ? You need a SA.

This is why the 500$-1000$ range is so important : it's a no brainer for small company, even if it's one time of use week per year.

More than 1500$ ? Or 5000$ ? You're gonna argue, "Why now?", "Can we do without?", ... And everyone think you just want a new toy (even in the R&D team).
In my last job I had to wait for some BIG problems (certification failed) to make them buy a signal analyser, and even at this point it was after WEEKS of arguing.

Can't wait to test the LibreVNA, and see how it compare with the NanoVNA V3 next year

IMHO, the question is, can you afford to buy cheap. Can you afford to buy a $500 VNA or SA and have your product fail in certification, or in production, or in the field.

I think it is really a question of risk. How much will it hurt if something goes wrong. For sure a cheap instrument is better than no instrument at all, but it has to be able to answer your questions.

I'm thinking of my time making consumer electronics. At a point it was clear that our company had to introduce WiFi, and Bluetooth, and eventually GPS and make them all coexist in a palm-sized case. But it was a struggle to make management understand that we'd have to have the tooling for it. They tried everything to escape, relying on vendor promises of magical fractal antennas instead of hiring an RF engineer and buying lab equipment. When they finally acted they invested in the wrong thing again, tools instead of brain. And it hurt. A lot.

[bestel]

IMHO, the question is, can you afford to buy cheap. Can you afford to buy a $500 VNA or SA and have your product fail in certification, or in production, or in the field.

You're right, and that's why I always buy from a reputable supplier like Keysight (or whatever) but not Siglent or Rigol (sorry for that).

But, for a VNA, a cheap tool is better than nothing... and it shouldn't fool you as long as you know what you are looking at.
For me, in this price range, it's more of a tool to "confirm" a relatively safe design than to do weird 12GHz stuff as a full-time job.

If I were a pure software developer, I wouldn't have picked up Keysight for my oscilloscope but rather Siglent or Rigol for example.

[joeqsmith]

When they finally acted they invested in the wrong thing again, tools instead of brain.

Happens even at the hobby level where we self manage.  I can open my wallet and buy all this cool stuff to put on a shelf and look at, or I can invest in learning.   More equipment!!   

[JohnG]

IMHO, the question is, can you afford to buy cheap. Can you afford to buy a $500 VNA or SA and have your product fail in certification, or in production, or in the field.

I think it is really a question of risk. How much will it hurt if something goes wrong. For sure a cheap instrument is better than no instrument at all, but it has to be able to answer your questions.

I'm thinking of my time making consumer electronics. At a point it was clear that our company had to introduce WiFi, and Bluetooth, and eventually GPS and make them all coexist in a palm-sized case. But it was a struggle to make management understand that we'd have to have the tooling for it. They tried everything to escape, relying on vendor promises of magical fractal antennas instead of hiring an RF engineer and buying lab equipment. When they finally acted they invested in the wrong thing again, tools instead of brain. And it hurt. A lot.

My current employer uses both. We have a higher-end 4-port VNA with some nice cal kits, etc. But, it resides in one place, and you can't just use it when you want, and you have to baby it. A $500 VNA is so cheap that you can buy a few. Other engineers can be more thorough, and also it makes their mistakes much less costly. We still have the higher-end VNA when needed.

I would also like to point out that there are a lot of exploratory reasons to have a VNA even if your job is not directly related to RF design. As an example, I think it should be required training for power electronics engineers, so they can see that their off-the-shelf inductor has a series resonance at 300 MHz, right at the frequency where there power loop rings. Or, that the slots they cut in the ground plane to "reduce EMI" makes a beautiful dipole with a center frequency at 2.4 GHz. It can make EMI troubleshooting a lot less mysterious. If you have a high-end VNA and they don't know anything about RF equipment, you don't want them anywhere near the machine, anyways.

I understand being sensitive to a bunch of beancounters who are penny-wise and pound-foolish. But, making RF equipment more accessible to engineers is a good thing in my mind. It's a good way to invest in their development.

John

[Mechatrommer]

Can't wait to test the LibreVNA, and see how it compare with the NanoVNA V3 next year

yeah next year i guess.

My current employer uses both. We have a higher-end 4-port VNA with some nice cal kits, etc. But, it resides in one place, and you can't just use it when you want, and you have to baby it. A $500 VNA is so cheap that you can buy a few. Other engineers can be more thorough, and also it makes their mistakes much less costly. We still have the higher-end VNA when needed.

ditto. this is one way to do it. avoiding risk of damaging 7 digit priced equipment.

OwO (and probably his colleagues) has a good reputation here so its unlikely that they design a cheaper-option circuit just for the DUT to fail in the field. and for more reliable verification, big company that can afford, can buy the more expensive tool as a last stage verification as JohnG mentioned. imho the biggest issue with OwO and the gang is marketing or sale strategy, ie they seem like to have a hard time catching up with the knockoff sellers. this is very obvious in their V2 VNA, they only sell in Tindie and nowhere else. i have to register an account just for that device this hassle is so i can buy the authentic product because i've read OwO's post here, if not i would have just bought a knockoff version in Aliepxress and be happy today, and then buy another 6GHz LibreVNA or other knockoff NanoVNA 23M-6GHz and be happy tomorrow, how much they (OwO et al) have lost you guess?

do they expect everybody know or notified about their new coming V3? or do they expect ALL their previous loyal buyers of V2 will fill up the V3 wait list? if so, then that is some kind of mentality. every year, there are thousands of new ee students coming out of U, and more newcomers/hobbiests/enthusiats will dig into 6GHz territory, when they want to buy stuffs, where do you think they will look up to? Tindie? oh please! i will search in youtube, Amazon reviews and Google etc. how you get your product appear in youtube or Amazon if you keep waiting the wait list to fill up?

[joeqsmith]

Hopefully they were smart enough to not lock the V3 group if they are trying to advertise.   

I would be fine with them keeping it closed source to recover their investment as long as they support it.   If they sent a hardware,  I would have no problem porting my software to control it and start making reviews for it.   My channel is very small but it may help generate some interest. 

[thinkfat]

I agree. Locking oneself into a niche is dangerous. I'm pretty sure that they will meet their target specification, but specs alone don't sell. They are a well recognized bunch meanwhile, but they have a long way to go in terms of brand building. Word of mouth alone is not going to be enough.

[jankae]

Hi, LibreVNA developer here. I just stumbled across this thread and am certainly not looking to hijack it, but I still want to shed some light on the mentioned "censored communicatons" issue:
I certainly never censored anything, you can always reach me by mail (see github profile), create issues on github and of course there is the groups.io: https://groups.io/g/LibreVNA-support/topics

Discussions on forums like this is obviously also fine, but if you want my input as well, it is probably best to write a short mail with the link to the topic (I don't constantly monitor all electronic forums )

Here is what happened and what probably looked a lot like censorship from the outside: Shortly before publishing all the data under the name LibreVNA and Hugens announcement of the device, someone created the old LibreVNA group (https://groups.io/g/LibreVNA/topics) and several people (including me) started using it. Although I still don't know who created that group, at first, everything seemed fine. However, after some time messages stopped getting approved. This is only an issue for new members, as approval is not necessary if you posted before. I only became aware of the issue when someone emailed me about it. At that point, Hugen created the new group (which I am also a moderator on) and since then, not a single message was censored. Sorry about all the confusion, please do not use the old group anymore.

[joeqsmith]

While I am surprised you would start out with an unknown group you had no control over, at least I now understand what happened.   Thanks for clearing that up. 

[Bud]

I cant stop laughing seeing how people through 6GHz left and right in this topic. Have any of you measured anything at these frequencies?  And I assume you guys have the calibration standards and patch cables for the frequency range, right?

[joeqsmith]

I cant stop laughing seeing how people through 6GHz left and right in this topic. Have any of you measured anything at these frequencies?  And I assume you guys have the calibration standards and patch cables for the frequency range, right?

I think the idea is that you would use the supplied standards and cables.   For my review of the V2Plus4, I put some simple circuits together but it's limited to 4GHz.   So I guess, yes and yes.   

[joeqsmith]

Recently I was attempting to replicate a study that was looking at the shunt capacitance of 1206 resistors.  That was ran at 6GHz.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/shunt-capacitance-of-1206-smd-resistors-jeroen-belleman-december-2010/msg3606722/#msg3606722


I have an interest in using a VNA to look at PDNs and ended up making a common mode transformer and a couple of DC blocks for it.   These were also tested to 6GHz.

https://www.eevblog.com/forum/rf-microwave/impedance-measurement-with-vna-using-series-shuntseries-through-methods/

[edigi]

I cant stop laughing seeing how people through 6GHz left and right in this topic. Have any of you measured anything at these frequencies?  And I assume you guys have the calibration standards and patch cables for the frequency range, right?

Luckily there is life beyond metrology grade calibration standards and lab grade equipments in RF technology and in case you missed my previous posts in this topic I even gave concrete use case example for this. Others have also explained quite well that even if one has (occasional) access to high grade equipements (with astronomical prices) it's not necessarily that one wants to/can use it on a daily basis for good enough reasons.

How much demand there is for this kind of VNA is yet to be seen, but I'm pretty confident that the developers trying to push their own distribution channels instead of big ones like Banggood for previous versions cut back their sales so much that actually they may have lost on this. Most people here are probably not impacted or even aware that recent EU regulation changes (IOSS) have made it even worse due to added bureaucracy and incurred cost of the bureaucracy that is entirely pushed to the buyers (perhaps not so much relevant for v3 as its price is likely to be above IOSS region).

[Bicurico]

On a different note: Importing stuff inside the EU has become a nightmare since July of 2021.

All items, even those with a total cost (item price + shipping) under 20 Euro are now subject to import taxes and VAT.

While it can be argued that import taxes and VAT are fair and square, the resulting overload at customs, post offices and other parcel services is overwhealing!

To me, as a consumer, it means that I am now steering away from any purchase outside the EU. It sucks big time and I miss buying stuff from AliExpress and from UK (where test equipment used to be cheaper than in mainland Europe). I am simply not up for the waiting game, where an order may take one week to arrive from China and then get stuck for several months (!) in customs.

What has this to do with the NanoVNA V3? Well, a company and, especially, a hobbyist might not consider a 500 Euro purchase subject to getting lost at customs and taking literally months to be delivered.

So, the manufacturer of the NanoVNA V3 should consider a proper sales channel with local (EU) stores, if they want to do serious business.

The same is valid for many other products available on AliExpress: as soon as a hobby/entry level product gets more mature and the price tag increases to several hundered (Euro/US$), then one wonders if the sales channel through AliExpress is still a reasonable choice.

Regards,
Vitor

[thinkfat]

That I'm not getting. Import goods are now taxed at the source, so this will ease the load on customs and post offices at the destination.

[Mechatrommer]

I cant stop laughing seeing how people through 6GHz left and right in this topic. Have any of you measured anything at these frequencies?  And I assume you guys have the calibration standards and patch cables for the frequency range, right?

today is 5G age friend, wake up! once upon a time hobbiests using circle chaped CRT tube bought 2nd or 3rd hand to see 10MHz waves, now we have Rigol etc... you can fill up the history line, i'm not intending to do a full history lesson here. on which during that time, leaving GHz and VNAs on premium side. today we are seeing the next major phase shift, i've been eyeballing this for years. but thats ok friend, some great people already started it, like OwO group and LibreVNA etc, Deepace earlier... and we are currently doing our parts on studying and venturing into other cheaper options on what you have mentioned. and thanks to China production they seem to catching up, we will be glad to become the Q&C section and reselling at 10 or 300% margin of value added product, depending on how hard work we have done and how much reject units that we are willing to trash one day we hope tinkering with diy 6GHz transceivers and antenna will become mainstream. as i said i have a really serious $5 project waiting for that cheaper VNA, still... one of the major obstacle is... our international shipping cost rate, i need to break into parliment to deal with the issue, but covid halted almost every of this progress, i'm currently thinking about going fishing in the open sea

Hi, LibreVNA developer here..

glad to hear from you. checking your first post was on 2019 so you must be very busy lately. how about creating a thread on LibreVNA in eevblog. it can also serve as a technical support for those of us who are not very familiar with io group. arent you aware of whats going on discussion about NanoVNA V2 around here in these years of the past? as a 6GHz VNA developer i think you should already. btw if i'm given one chance to ask question for you to answer... can LibreVNA support or compatible with VNA View PC software (screenshot attached below) specifically will it upload raw unprocessed S11 data into the PC so VNA View can process it using s-parm databased CAL kit data? (see 2nd attachment). better if we can get this kind of support in your thread specifically created for the LIbreVNA.  i have to learn this VNA View feature by myself with some intuition and guessing as OwO is equally a busy person same as you. i will be checking the io group soon, thanks and cheers.

[Bicurico]

That I'm not getting. Import goods are now taxed at the source, so this will ease the load on customs and post offices at the destination.

This is what the politicians try to tell you... The reality, at least in Portugal, look like this:
https://translate.google.com/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&u=https://www.dn.pt/sociedade/clientes-desesperam-com-encomendas-retidas-na-alfandega-14072601.html

Regards,
Vitor