Author Topic: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread  (Read 14549094 times)

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Offline AVGresponding

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112550 on: January 28, 2022, 03:25:00 pm »
Page 4503? Do you lot have nothing better to do than post on here all bloody day?!?

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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112551 on: January 28, 2022, 03:31:17 pm »

With the cessation of paying the majority of blue collar and lower grades of white collar workers in cash something has disappeared from the world - the "wages snatch" where criminals would rob the (weekly, entirely predictable) delivery of cash to factories.

When did that end in various places?

My first paying job was a council sports arena groundskeeping one, in the summer school vacation. They wired directly to bank account; and this was ~1985.   Next one (early 90s) was initially a bit ancient in style; we got cheques once a month (Weekly wages haven't been a thing here since the 1930s; the unions fought it  and got monthly payments instead.)  but over the course of perhaps two years they migrated to wiring money too. Since then, everyone, even the company who tried to pay me without the taxman knowing, have used wire transfers.

In Britain there used to be a clear distinction between wages and salary. Wages was weekly, usually paid in cash on a Thursday. Salary was monthly and  was normally paid by cheque. Manual workers, secretaries and lower grade clerks got wages, senior grades and management got a salary. In the 70s a factory worker would have been most likely paid weekly in cash. By the mid eighties pretty much everything had moved to bank transfers, but a lot of people still got paid weekly wages. By the mid 90s I think everybody had moved to monthly salaries.

The move from weekly to monthly payment was resisted by the unions here - there's nothing more conservative than a working class man who would nevertheless never vote Conservative.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112552 on: January 28, 2022, 03:31:35 pm »
New acquisition:

Fluke VT04A (handheld IR camera)

I've been wanting an IR camera since I started reading the TEA forum (gee, thanks...) but, being a miser, never wanted to spend the money. This popped up for cheap so I snagged it. This is one of the more fun TEs to play with in and around the house.

The batteries are stamped "Made in Belgium". Well, that's funny. The unit is made in the UK. Well, that explains it. The batteries must be the ones that came with the camera. They were full, according to the battery meter on the camera display. The camera and case appear to be completely unused and 100% new.

The Fluke VT04A has been discontinued. The VT04 has a replaceable lithium rechargeable battery, the VT04A takes 4x AA batteries. Fluke says that it gets about 5 hours of run-time on a set of batteries. It's got both an IR camera and a visible-light camera that it can mix at different ratios. It also has "Near" and "Far" modes to help correct for parallax between the two cameras. That feature seems to work OK. It can save pictures in a format to work with some Fluke software, or else BMP. It came with a 4GB microSD card.

https://www.fluke.com/en-us/product/temperature-measurement/ir-thermometers/vt04

I tried NiMH batteries and it refused to power on  :-- I removed the alkaline primary batteries once I finished playing with the camera. I'll have to buy one of those knock-off Pelican cases to store this camera in so I can store the batteries separately in the case.

I recently ordered a couple of 200W 8R from AliExpress to build a proper power sink to burn-in audio amplifiers. I thought that warming one up would make a pretty show for the nice people in the computer. I put 200W into it from my DC power supply and just as quick as I could put it in the frame of my new camera "Oh, I popped it". 200W, my ass. Yes, I know it's supposed to be bolted to a heat sink with thermal compound but it really didn't even have time to get very hot. Boo! Buy the cheapest resistor = get the cheapest resistor. I have proved nothing. Are you not entertained?
IIRC, the VT04x are not a IR camera... they are a IR thermometer with a digitally processed visible light camera overlay. Not sure how many "pixels" the actual thermal sensor is... maybe 16...? :-//

Due to the huge demand for the tech and limitations of relevant government regulations, there is a whole world of "badunka-dunk" marketing crap surrounding anything less than the stuff in the 10s of thousands of dollars range... part of the reason I've held off so long in my own similar pursuit. Even these "non-camera" IR imaging what-the-fuck-ever-it-is things are in the ridiculous ~$500 range... If you got a good enuf deal, it doesn't matter what I think of them. ;)

That said... I am curious to see just how much they're able to "fake it with software" in these later generations. I suppose if they get good enough, it won't really matter if they are actually an IR camera or not. :-//

mnem
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Offline nixiefreqq

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112553 on: January 28, 2022, 03:41:28 pm »
mnem
Anybody know where I can get a decent carrot cake...? you know, like with actual flavor...?

Carrot and cake, two words that never belong in the same sentence.   >:(

sorry AVG....gotta' agree with "the scaly one" this time.

good carrot cake is a never ending source of happiness and pleasure. 
free range primate
 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112554 on: January 28, 2022, 04:01:11 pm »
1 Don't really need it.
2 Don't have one.
3 Seems kind of sort of affordable.
4 Is Test Equipment.

Only one conclusion to be reached...
Buy them all!
Now I think I have too many... :scared:
BLASPHEMER!!! Get thee off to the Bay of EEEVIL and atone for thy sins posthaste!

Two Lord Tektronix' Prayers and 3 Hail Hewlett Packards should suffice to scrub thy soul clean. ;)

mnem
That was a close one... :phew:
Oh, Lord i'll follow you.   I'll be back later. See you soon.  :scared:
   My two HP front covers for spectrum analyzer arrived today.   Now I can sleep much better!  :=\

Two Lord Tektronix' Prayers and one Hail Hewlett Packard more to go...  >:D
LOL.... it took you a while... but you certainly did some atonein' there, dinn'cha...?  :clap:

Welcome back! :-+

mnem
 :-/O
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112555 on: January 28, 2022, 04:05:50 pm »
Vince what have you done without us for so many years?

 ;) :D
Until we came along he was a very successful and widely respected breeder of wallet moths.  :)
Ya think.
Actually Vince has spent some years mainly over in the Repair board and of his 28 topics most of them are there until I dragged him over here. Like some others here he has an impressive repair queue but needs be careful with his funds now without formal and gainful employment.
Speaking from painful experience... the two scenarios are not mutually exclusive. ;)

mnem
*usedta have one of those wallets with the Velcro closure that screeeeams when you open it*
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112556 on: January 28, 2022, 04:15:30 pm »
I'll bring the beer and a big chunk of pig.  (I know the way to a German boy's heart. :))

What...you'll take British beer to a German boy are you crazy or what? German beer is among the world's finest, they have purity laws over there for their beers  :o
I'm not carrying beer (or half a pig) all that way when they've got perfectly good local stuff. Not that all German beer is great, it's quite possible to get a Maß of insipid, national brewery beer in Germany, just like you can here. "Bitte ein Bit?" - nein danke. Thankfully, the Germans have been a bit more insistent than us in keeping their local breweries alive and kicking and generally if you drink what's brewed locally you can't go wrong.
Honestly, I am shocked that you wouldn't at least try to convert the lad into a Guinness true believer...?

Tho I guess that would require "Guinness" in bottles, which, even tho it has a holy stone in the bottom to keep the demon ichor subdued, I understand is not an entirely safe substitute for the real thing served from tap, and is regarded by you scone-eaters as "only good enuf to send to the colonies"...  :-DD

mnem
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112557 on: January 28, 2022, 04:19:39 pm »
With all due respect... you can kiss my scaly dwagon arse. ;)

A good carrot cake full of walnuts and cinnamon-sugar and shredded carrots... layered with with orange marmalade glaze & topped with decadent cream-cheese icing... it is a thing of beauty.

It was what I got for my wedding cake, and we try to make it happen for dwagon birthdays as well... tho infrequently enough do we find a decent one that it hasn't happened since I left San Antonio and the sphere of influence of a certain Jewish bakery...

mnem
*toddles off to look for a drool sponge*

Marmalade? Ugh, it just keeps getting worse! 
Not orange marmalade... orange marmalade glaze. That starts with orange marmalade and adds enough confectioner's sugar and a wee bit of honey such that it turns a bit crunchy.

mnem
yummmm.
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Offline AVGresponding

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112558 on: January 28, 2022, 04:25:04 pm »
With all due respect... you can kiss my scaly dwagon arse. ;)

A good carrot cake full of walnuts and cinnamon-sugar and shredded carrots... layered with with orange marmalade glaze & topped with decadent cream-cheese icing... it is a thing of beauty.

It was what I got for my wedding cake, and we try to make it happen for dwagon birthdays as well... tho infrequently enough do we find a decent one that it hasn't happened since I left San Antonio and the sphere of influence of a certain Jewish bakery...

mnem
*toddles off to look for a drool sponge*

Marmalade? Ugh, it just keeps getting worse! 
Not orange marmalade... orange marmalade glaze. That starts with orange marmalade and adds enough confectioner's sugar and a wee bit of honey such that it turns a bit crunchy.

mnem
yummmm.

Just keep the hunny and throw the rest away

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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112559 on: January 28, 2022, 04:25:53 pm »
Resistors eh...




It starts with a drawer, just one or two (or three or four),
But sooner or later it becomes one or two more.
Soon for some space you'll look all over the place,
On top of the drawers, the meters, the floor,
Some hide in boxes, some hide some more,
Some hide in cupboards or behind a door.
Some you just can't bloody well find at all.
:clap:

This.... 1000x this... is why I have kept my dwagon mouth zipped on the subject thus far; the state of my resistor organization is positively shameful. 

mnem
Thank you for being brave enough to share your misery. :-+
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Offline AVGresponding

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112560 on: January 28, 2022, 04:35:24 pm »
Frustration of the moment: can't find any fecking envelopes. I had some self-sealing ones, though they were so old the glue had dried out. But nope, nowhere to be found.

Apologies to nixiefreqq (he will understand what I mean), will have to buy some from the Post Off in the moaning.   |O
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112561 on: January 28, 2022, 04:41:07 pm »
mnem
Anybody know where I can get a decent carrot cake...? you know, like with actual flavor...?

Carrot and cake, two words that never belong in the same sentence.   >:(
I have two words for you: "Lardy cake".

(My mother used to have to bake lardy cake for my father because no bakery in the south of England had even heard of it, let alone sold it.)


Wikipedia seems to think that is where the stuff originated from... perhaps you should "adjust" them in that inimitable Cerebus style. ;)

However... it does sound a lot like cinnamon-raisin loaf, which is a thing over here... of course, the quality and percentage  of raisins thereof varies hugely from bakery to bakery. The related bakery goods produced by that chain which made their "name" off the stuff, Cinnabon, are quite possibly the absolute worst example of the breed I've ever tasted, and I include the no-name generic knock-off refrigerated dough product from Aldi's in that sample. Simply devoid of any actual flavor; it's like white-bread toast drowned in flavorless white frosting. *blerk*

mnem
 :popcorn:
« Last Edit: January 28, 2022, 04:49:21 pm by mnementh »
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Offline Cerebus

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112562 on: January 28, 2022, 04:55:11 pm »
Lardy cake might have a southern origin (it might not, I really have no idea) but in my lifetime it's not been a southern thing but, like all the best things involving lard, been a northern thing. You have to remember that the south-east of England has since the 1960s been been turning into the fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, taste-free, pleasure-free capital of Europe.
Anybody got a syringe I can use to squeeze the magic smoke back into this?
 
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Online factory

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112563 on: January 28, 2022, 05:20:08 pm »
'Lots' of analogue TV goodies in next Months PP auction.  Stacked in with the nearly useless PALish things, there are at least two HP distortion analysers.   

https://www.ppauctions.com/auction/338/february-collective-sale-electronics


There are  few items I may bid on.   

At least three of the lots that I got outbid on, are in the pictures in the email, bet the Wavetek 164 you were interested in last time will be back too, the lot of trashed Tek scopes is back too (just rearranged). I guess it's a mix of what didn't sell last time & some new stuff.

David
 
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Offline Robert763

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112564 on: January 28, 2022, 05:31:38 pm »
New acquisition:

Fluke VT04A (handheld IR camera)

I've been wanting an IR camera since I started reading the TEA forum (gee, thanks...) but, being a miser, never wanted to spend the money. This popped up for cheap so I snagged it. This is one of the more fun TEs to play with in and around the house.

The batteries are stamped "Made in Belgium". Well, that's funny. The unit is made in the UK. Well, that explains it. The batteries must be the ones that came with the camera. They were full, according to the battery meter on the camera display. The camera and case appear to be completely unused and 100% new.

The Fluke VT04A has been discontinued. The VT04 has a replaceable lithium rechargeable battery, the VT04A takes 4x AA batteries. Fluke says that it gets about 5 hours of run-time on a set of batteries. It's got both an IR camera and a visible-light camera that it can mix at different ratios. It also has "Near" and "Far" modes to help correct for parallax between the two cameras. That feature seems to work OK. It can save pictures in a format to work with some Fluke software, or else BMP. It came with a 4GB microSD card.

https://www.fluke.com/en-us/product/temperature-measurement/ir-thermometers/vt04

I tried NiMH batteries and it refused to power on  :-- I removed the alkaline primary batteries once I finished playing with the camera. I'll have to buy one of those knock-off Pelican cases to store this camera in so I can store the batteries separately in the case.

I recently ordered a couple of 200W 8R from AliExpress to build a proper power sink to burn-in audio amplifiers. I thought that warming one up would make a pretty show for the nice people in the computer. I put 200W into it from my DC power supply and just as quick as I could put it in the frame of my new camera "Oh, I popped it". 200W, my ass. Yes, I know it's supposed to be bolted to a heat sink with thermal compound but it really didn't even have time to get very hot. Boo! Buy the cheapest resistor = get the cheapest resistor. I have proved nothing. Are you not entertained?
IIRC, the VT04x are not a IR camera... they are a IR thermometer with a digitally processed visible light camera overlay. Not sure how many "pixels" the actual thermal sensor is... maybe 16...? :-//

Due to the huge demand for the tech and limitations of relevant government regulations, there is a whole world of "badunka-dunk" marketing crap surrounding anything less than the stuff in the 10s of thousands of dollars range... part of the reason I've held off so long in my own similar pursuit. Even these "non-camera" IR imaging what-the-fuck-ever-it-is things are in the ridiculous ~$500 range... If you got a good enuf deal, it doesn't matter what I think of them. ;)

That said... I am curious to see just how much they're able to "fake it with software" in these later generations. I suppose if they get good enough, it won't really matter if they are actually an IR camera or not. :-//

mnem
 :popcorn:

Even Fluke call them a "visual IR thermometer" not an IR viewer https://www.fluke.com/en-us/product/temperature-measurement/ir-thermometers/vt04

On the blown resistor, I'd not blame the supplier too much. They need a HUGE heatsink.  The Welwyn 200W need 3800 cm2 of 3 mm thick aluminium. Thats over 2 foot square (62 cm square). Thats at 25 deg C ambient at sea level and the resistor will get to 200 deg C  :scared:
The Welwyn is rated at about 40 W with no heatsink (and that's not sitting on an insulating bench either)
Also if it was new and had been in transit there may have been moisture inside. This will boil and blow the seal out. Always best to bring them up slowly.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2022, 05:41:38 pm by Robert763 »
 
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Offline mnementh

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112565 on: January 28, 2022, 05:36:18 pm »
Lardy cake might have a southern origin (it might not, I really have no idea) but in my lifetime it's not been a southern thing but, like all the best things involving lard, been a northern thing. You have to remember that the south-east of England has since the 1960s been been turning into the fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, taste-free, pleasure-free capital of Europe.
I am truly sorry that US-style "Wonder White Bread" anti-flavored conservatism, making it a goal to suck the joy out of everything, was what we exported back when you all gave us The Beatles, The Who, Donovan, and Pink Floyd  and so many other joys with The British Invasion. The karmic backlash has been great, for both our nations. ;)

mnem
The Stones.... ehhh... could you please take them back...? >:D
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Offline mansaxel

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112566 on: January 28, 2022, 06:03:30 pm »
As much as I do love me somev good ol' ghetto-fab on protoboard, I look forward to your attempts to bring your project up out of those Stygian depths. 

Oh, the 4558s are OK to use even if new. The trouble is with the bucket brigade delay lines that Panasonic used to make, they're not made by them anymore, and haven't been since about 1999.  Any  "Panasonic new old stock" today likely isn't.

There is of course enough demand, that clones - marked as such - turned up pretty early, and I'm guessing that there's about 2 factories who make them, and it's likely that some of that production is siphoned off to being repainted with Matsushita markings.  My stockpile contains both "M" and other circuits.


Offline mansaxel

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112567 on: January 28, 2022, 06:05:19 pm »

Anybody know where I can get a decent carrot cake...? you know, like with actual flavor...?

I'm slowly getting flavour sensations back. But I'm with those who regard carrot as not-a-cake-ingredient.

Offline AVGresponding

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112568 on: January 28, 2022, 06:10:13 pm »
Lardy cake might have a southern origin (it might not, I really have no idea) but in my lifetime it's not been a southern thing but, like all the best things involving lard, been a northern thing. You have to remember that the south-east of England has since the 1960s been been turning into the fat-free, sugar-free, gluten-free, taste-free, pleasure-free capital of Europe.
I am truly sorry that US-style "Wonder White Bread" anti-flavored conservatism, making it a goal to suck the joy out of everything, was what we exported back when you all gave us The Beatles, The Who, Donovan, and Pink Floyd  and so many other joys with The British Invasion. The karmic backlash has been great, for both our nations. ;)

mnem
The Stones.... ehhh... could you please take them back...? >:D

FMOB as if traffic wasn't bad enough around here, we've got a f*****g Hollywood invasion going on atm, Samuel L Jackson and others, filming some new superhero bollocks.

Among the locations they've used is the Halifax Piece Hall, and the interview on the news with the manager was hilarious, particularly the point where she said "people come in here and go 'wow!' ", and I thought, yeah, they go "wow, what a shithole".
The place has been dying on its arse for years, thanks to the local council constantly jacking the business rates up, and driving all the small vendors out of business/out of the area.

I remember going there in the late 1970s when they had the Multicoloured Swap Shop Roadshow there, and back then every unit was occupied. Now it's barely 1 in 5 or so. Was a great place for shopping back in the day.
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Offline duckduck

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112569 on: January 28, 2022, 06:14:18 pm »
New acquisition:

Fluke VT04A (handheld IR camera)

I've been wanting an IR camera since I started reading the TEA forum (gee, thanks...) but, being a miser, never wanted to spend the money. This popped up for cheap so I snagged it. This is one of the more fun TEs to play with in and around the house.

The batteries are stamped "Made in Belgium". Well, that's funny. The unit is made in the UK. Well, that explains it. The batteries must be the ones that came with the camera. They were full, according to the battery meter on the camera display. The camera and case appear to be completely unused and 100% new.

The Fluke VT04A has been discontinued. The VT04 has a replaceable lithium rechargeable battery, the VT04A takes 4x AA batteries. Fluke says that it gets about 5 hours of run-time on a set of batteries. It's got both an IR camera and a visible-light camera that it can mix at different ratios. It also has "Near" and "Far" modes to help correct for parallax between the two cameras. That feature seems to work OK. It can save pictures in a format to work with some Fluke software, or else BMP. It came with a 4GB microSD card.

https://www.fluke.com/en-us/product/temperature-measurement/ir-thermometers/vt04

I tried NiMH batteries and it refused to power on  :-- I removed the alkaline primary batteries once I finished playing with the camera. I'll have to buy one of those knock-off Pelican cases to store this camera in so I can store the batteries separately in the case.

I recently ordered a couple of 200W 8R from AliExpress to build a proper power sink to burn-in audio amplifiers. I thought that warming one up would make a pretty show for the nice people in the computer. I put 200W into it from my DC power supply and just as quick as I could put it in the frame of my new camera "Oh, I popped it". 200W, my ass. Yes, I know it's supposed to be bolted to a heat sink with thermal compound but it really didn't even have time to get very hot. Boo! Buy the cheapest resistor = get the cheapest resistor. I have proved nothing. Are you not entertained?
IIRC, the VT04x are not a IR camera... they are a IR thermometer with a digitally processed visible light camera overlay. Not sure how many "pixels" the actual thermal sensor is... maybe 16...? :-//

Due to the huge demand for the tech and limitations of relevant government regulations, there is a whole world of "badunka-dunk" marketing crap surrounding anything less than the stuff in the 10s of thousands of dollars range... part of the reason I've held off so long in my own similar pursuit. Even these "non-camera" IR imaging what-the-fuck-ever-it-is things are in the ridiculous ~$500 range... If you got a good enuf deal, it doesn't matter what I think of them. ;)

That said... I am curious to see just how much they're able to "fake it with software" in these later generations. I suppose if they get good enough, it won't really matter if they are actually an IR camera or not. :-//

mnem
 :popcorn:

Fluke sells the VT04A as a "Visual IR Thermometer" and they do not disclose the IR resolution, so it is certainly very poor compared to anything sold as a "IR Camera". That being said, it does have an IR camera in it which works well enough for my limited needs wants. I paid USD200 and tested it out before I bought it. Given the like-new condition and the Fluke nametag, I figured that I could sell it pretty easily if it didn't work out.

Here's a picture of my hand using only the IR camera. I get the same resolution while covering the visual camera so it can't "cheat". 4K it ain't, but it certainly looks like it has at least 64 pixels (+software smoothing/interpolation) to get this displayed resolution.

Also a picture (visual with IR overlay) of a strip of eight 1/4W 220R, one dissipating 194mW. It's very easy to tell that one is warmer than the others. With a little bit of moving around, it is easy to tell which one is warmer than the others. 99% of the things that I work on are through-hole (solid- and hollow-state guitar amps) or even point to point (Hammond organ from 1959).

EDIT:

Of course, I am the staff handyman for my household, so I'll be looking for drafty windows, missing insulation, warm fuses breakers in the load center / home fuse breaker box, warm electrical wiring, etc.

EDIT EDIT:

According to https://www.tequipment.net/Fluke-VT04-vs-Flir-TG165/ the VT04 thermal sensor is 31x31, so 961 pixels.

EDIT EDIT EDIT:

I see the Flir TG165 on ebay for USD342 delivered to my front door. A little bit more money, but a much better camera. How much IR resolution will your wallet allow you?
« Last Edit: January 28, 2022, 08:40:11 pm by duckduck »
 
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Online factory

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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112570 on: January 28, 2022, 06:53:08 pm »
Resistors eh...




It starts with a drawer, just one or two (or three or four),
But sooner or later it becomes one or two more.
Soon for some space you'll look all over the place,
On top of the drawers, the meters, the floor,
Some hide in boxes, some hide some more,
Some hide in cupboards or behind a door.
Some you just can't bloody well find at all.
:clap:

This.... 1000x this... is why I have kept my dwagon mouth zipped on the subject thus far; the state of my resistor organization is positively shameful. 

mnem
Thank you for being brave enough to share your misery. :-+

Don't worry, mine are a disorganised mess too, have about a dozen racks containing just resistors, but can't get to most of them. This problem started three years ago when I bought & cleared the contents of the component store room at work, before they ended up in a skip. Since the document I signed stated I could only buy for personal use (forbidden from selling), I've slowing been trying to make them take up less space, not too difficult as many drawers aren't full, some drawers got pillaged by others in the year between the lab closing & me acquiring it (almost all big potentiometers are missing for example), there is also some duplication from the two sites we did electronic repair at.
Moving it all was no fun either, I had a week five days to clear it and it all had to be done outside of work hours on my own, it took three evenings to shift three van loads & find space here for it.


Since then I've only managed to condense the transistors from six racks to three racks. I've finally decided what to do about ridding the IC drawers of the nasty ESD foam, before all the legs rot away. Some of it is now stored in a shed & condensation is a problem, no climate control like we had at work.

David

P.S. there should have been one of those RS boxes of resistors in small tubes, but I can't see it in my pictures, so I guess someone else took those, or the builders skipped them.
« Last Edit: January 28, 2022, 07:49:18 pm by factory »
 
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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112571 on: January 28, 2022, 06:54:37 pm »
No TEA activity here for a while - currently celebrating my father’s hundredth birthday! 🎂
 
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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112572 on: January 28, 2022, 07:34:20 pm »
I've been slowly acquiring Red Devil drawer sets as I find them - need to print out new labels as those on them are falling off, and don't necessarily match what I want to store in them.  As an aside, those cabinets taught many my fellow students in college the resistor color code - they have no stops, so if you pull too far the drawers come out of the cabinet and, as you're holding the handle at the front, drop at the rear and flip over, spilling the resistors held therein into a pile on the bench.  The rule was you spill it, you pick it up and sort them.  Some never learned not to pull too far, and as a result spent a lot of time sorting quarter-watt resistors in labs.   :-DD





-Pat
If it jams, force it.  If it breaks, you needed a new one anyway...
 
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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112573 on: January 28, 2022, 07:37:12 pm »
I've been slowly acquiring Red Devil drawer sets as I find them - need to print out new labels as those on them are falling off, and don't necessarily match what I want to store in them.  As an aside, those cabinets taught many my fellow students in college the resistor color code - they have no stops, so if you pull too far the drawers come out of the cabinet and, as you're holding the handle at the front, drop at the rear and flip over, spilling the resistors held therein into a pile on the bench.  The rule was you spill it, you pick it up and sort them.  Some never learned not to pull too far, and as a result spent a lot of time sorting quarter-watt resistors in labs.   :-DD





-Pat
Them's cool.  8)
But cuddles SMD resistor book ........
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Re: Test Equipment Anonymous (TEA) group therapy thread
« Reply #112574 on: January 28, 2022, 07:49:32 pm »

With the cessation of paying the majority of blue collar and lower grades of white collar workers in cash something has disappeared from the world - the "wages snatch" where criminals would rob the (weekly, entirely predictable) delivery of cash to factories.

When did that end in various places?

My first paying job was a council sports arena groundskeeping one, in the summer school vacation. They wired directly to bank account; and this was ~1985.   Next one (early 90s) was initially a bit ancient in style; we got cheques once a month (Weekly wages haven't been a thing here since the 1930s; the unions fought it  and got monthly payments instead.)  but over the course of perhaps two years they migrated to wiring money too. Since then, everyone, even the company who tried to pay me without the taxman knowing, have used wire transfers.

In Britain there used to be a clear distinction between wages and salary. Wages was weekly, usually paid in cash on a Thursday. Salary was monthly and  was normally paid by cheque. Manual workers, secretaries and lower grade clerks got wages, senior grades and management got a salary. In the 70s a factory worker would have been most likely paid weekly in cash. By the mid eighties pretty much everything had moved to bank transfers, but a lot of people still got paid weekly wages. By the mid 90s I think everybody had moved to monthly salaries.

The move from weekly to monthly payment was resisted by the unions here - there's nothing more conservative than a working class man who would nevertheless never vote Conservative.
true, and back in them days of being weekly paid in cash there were loads of bleeding wages snatches, many of which were violent so it was good that things went over to bank transfers. There was hardly a week went by when then without hearing about at least one wages snatch of some sort or other  |O
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