UNI-T UTG932/UTG962 200MSa/s Function Arbitrary Waveform Generator

[Dd]

Yes, my bad. They listed 962 for $124.90 but they don't have it in stock.

Here is 962 model in stock for $122.79
Orange ($3 for $65) coupon from the item page and 1111SALE $1 coupon = US $118.79

Anyway, I'm looking through the wish list to find more items to use 11.11 codes and discounts as much as possible.
I don't need another 932 at the moment so I am looking at some audio stuff in the same price league.

[Shiv]

Hi all, I´m buying this generator.

Did sombody make the battery mod?

I mean: internal, protected and with integrated charging system, not just plug a battery with a 5V DC regulator in DC input.


I´m searching for battery management boards like arduino shields and I don´t find it for 2 A output. only 1A rated...

[Dd]

Shiv
May be this is what are you looking for? 2A, 4.2V
_{Note: Use Ali Standard Shipping only, not economy or saver.}

[Shiv]

Shiv
May be this is what are you looking for? 2A, 4.2V
_{Note: Use Ali Standard Shipping only, not economy or saver.}

Is a good approach, but I think not.


This one is only a charge regulator, I mean:
This gets the DC input and convert it to battery charge (constant current)
Protects the battery for overload, overheat and overcurrent (short)


But it hasn´t:
DC battery ouput regulator (but it could be added)
discharge protection circuitry (if below 3V shutoff or warning)
DC input detector (to switch between external or battery)
The switch itself

EDIT: my bad
I´m reading and I think this thing does it all.

Thank you so much

[Mechatrommer]

Did sombody make the battery mod?
I mean: internal, protected and with integrated charging system, not just plug a battery with a 5V DC regulator in DC input.
I´m searching for battery management boards like arduino shields and I don´t find it for 2 A output. only 1A rated...

the cheap $10 china power bank for smartphone charging is readily available, you only need to mod connector to the FG unit or the smartphone USB charging cable. i have few of them came free with smartphone purchases. you can get a bit descent pack with power percentage LCD display, multiple 2A/1A ports with everything protection and charging that you want for just tiny like $5-10 addition. i and wife got this type with LCD display Pineng brand many years ago and still working now to my surprise considering the average li-on batteries operating life (with flashlight built-in too ), i believe these packs can power the UTG unit for many minutes, if not hours. i cant count how many power banks i have some of them may got thrown away or taken by the kids already.

[Shiv]

Did sombody make the battery mod?
I mean: internal, protected and with integrated charging system, not just plug a battery with a 5V DC regulator in DC input.
I´m searching for battery management boards like arduino shields and I don´t find it for 2 A output. only 1A rated...

the cheap $10 china power bank for smartphone charging is readily available, you only need to mod connector to the FG unit or the smartphone USB charging cable. i have few of them came free with smartphone purchases. you can get a bit descent pack with power percentage LCD display, multiple 2A/1A ports with everything protection and charging that you want for just tiny like $5-10 addition. i and wife got this type with LCD display Pineng brand many years ago and still working now to my surprise considering the average li-on batteries operating life (with flashlight built-in too ), i believe these packs can power the UTG unit for many minutes, if not hours. i cant count how many power banks i have some of them may got thrown away or taken by the kids already.

Thanks!!

That was my first search (got 3 or 4 of this), but I saw UTG input is 2A rated and all powerbank board I saw was only 1A rated and that, even if the generator powers, wouldn´t charge the lipo.

For battery packs, I ´ll use some cells recycled from drones (1500 -2000 mAh LIPO 1s to 4s)

[mnementh]

Considering these are right now within a few dollars of the FY6x00, all at around US$100 (the days of the $40 FY6600 are long gone), and only aboot $75 less than the PSG8090 even with "Black Friday" sales, is the PSG8090 now the best bang/buck? 

I like the form factor of the UTG 9x2, as it would fit under my scope with the bail down (pretty sure that's why these were made this way); but it is pretty hard to make even a ballpark evaluation of the 3 families of "Chinesium Cheapies", except that the FY6900 seems to be pretty roundly disliked as a downgrade from previous versions. 

One thing that would make my decision easier... can these be easily modded with an external +/-15V supply? I mean, without just munging the eff out of the board...? And now the diff between the 932 and 962 is more like $20-25; have we successfully hacked a 932 to a 962?

mnem
 

[Mechatrommer]

One thing that would make my decision easier... can these be easily modded with an external +/-15V supply?

for what? UTG9x2 is powered from 5V wallwart and has internal +/-15V supply for output.

[mnementh]

Aware it has DC-DC converter on mainboard, and ewwwwwww...

Also, I have a pretty high-quality +/-15V PSU just lying here, so...

Any opinions on the diff between the 932 & 962 vs the current diff in cost?

mnem
 

[Mechatrommer]

Aware it has DC-DC converter on mainboard, and ewwwwwww...
Also, I have a pretty high-quality +/-15V PSU just lying here, so...

so you can always rip away the internal +/-15V DC-DC and put your quality PSU in.

Any opinions on the diff between the 932 & 962 vs the current diff in cost?

932 can go 30MHz, 962 can go 60MHz. am i re-stating the datasheet? if you ask me difference 9x2 vs FY6*00, 9x2 has numeric keyboard FY6*00 got none

[mnementh]

Aww, come on man... now yer just pullin' the TinkerDwagon's tail.

I was wondering if we know whether there are any material differences between the 932 & 962, and if anyone had hacked a 932 into a 962? At a price difference of now ~US$25, seems it might be worth a certain, minimal amount of assache. As long as it's not too much. 

I guess I hadn't read through this thread like I thought; I just saw yer post with this pic:



Looks like I can just desolder L8, SD1 & SD2 and use the freed-up pads to attach for +/- rails. I have 5VSTBY on my PSU as well, so could put in a rocker switch or just plug it all into a outlet strip.

mnem
hmmmm....

[Mechatrommer]

i'm not sure why you want to screw a perfectly fine unit. i cant make further suggestion on that, its plain "dangerous" and not worth our effort. one of reason we bought this instead of cheaper FY* is we dont want to deal with modding it, we just want a working unit OOB. anyway, you saw the board and you can plan your strategy from there. is it worth a risk of hacking and then bricking FW just to save $25? its not for me, just buy the 962 if you need extra BW. we will be glad if you can come up with some sort of hack improvement to it, its just its not worth my time atm.

[mnementh]

Yeah, I hear that. Part of why I was on the fence between this and the PSG9080 at ~US$175. Of course, then you are in "add another $100 and you're into a DG811" territory, and so on...

I guess then... if you had to buy one sometime soon and knowing the 9x2 as you've used it awhile, would you buy it again or would you hold off and wait for more intel to develop on the PSG9080?

mnem
 

[ataradov]

I guess then... if you had to buy one sometime soon and knowing the 9x2 as you've used it awhile, would you buy it again or would you hold off and wait for more intel to develop on the PSG9080?

I would absolutely buy it again. But for me it is a secondary unit, and I value bench real estate and noise more than performance for most uses.

Same with the oscilloscope. My primary scope at the moment is Owon SDS1102. Probably not the greatest if you go by pure performance numbers or even bang/buck numbers. But for me it provides value as it is fan-less, so quiet, and it is very slim, so does not take up space.

And if for 1% of uses I need more performance from the scope or from a signal generator, I'll bring out the real deal.

So it all depends on your use. If you use your equipment to 100% of the capabilities, then going for the most capable device makes sense. But I doubt many people actually do that.

And I'm in the same boat for modding - the price and price difference are low enough for me to not really care to spend any time on that.

[Labrat101]

I have the UTG962 . which just works fine out the box .
After Binning my last FY68 which was the biggest waste of time & money
trying to mod it . To just get it to work within any accurate spec's . .
962 is accurate and all function work OOB . So modding it .
Would be like buying a new BMW and taking it apart to see if you could run it off 24 volt battery .The only Mod that I could possibly think of. would to add an external Ref socket for  GPSDO . As it stands at the moment its less than 30ppm which is OK.Also it comes with a full warranty from Uni Trend . So it can be returned to any of there agents for repair or replacement .
 I would if i was you just pay the extra $20 and sleep well at Knights .
  Killing the dragon is no fun .. Saving the Damsel in distress well I will leave that  to ones own Imagination 
  RNS

[JamesLynton]

Received a UTG962 today, can confirm it performs remarkably well for something so compact & affordable.
Build quality and ui is also quite nice.

Some quick niggles I noticed though:
The output voltage of the AWG is entirely dependent on the power supply feeding it - if it is to be accurate (in lower ranges) it needs to be exactly 5V - Linear regulation probably a good idea. Also expectedly, due to slew factors, the crest voltage drops off a little at higher frequencies a little bit, but planning to account for that in this latter instance should be expected in this price category.

The apparent lack of a means to SAVE AWG configurations and recall them quickly. Dear lord that is irritating, however they do dedicate that entire menu to just recalling factory configuration state. Bah. Well, I contacted them directly via website supplied support email and politely asked for this essential feature to be implemented; I'm not expecting much to get done.. but we'll see, I like to be surprised in that regard.
If this bugs you too and otherwise haven't found out how to do it either, mind popping a feature request to them as well ? ta.


That aside, good lord UNI-T customer service on AliExpress atm *good lord*...
Useless would be a bit polite as of early Nov 2020, Kind of left me feeling like I should go with 3rd party sellers if I need their products again, rather than what I understand to be their official store (https://unit.aliexpress.com/store/3095007).

First, they managed to ignore my order from Spain to ship to UK for weeks, when they did respond the person dealing with it didn't seem to recognise my address/post code as valid, which I've never had a problem with. This matter was dealt with politely. Then it became 'oh we can't ship from there now, you've left the EU (new one to me (and no, I didn't vote that way either; as an aside)) - Thing is, as far as trade is concerned, that doesn't potentially affect that until the beginning of 2021 (still technically in trading block until then); no issues with anyone else shipping within the EU in this timeframe.
So from there it was eventually shipped from China, after nudging them again asking what was going on. This went out by a service that incurred customs duty charges (via DPEX express). Following that, not much happened for a while and only found out it was stuck in customs when I checked the tracking number & found out it had been there for 5 days, and I'd not heard a peep on the matter from anyone. According to the shipping company (after digging deep to get their contact details) they had not been provided with my contact details (email or phone no) by the shipper (nor where they responding to their requests for them either), and thats apparently why I hadn't heard from DPEX, still.. they could of sent a letter ? (shrugs).
In any case was able to iron out the issue dealing with the couriers directly on phone, however less than impressed with UNI-T's representatives handling of the matter, it was an utter shambles that had me 0 days away from incurring a £10 a day storage charge, and about a week away from the goods being destroyed without (otherwise potentially) knowing about the matter at all.

So yes, if dealing with UNI-T directly on the likes of AliExpress, keep a close eye on those orders, they might cock things up massively.

[Dd]

Also you could find several stores with "official" or "flagship" any similar word in the title. It means nothing at Aliexpress.
It's a big street marketplace so don't expect anything near tequipment or batronix service. Ali is about prices, not service.
We couldn't imagine such a device for one hundred dollars at pre-Ali times. There is no room for English speaking support staff salary in these prices.

[Labrat101]

Hi , I also had trouble with DHL.
This is the real supplier outlet and they replied to me within hours . ( Remembering the time difference )
https://unit.aliexpress.com/store/3095007?spm=a2g0o.detail.1000002.2.2a6468c8cgv5Nh
This is the shipping outlet of UNI-T

 DHL has many problems when I ordered my one about 4 months ago DHL held it in a truck for 10 days .
I used Ali messenger and I request a recall from DHL and to send it via Fed-ex . which they did. And sent another one out.
which I got within 10 days.   . This is the third time I have had trouble with DHL they are the worst as they use other carriers.

 BTW the Save . 962 if you turn it off the last setting will be saved.  when turned back on again . well my one does .

Enjoy 

[ataradov]

This is the third time I have had trouble with DHL they are the worst as they use other carriers.

This is location dependent, so use whatever carrier works best in your area. In my case DHL is the most reliable carrier.

[Labrat101]

This is the third time I have had trouble with DHL they are the worst as they use other carriers.

This is location dependent, so use whatever carrier works best in your area. In my case DHL is the most reliable carrier.

Not really in my case it never left china and never got to the main distributor . UNI-T sent it out DHL collected and after 10 days
never got processed .
I had the same thing with DHL UK they lost a package at the airport .    It turned up 3 months later . I had already  got a refunded
and a resend via another Currier within 7 days .
 DHL has the worst track history and the best delay system .

[Dd]

932 also saves the settings on shutdown, the missed feature is persistent memory for "external" waveforms

[Mechatrommer]

This is the third time I have had trouble with DHL they are the worst as they use other carriers.

This is location dependent, so use whatever carrier works best in your area. In my case DHL is the most reliable carrier.

Not really in my case it never left china and never got to the main distributor . UNI-T sent it out DHL collected and after 10 days
never got processed .
I had the same thing with DHL UK they lost a package at the airport .    It turned up 3 months later . I had already  got a refunded
and a resend via another Currier within 7 days .
 DHL has the worst track history and the best delay system .

and again i guess its location dependent. source DHL will need green light from last mile deliverer in order to proceed putting the item in the transportation line. or maybe they will need certain mass of parcels to economically send out to a particular location by plane. or just maybe... they cant figure out what your flag is from this forum... for prestigous couriers to my place, i can pick Fedex, UPS or DHL. i usually prefer DHL.

[JamesLynton]

On saves, I could do with being able to recall setups quickly for different jobs (outside of creating an externally imported waveform) ..it would save the chore of recreating the synthesised setup each time for complex do dads. Its curious that its missing.

Onto something else from me,
Did some quick and dirty ballpark testing of this unit out of curiosity & heres the results:


UNI-T UTG962 noise floor analysis with Siglent SDS1204X-E scope - Testing different power source influences.

Quick Conclusion: Powering the UTG with a (merely average) usb power bank can make a dramatic difference to signal noise levels. Also, the output from the UTG is quite unexpectedly & remarkably clean when given a decent power supply. So much so, its own inherent noise is frequently barely above that of the oscilloscope.



Siglent SDS1204X-E scope Baseline Details:
Scope Channel - Unplugged.
        - (200MHz BW) 0.12mV RMS - 0.80mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20MHz BW)  0.10mV RMS - 0.40mV Pk2Pk 
Scope Channel - 50 Ohms direct terminated.
        - (200MHz BW) 0.12mV RMS - 0.80mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20MHz BW)  0.13mV RMS - 0.40mV Pk2Pk 
Scope Channel - CH3 Terminated into CH4 via scope lead.
        - (200MHz BW) 0.14mV RMS - 0.84mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20MHz BW)  0.13mV RMS - 0.44mV Pk2Pk

Test Scope Setup Conclusions:
* Using a proper 50 Ohms bnc terminator actually slightly raises noise floor.
* 'properly' Terminated Scope lead shows that it introduces negligible noise.
Note: the Ground pin next to the calibration terminal is actually rather unacceptably noisy in the millivolt range.


UNI-T - UTG962 Test Setup Details:
* Test of fairly decent generic mains usb PSU and a fairly standard USB battery power bank as power sources.
* UTG connected to scope via supplied bnc to bnc cable.
* Test done by placing the signal generator into DC output mode & taking it thru the entire unipolar voltage range, with scope in AC coupled modes to establish noise levels present.
* Measurements taken at 1mV/Div and at 20ms (a 280ms sampling window).
* 20MHz & 200 MHz modes used to crudely establish extent of unwanted noise density in different ranges.
* Note: some very minor DC shift was observed whilst taking these measurements, I expect this was down to saturation quirks of the scopes AC decoupling stage, this was compensated for with offset.


Results for (non uni-t) reasonable quality mains powered USB adapter:
PSU - Channel OFF - Much Lower Noise than channel ON.
        - (200Mhz BW) 0.39mV RMS - 2.50mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20Mhz BW)  0.35mV RMS - 1.20mV Pk2Pk     
PSU - 0-560mV     - Significant noise floor rise upon switching channel ON.
        - (200Mhz BW) 0.41-0.43mV RMS - 8.50-9.00mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20Mhz BW)  0.37-0.40mV RMS - 5.80-6.50mV Pk2Pk     
PSU - 561mV-10V     - Slight to moderate rise in RMS noise floor.
        - (200Mhz BW) 0.45-1.25mV RMS - 9.00-9.00mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20Mhz BW)  0.40-0.85mV RMS - 6.50-6.50mV Pk2Pk     
PSU - Unplugged   - Slightly less noisy across the board than Channel OFF, worst at full bandwidth.
        - (200Mhz BW) 0.35mV RMS - 1.10mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20Mhz BW)  0.33mV RMS - 0.68mV Pk2Pk     

Results for iMuto USB Battery Power Bank:
USB - Channel OFF - Slightly lower noise than with Mains PSU, particularly below 20MHz.
        - (200Mhz BW) 0.31mV RMS - 2.00mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20Mhz BW)  0.29mV RMS - 0.80mV Pk2Pk     
USB - 0-560mV     - MUCH lower noise than PSU, though mainly in Peak to Peak noise.
        - (200Mhz BW) 0.35-0.40mV RMS - 2.20-2.20mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20Mhz BW)  0.32-0.39mV RMS - 1.00-1.00mV Pk2Pk     
USB - 561mV-10V     - MUCH lower noise than PSU, though mainly in Peak to Peak noise.
        - (200Mhz BW) 0.37-1.00mV RMS - 3.50-3.75mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20Mhz BW)  0.35-0.75mV RMS - 1.20-1.20mV Pk2Pk     
USB - Unplugged   - Same as previously (because of course
        - (200Mhz BW) 0.35mV RMS - 1.10mV Pk2Pk     
        - (20Mhz BW)  0.33mV RMS - 0.68mV Pk2Pk     


See middle section of below graph for just how much noise is reduced with a good power source, particularly when dealing with spurious, peaky noise.



Some of the screen grabs off the scope, Bottom trace is an unloaded channel shown for scale concerning noise levels.

PSU - Measured at 200MHZ bandwidth:

State - Channel OFF, Generator plugged in:


State - Channel ON, 0 Volts DC selected:


State - Channel ON, 10 Volts DC selected:



USB - Measured at 200MHZ bandwidth:

State - Channel OFF, Generator plugged in:


State - Channel ON, 0 Volts DC selected:


State - Channel ON, 10 Volts DC selected:




Bonus Bits - PSU and USB at 20MHz Bandwidth Limit:

USB - State - Channel ON, 0 Volts DC selected:

yum.

PSU - State - Channel ON, 0 Volts DC selected:

yuck.

Also, yeah ...wow, modern scopes  , and cheap ones too having sub millivolt noise on their front ends (0.10-0.80mV), at hundreds of Mhz ..that still blows my mind; and to think I thought the noise floor performance of my old, late 80's analog 150MHz Tek 2445a was pretty decent ..not by half, that had fuzz in the several millivolt range iirc.

[Labrat101]

I did notice that the power supplied had some noise . But my power supply was not as bad
 I also noticed that the supplied as it had no earth pin there was a small amount of leakage.
 as well . I use a ground wire to the neg shielding cured it . But as you did a very nice full
test .  Yes the Unit works better with a better 5v supply ,  its known that most of the battery
usb chargers with only 2 pin and without the ground earth are slightly noisy  .
 But the supplied one was better than some of the other china smp's .not by much.
As you quoted a decent 5v power supply is far better . I took my 5v from my computer
SMPS directly .  and not from a cheap charger .
 Nice test . over all it is a good unit and I found my one was very accurate .
 

[JamesLynton]

Thanks
I'll quick check it later with the supplied uni-t wall wart, though it didn't come with my regional plug connector plate. Will wack it in a shaver adapter and see how it does.
Maybe that in afew days. Not expecting miracles there, but maybe they did get it specced slightly better than the average one