Let's get Slider (aka Mark Vaughan) a nice 4-channel DSO with math functions!

[ion]

I agree !!  

Also,does Smudge have a NICE scope ??

I can't speak for Smudge, but believe he is a huge asset that  has freely and generously given his life's work of 80+ years to the forum in the form of very well written scientific documents and very worthy ideas for research. From the fact that he relies on Peterae and others to do testing and post scope shot results of his experiments leads me to believe he does not have a scope befitting the calibre of a scientist of his stature.

There are many very worthy researchers here with ideas far more in line with the mission statement of this forum than others that have been so blessed. Hopefully all of their needs will also be met as generously.

[ion]

Thanks ION

I didn't mean for people to raise money for me though, the price is better than anything we can get in the UK.

I think that very few really qualify for fund raising on the basis that they don't make their work visible to the public, the likes of Slider & Grumage are much more deserving of that as they have more time to use it.

Peter

The fact that there is less visibility for the "hidden projects" on this forum is usually because they are more "sensitive" or more likely to be scrutinized by non-members and possibly plagiarized, or has more possibility of a large breakthrough, as I understand it. But this is not often the choice of the researcher, who is often invited to share his work in the private thread by a select group after it has been started. That these "hidden" projects should be somehow less "worthy" of investment is curious.

Personally I am not in favor of private threads but there seems to be no other good solution to protecting the forum at this time.
Any ideas on this issue are welcome.

Regarding equipment purchases and project allocation, I am keenly aware of the sensitive nature of this endeavor, having been a former Director of Research and Development for many years in my professional life. It was a difficult position, you couldn't please everyone. Generally projects that were most in line with the company mission statement were funded first and with the best equipment and project resources. Other projects didn't make full funding, and some were unfunded and not pursued.

All equipment went into an equipment pool and were lent to the projects according to certain criteria. When the project was finished, other projects could request the equipment.

   One thing is for sure, all projects required that proposals be submitted first, with expected goals and the investment would have to have some success probability attached. Also the projects would be aimed at surpassing current technology by adequate benchmarking with existing technology. Where no such goalpost was to be had, the project was not funded or very lightly funded.

Fortunately I do not serve on such a committee here at OUR, as it is a difficult position, and as far as I know there is no such committee, how recipients are selected I do not know. What is obvious is that there are only a handful of posters that actually worked in the real world and had responsibilities and headaches of project management and resource allocation. They know who they are.

The other approach is "Hey Hey! Let's buy a bloke a beer" which has it's pitfalls for the bloke might actually be expected to drive "car" home. If there are no expectations, then it could be just "charity".


Kind Regards
ION

[Smudge]

I agree !!  

Also,does Smudge have a NICE scope ??

I have two old scopes salvaged from the scrap heap, not DSO's but the old fashioned variety.  However due to health and other commitments I do not have time to do any active work in this area, although I am very much tempted to restart.  I haven't touched a soldering iron or scope probe for over 3 years  .  I am happy to continue with other people doing the spade work while I sit back and play the foreman.  This might take longer than doing it myself, but at least it gets the job done.  If it was left to me to do the work I am afraid it would languish  .

Smudge

[Peterae]

For real public funding or people to donate, i think Zero fossil fuel has the right approach, you need to reveal all work in public in effect advertising your work and skills in order to tempt people for donations of money and equipment/tools/parts, i think you need to be pretty sharp with technology in order to make a living while doing FE research.

If you are working on something that could cause trouble as long as you have a wide public following, build it and show the research in total as it progresses then i don't see there being a problem.

My idea of a funded person is a lab with camera and voice contact during working times so people can watch and listen and then also contact via typed chat and then audio chat if time is available, there is no privacy, treat it like a job, 5 days 9-5

A project started would include a talk of what the aim is, and regular talks about how it's going and if it has gone off track and changed direction, there's loads of scope here.

I don't know the legalities or tax implications but i would imagine setting up a charity, the donations are then tax deductable to the donour, the charity buys the parts and equipment and a fair wage is paid to the researcher.

[Chet K]

we are looking into the charity thing here,in the USA
Perhaps A query in the UK ,Australia,the Netherlands Sweden,Eastern Europe
France,Germany...Or ?

we cover the globe we should see where it is the easiest and makes sense ?

Lots of good ideas !

[Slider2732]

It's arrived !!!!!
Many many thanks to all  

Chet called saying he'd see into finding shipping location info and, not 2 minutes later, there was a knock at the door.

A few unboxing pics below.
It was noted while doing so, that nearby sits my restored 1970's LG BM-709 radio. Similar width, depth, height, weight and even a carrying handle. So the last pic is a fun comparison of 1975 vs 2015.

[Slider2732]

Indeed, i've often wondered about those mushrooms that grow wild in our front yard

[TinMan]

Great to see it turnd up finally Mark.

Enjoy

[TinMan]

Oh-P.S

Did TK get his yet?

[Slider2732]

Thanks Brad
I believe TK's arrives today too, source being the conv with our Mr. Chet.

Have just had a bit of a play and (scope newbie here) realised that there's 4V p/p of mains hum, if I hold the input lead ground and end tip. Seems like it's going to be really useful for such experiments as those that your osc device is bringing in. Perhaps also with furtherments of my own Pigeon Loft stuff of a few years ago. The readings go higher if gripped or if I tread into the floor. All normal, but never personally seen on a screen.
May make a sniffer coil for wireless work, but am wary of taking it within 10ft of a Slayer Exciter.

Initial observations are that it takes a while to boot up, 20 seconds or something, makes lots of relay clicking noises and has a loudish fan for a quiet room. I say loud, it's exactly the same as a regular 12V PC fan running inside a small area plastic case...annnd there could be a reason for that.
But, other than that, it's like using a 7" tablet or similar....very intuitive controls too that feel well made.
It doesn't move at all when pressing anything, which was a concern being on a wooden table.
Apparently I have 35hrs 57 mins of free features time. Probably enough time to realise what they do, get used to them, use them daily and then *poof*.
Shut down is hilarious in comparison to the slow data setup feed-in of the start up procedure - 'click' - gone lol

[TinselKoala]

Oh-P.S

Did TK get his yet?

Nope. It is supposed to be on a UPS truck for delivery today, but I haven't seen anything yet. Supposedly got put on the local truck at a bit after 5 am, and it's about 2:23 pm now.

Chet placed the order for this scope on February 9, by the way.

[TinselKoala]

@Slider: you may find this useful:

(If you are using Linux you will need to run the makefile to compile the Linux version for your system. The Windows and HTML versions should work "out of the box". I haven't tested the Mac version.)

[TinselKoala]

Also, two quieter fans have been suggested on the EEVblog forum:

Gelid Silent 5
and
Fractal Design FD-FAN-SSR2-50

I have one of the latter on the way, coming from Houston, at 9.99 plus tax, free shipping. Just in case the stock fan keeps me awake.

ETA: Here's a basic multivibrator circuit with very fast fall-time. You can whip this up quickly to play around with, see if you can get the scope to resolve the falling edges of the pulse. Neither of my Analog scopes (60 MHz) will do it.

[Slider2732]

Running Lubuntu here.
Thanks
Will certainly look at the Royer type circuit (if that's what it is ?)

The fan is no real problem though, just that there is one and it's noticeable in a quiet room.
On the other hand, my PC has a twonked out fan that needs to be replaced. You know that sound that car wheels make when the bearings crunch on a full turn lock ? it makes that sound. I'd considered turning it into one of those Imhotep Berdini things...but it would be the most underunity version ever. Start it up to scare small children at Halloween sort of device.

[JimBoot]

Great stuff Wallace, looking forward to seeing it in action

[Chet K]

Tinsel know has a suped up Scope .
Loves it.

[TinMan]

Tinsel know has a suped up Scope .
Loves it.

It is great to see both guys have there new scope.
Now--wheres the video's ? lol.

[TinselKoala]

 

Yep, it finally arrived--- at the vacant house next door. UPS just dropped it off on the front porch of the vacant house. They were supposed to get a signature.... obviously didn't, since nobody lives there! That house has been broken into several times and there are people who cruise this 'hood looking for loose stuff to rip off from porches, so it's very lucky that I found it over there before someone else did. We got on the phone to UPS customer service with a complaint, they are supposed to call back today with... what? What can they do at this point?

At any rate, it's here, it is in good shape, it works, it's not too noisy, I've unlocked it to 100 MHz bandwidth etc and burned it in overnight. I'm pleased as punch, and I want to thank everyone that helped make this possible. It's a significant upgrade to my lab capabilities and I'm sure it will pay off in terms of ... more data...

Here's the short unboxing video, nothing exciting except for my rant vs. UPS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gStNYfqMXk

I've just made another 12 minute video, showing some of the basic features and operation of controls. That will be ready to view in an hour or so, it takes a long time to transcode and upload from here. I'll post the link here when it's done.

(ETA: Note that the labels on the traces below aren't really  indicating "current" or Joules, the circuit isn't set up for those actual measurements. I just put the labels there to show how it's done. The Math trace is the integral of the multiplication of the two raw traces, though. )

[TinMan]

Yep, it finally arrived--- at the vacant house next door. UPS just dropped it off on the front porch of the vacant house. They were supposed to get a signature.... obviously didn't, since nobody lives there! That house has been broken into several times and there are people who cruise this 'hood looking for loose stuff to rip off from porches, so it's very lucky that I found it over there before someone else did. We got on the phone to UPS customer service with a complaint, they are supposed to call back today with... what? What can they do at this point?

At any rate, it's here, it is in good shape, it works, it's not too noisy, I've unlocked it to 100 MHz bandwidth etc and burned it in overnight. I'm pleased as punch, and I want to thank everyone that helped make this possible. It's a significant upgrade to my lab capabilities and I'm sure it will pay off in terms of ... more data...

Here's the short unboxing video, nothing exciting except for my rant vs. UPS.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-gStNYfqMXk

I've just made another 12 minute video, showing some of the basic features and operation of controls. That will be ready to view in an hour or so, it takes a long time to transcode and upload from here. I'll post the link here when it's done.

(ETA: Note that the labels on the traces below aren't really  indicating "current" or Joules, the circuit isn't set up for those actual measurements. I just put the labels there to show how it's done. The Math trace is the integral of the multiplication of the two raw traces, though. )

Looks great TK,and i may have a job for you and your new scope very soon lol.

[TinselKoala]

Looks great TK,and i may have a job for you and your new scope very soon lol.

Any time, I'm already looking for stuff to test. The scope is great, most of the time!

The scopeshot below shows the pulse output from my old DataPulse DP101 pulse generator, which has a risetime spec of 5ns into 50 ohms. So ran it up to its maximum frequency of 10MHz and used a 50-ohm terminator adapter at the scope end of a length of co-ax, and got a satisfactory result: the scope reports less than 4 ns risetime. The scopeshot also shows the use of the cursor system, the zoom mode, and large fonts on the measurements.

I did have a weirdness while setting this up ... the scope locked up completely on me at one point. It was still capturing live waveforms but wouldn't respond to any buttons or knobs. Cycling the power made it work again... but of course I had the Power-On Setup set to "Default" instead of Last, so I lost the setup and had to reestablish it. So I am recommending that this parameter be kept in "Last" mode instead of Default, since it's easy to get rid of a previous setup after starting the scope, but harder to restore one that's lost by power-cycling.

Here's the 12 minute demo video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oNzfRsnabwk

I wish I could get better resolution without it taking hours and hours to upload. I have to compress to under 100 MB for any reasonable upload time, since we have a really slow connection here.

[evolvingape]

Any time, I'm already looking for stuff to test.

I got something for ya to test.. being posted out soon! 

Family holiday here for Easter so been labouring all week completely knackered, cannot wait to go back to work for a rest lol no time to test but that changes this weekend and the device will be on it's way to you pronto.

[Slider2732]

Yes, many thanks to you too Grommit - good heavens, it must be 4 or 5 years that we've kept that going lol

TK - your vids are great for learning. I had no idea up until you posted that video about the zooming of ranges in those ways.


I wanted to do a vid with the scope, on TinMan's extraordinary thingummy with the Ground only connection. However, the darn circuit doesn't want to work yet. It lights an LED at up to 610kHz (signal generator) then the LED goes out, yet only to 510kHz in another configuration. Has a weird trait of snuffing the LED at 4Hz but works all around the lower figures too. I got intrigued and side tracked with it, morphing it to a Lasersaber SJR 3. No idea of the actual connections, basing it on the report within the video of a Berdini type SSG circuit.
Ummm I should use the scope to trace it out a bit, but would rather it was doing something first.

 

[TinMan]

@ TK or slider
Are the grounds on those scope independent from one another?

[TinselKoala]

@ TK or slider
Are the grounds on those scope independent from one another?

No, they are not. All the BNC shields are connected together at the chassis, and the chassis ground is connected to the Mains ground pin. So you have direct continuity from the scope probe grounds, to the Mains powerline ground.

There are only a few scopes that I know about for which this is not true. For example, the Fluke 123 and 199 ScopeMeters have isolated and independent channel grounds good for 600 volts differential.

[TinMan]

No, they are not. All the BNC shields are connected together at the chassis, and the chassis ground is connected to the Mains ground pin. So you have direct continuity from the scope probe grounds, to the Mains powerline ground.

There are only a few scopes that I know about for which this is not true. For example, the Fluke 123 and 199 ScopeMeters have isolated and independent channel grounds good for 600 volts differential.

Ah,bugga. Oh well-cant win them all.
Im guessing these other scopes you mentioned cost an arm and leg.

Wish i could work out the math function on my scope-that would be handy.