Partnered Output Coils - Free Energy

[TinselKoala]

@MH: The Rigol has some two-operator math, it can do multiplication and then integration, so the power and energy waveforms don't need to be calculated in the spreadsheet, they can be seen directly on the scope itself.  Only one math trace at a time, but push a button or two and you can see first the VxI power, store that, then compute the integral of the power trace, pull up the stored power trace and display them both, in addition to four more live traces if you need to.
It also has the best variable intensity display in the business, according to some reviewers, so can produce a great near-analog picture.

The serial bus decoding is really neat. I may never actually use it... but it's great to be able to say I can do it!

[stivep]

I agree that buying used bench equipment can allow you to get higher quality equipment
at a cheaper price, but if the equipment is over say 20 years old, there can be bad/poor connections
due to corrosion and dirt build up in switches and pots, and electrolytic capacitors have a limited lifetime and
very old electrolytic capacitors may well need to be replaced. With old equipment of more than 20 to 30 years or so,
don't be surprised if some things like switches and pots don't work well, or if the equipment is quite out of calibration,
or needs electrolytic capacitors changed. If you can afford it, buying new equipment will likely at least save you
these sort of problems, if you don't have the time or desire to tinker with and refurbish older equipment.
Also, the newer digital equipment these days often allows file storage and USB and computer access and control
as well as many other handy features that older equipment does not have. Very handy features these days. :-)
All the best...

Your comment  is Not than much of the truth.
Every equipment has its own application.
I have some of instruments from 1901 . Beauty of its own.


Think this way.
How many Rolls Royce  that are more than 30 years old you can find out there?
than
How many Toyota or  Fiat  that are more than 30 years old you can find out there?
than compare.


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the bottom line is that Rolls Royce  that is 20 years old you can buy  for as little as  from $2000 to $15 000
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the inconvenience is that you  need to find them * auction, second  owner and so on. But it still will be Rolls Royce.










The same story is with equipment:

1. newer buy new ( the same as with the car, after it left  seller is 20%  cheaper, after 2 years is another 20% cheaper)


2. newer buy  a "tandem" If you have  oscilloscope,  generator ,spectrum analyzer  in one unit than when is broken you may lose all of  the modules.The performance of Tandem is compromise never  compatible with single generator , oscilloscope and so on.


3. Application is important.
There are no generator that does everything.
It is good to have   farm of different generators as everyone has its own unique futures.
example of it -
a.  Tone generators
b.  HV generators
c.  Programmable  waveform generators
d.  High current generators
e.  burst generators
f.   two and more channels generators
g.  tracking generators
10.high impedance generators
11. Arbitrary Waveform  Generators
12 Femto second  Generator- as a group  is generators with  very fast rise  and fall time  say 50ps rise time

The one that I have for many years is AWG 2041 and this one can be used only if application doesn't require from me to have voltage  higher than 2.0 V


So the good thing is that  they are cheap.


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Much better is with oscilloscopes.
the most important is to have  sampling time  as high as possible  for your money . say: TDS-654c  has  5Gs/s


Tektronix TDS 654C Four Channel oscilloscope 500Mhz bandwidth, 5G/S sample rate (real time.) 

US $800.00
and plenty of math functions.
It was made for military so 20 years old is sky top better  than  that Rigol from above.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Tektronix-TDS-654C-Four-Channel-oscilloscope-500Mhz-bandwidth-5G-S-sample-rate-/351319450605?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item51cc4563ed


The good about it  that  it does not need any special probes. Lecroy  tries to catch you   with it big time. but Lecroy is  the Rolls Royce.
I have -TDS-654C. I got it from ebay for  around $540 5 years  ego with partially damaged CRT ( discoloration)
So  what?
It does the job  and I can see all of  different shapes in  different colors. Sharp and precise.
So I'm pointing here at: bandwidth and sample rate.

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thinking about the lab:
1. it is set of devices that you  very rarely touch.
2. it is set of devices that are handy when needed
3.it is set of devices that might easily  got damaged  dealing with unspecified measurements.
4. it is you playing with them and getting  better  big time in overall knowledge.
5. it is your investment  very much  having more of return than you payed for it if  purchased  as used, and exchanged  for better in right time.
By that  it should be clear that you are cruising on the internet all the time and because of it you increasing your knowledge as well. 
Most of my experience  comes from reading application notes of  the instruments. than I tried to duplicate what was meant of higher   grade of instruments on the older one I have.
6. at no time you get so good   you just surprised how come that was possible in such a short time.
7. with the time you might find that you not in rush to play with another  "new" toy as you do not even have time to finish playing wih the old one.




And there it comes.
You actually will see  business or job opportunity for yourself  changing your future to different direction.
 









Wesley

[MileHigh]

TK:

Yes I understand that there is a lot of power in the scope.  I just think it's worth it to think about the spreadsheet as a very powerful tool also.  All in good time, I am not suggesting anything beyond just illustrating an example of what could be done for now.

One thing about a DSO that I think is worth mastering is trying to sample your waveform at the highest rate possible.  I notice you often see that the "data buffer depth window" shows that you are looking at a tiny slice of the memory buffer.  I don't have the skills or experience, but what is always in the back of my mind when I look at those displays is how many raw data points have I captured for my waveform.  Note that what you see on the display is typically a "crunch down" of your data buffer and since I don't have the skills to drive the machine I am always in doubt.

I will put it in simpler terms:  You see a waveform on your scope.  It's taken for granted that you are oversampling the waveform.  The display is 800 pixels wide.  Are there 15,000 samples that were crunched down to render that waveform into an 800-pixel-wide display?   Or were there 942 samples that were crunched down to render the waveform into an 800-pixel-wide display?  That's were I feel uncertainty and that's where I always want to know.

Of course there are diminishing returns, 200,000 samples vs. 15,000 samples is not going to give you anything.

For spreadsheets, here is just something to ponder:  You have a highly oversampled waveform and we know the A/D is eight bits.  You can take that data buffer and filter it in your spreadsheet and completely remove the "jaggies" and turn it into what looks like a perfectly smooth waveform.  So the output from the spreadsheet could be a butter-smooth highly oversampled waveform that is say a simulated 14-bits of precision.

I am no expert here but here is my train of thought:  You want to make a very advanced high-precision power measurement.  You take two raw highly-oversampled 8-bit waveforms, and smooth them out and get two "virtual" 14-bit waveforms.  Then you do the math on the 14-bit "near-zero jaggie" waveforms and output a butter-smooth set of power and energy waveforms.

You might only want to do that once in a while when there is reason to do it.  The point being in a way you can "overcome" the jaggy 8-bit A/D by oversampling and filtering your data and then you work with these derived waveforms.

Correct me if I am wrong, but this is what a high-end sound card does with its on-board processor.  It calculates intermediate values between samples to produce "smoother audio" at a simulated higher D/A bit depth.  The sound card creates virtual higher precision A/D data and a virtual higher precision sampling clock before clocking out the data into say an 18-bit D/A chip.  In the case of your DSO, you don't really have to do any virtual oversampling because your sample rate is already super high.  But the "smoothing" and simulating a higher A/D could come in handy when trying to make more precise power measurements.  And like I said, then you get "prettier" waveform plots that are free of the jaggies.

Finally, I think this is mostly valid.  You can generate derived smoother waveforms because that is what is actually happening in real life.

MileHigh

[Void]

Hi Stivep. I hear you. Some people just prefer older or higher end equipment, and sometimes it could definitely
come in handy to have more accurate/precise higher end equipment, but I find for day to day
use my fairly cheap economy based DSO gets the job done. Sometimes I do wish I had a higher end scope
however when making more critical measurements. I had an older analog function generator from maybe the
seventies or eighties, which had some nice features, but it was somewhat out of balance/calibration and some
of the pots and switches were corroded and dirty and didn't work the best. I ended up replacing it with
a brand new GWInstek function generator, which was a bit expensive, but it is actually a good work
horse function generator with output circuit protection features, which comes in real handy with
the various types of circuits I use it with. It is all a matter of need and preference, sure, but
for the most part a cheaper and new lower end piece of equipment will get the job done. Some of the Chinese economy
equipment does have glitches and bugs, and I have found a couple of those with my Chinese Siglent economy
DSO scope, but it still does get the job done for most things I need it for
All the best...

[DreamThinkBuild]

Hi MileHigh,

Thanks for bringing this to attention.

I think I've seen you mentioned somewhere that you could control the scope (Rigol) with a USB link and Python. That would be awesome with a Raspberry PI (2) which already has the video built in and also the GPIO ports to trigger external devices.

If a low loss mux switch could be setup for multiple scope inputs controlled by the Pi then having a program to analyze the inputs using the scope as a glorified sensor conditioner would be amazing. That would cut down on a lot of the ancillary sensor circuitry that would have to be created when doing many tests.

If the data can be fed into Octave/Matlab it opens a lot of doors, the vector operations are extremely powerful.

For signal output I've been using the Teensy 3.1, 12 bit DAC but it seems limited to 47khz. There are stair steps at low resolutions you can smooth them somewhat with caps but then it introduces lag and distortion at higher frequencies. Fun to play with though.

https://www.pjrc.com/teensy/teensy31.html