On Thu, 23 Feb 2012 20:01:18 -0000 "Rob Kimberley" <robkimber...@btinternet.com> wrote:
> I'm looking at Item: 300658066641 on EBay, and wanted to know if anyone in > the group had any experience of this product. I know this is way off topic, > but as a group it's nice to know what's out there and possibly useful in our > mutual hobby. It depends what you want to use it for. If you just want to have something protable that can show you roughly what's going on, then this might be a good thing. For anything else, especially measurements, i wouldnt trust it further than i can throw it. It's actually quite nice that they put the schematics online too, so their claims can be verified. First that jumps out is that they are using a AD9288-40 as ADC. Note the -40 there? It means it's an 40Msps ADC. Ie the maximum usable BW you can have is 20MHz (actually a bit lower). The analog circuitry doesn't seem too bright either, but i guess you should be able to get the 20MHz. I havent checked the exact circuitry so i cannot say whether the input circuit does filter at 20MHz. But as they claim to have 72MHz analog bandwidth, i would be very carefull about aliasing problems The input circuitry isn't very impressive either and has an undefined input capacitance (there is a trimmer there) somwhere between 5pF and 30pF (plus stray capacitances). I find it a it strange, that they disconnect one input of the frontend opamp... it might anything from going into saturation to start bouncing around... The analog switches are rather on the cheap side, nothing you'd expect in an DSO, but well.. for that price :-) Also notice that the connectors used look like SMB or MCX antenna connectors. Ie those would not be able to withstand many mating/break cycles. Overall, i'd say a good portable gauge, but not much more. For a more indepth analysis i'd have to take the schematics apart into a readable format... Attila Kinali -- Why does it take years to find the answers to the questions one should have asked long ago? _______________________________________________ time-nuts mailing list -- time-nuts@febo.com To unsubscribe, go to https://www.febo.com/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/time-nuts and follow the instructions there.