Agilent U1731B LCR Meter Teardown
A couple of weeks ago, I got myself an Agilent U1731B LCR meter on eBay. These handheld LCR meters are quite expensive when new, but can be found on eBay for a fraction of the original price. Dave Jones at…
Category: Electronics
Interfacing a Noritake VFD Module with Arduino
I recently bought a Noritake-itron VFD module off eBay. Noritake-itron specializes in making vacuum fluorescent displays for many OEMs. As such, there are many surplus modules being sold in secondary markets. The module I got has the model number CU20026SCPB-T26A,…
Inside an Agilent 66312A Two-Quadrant Power Supply
Typically, a lab power supply can only operate within a single quadrant. Take a positive voltage power supply for example, it can only output or source current. If any attempt is made trying to sink current into the power supply…
Extreme Teardown of a Panasonic PT-L780U 3LCD Projector
Have you ever wondered what is inside of a 15 year old commercial color projector? Well we will find out in this post today. As usual, a video of this teardown is included towards the end of the post.
OOK/FSK Modulation Using PE42420 RF Switch
I recently bought a few Peregrine Semiconductor‘s PE42420 RF Switch evaluation boards on eBay. The PE42420 is an absorptive SPDT RF switch that operates between 100 MHz and 6 GHz. Besides the obvious use as a single pole double throw…
Teardown of an MEDA PLM-100 AC Magnetometer
I did a teardown a while ago on a cheap eBay electromagnetic radiation detector, and if you recall the performance of that meter was mediocre at the best. This time around though, I’ve got a MEDA PLM-100 AC magnetometer. Since…
Inside a Datum 9300 Time Code Generator
IRIG time code generators (not to be confused with the ones used in video and film industry) are often used for clock synchronization among various connected equipment and is commonly used in power generation and distribution industry as well as…
Controlling an HMC624LP4E RF Attenuator Using Arduino
I recently found a Hittite (acquired by Analog Devices in 2014) HMC624LP4E evaluation board gathering dust in my miscellaneous PCB bin and thought it might be a great little project to add a microcontroller interface to it so I can…
Teardown of an MVMT Dual USB Port Wall Outlet Adapter
I bought a USB wall outlet adapter recently so that I can free up my wall outlets while charging my phones and tablets. Of course, before putting it into use, I wanted to open it up to take a peak…
Unusual Failure Mode of an APC Surge Protector
Recently I got hold of a dead APC SurgeArrest power strip that was about to be thrown out in my office. The power strip simply doesn’t provide power to any of its outlets regardless of the power switch position. Since…
Keithley 775A Programmable Counter TCXO Repair
In my last post, I did a teardown of the Keithley 775A programmable counter/timer. And while feeding a 10 MHz signal from my Rubidium frequency standard, I noticed that the measured frequency was significantly lower (9.9981 MHz) than the nominal…
Keithley 775A Programmable Counter Teardown
I just picked up a Keithley 775A programmable frequency counter from eBay. Specification-wise, this counter is very similar to the Racal Dana 1992 frequency counter I repaired last year. The Keithley 775A I got came with an additional channel (option…
HP 8566B Spectrum Analyzer “YTO Unlock” Repair
While I was making a video on how to use HP 8671A as the frequency reference for an improved version of my simple DIY tracking generator for my HP 8566B spectrum analyzer, my spectrum analyzer suddenly decided to call it…
A Quick Look at the M5Stack ESP32 Development Kit
I recently received an M5Stack ESP32 development kit from Banggood. Although I have not used any ESP32 based development boards before, I have heard many good things about the ESP32 platform, especially for its rich feature set and versatile connectivity.…
Teardown of an EcoSmart 60W Dimmable G16.5 LED Bulb
Although LED light bulbs have been around for a while, I have not been able to totally replace all my lights in the house to LED ones until quite recently. The main reason is that some of my existing light…