A Good Meter For Solar System Testing
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Good info, thanks guys -
How you doing hawkman
Long time since last post
How are things going for you?Leave a comment:
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Oh yeah, any of them are more than I can afford, if I still want to live in a house and eat food. I get to play with cool expensive stuff at work. I, on the other hand have a $2 walmart analog multimeter.Leave a comment:
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The 8566 newer? It's ancient. However, when they replaced ours with first a Rohde & Schwarz FSM30 we made them leave our old 8566. A couple years ago that was replaced with the MXA but they put our 8566 into the engineering drawings now and it has a dedicated antenna while it sits on top of our safe. I love its one button ability to do peak search and max hold and stored settings with 2 button pushes. The MXA does more but I hate having to go thru menus.
The 8566 is so good that when we got them in the 80's the USAF PMEL guys would steal ours so they could calibrate their calibration equipment.
When I was hired, they were using something even older (round screen). In recent times,
equipment must be calibrated by methods traceable to NBS, annually (one of my side jobs).
Bruce RoeLeave a comment:
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The 8566 newer? It's ancient. However, when they replaced ours with first a Rohde & Schwarz FSM30 we made them leave our old 8566. A couple years ago that was replaced with the MXA but they put our 8566 into the engineering drawings now and it has a dedicated antenna while it sits on top of our safe. I love its one button ability to do peak search and max hold and stored settings with 2 button pushes. The MXA does more but I hate having to go thru menus.
The 8566 is so good that when we got them in the 80's the USAF PMEL guys would steal ours so they could calibrate their calibration equipment.Leave a comment:
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Instruments
I like these. Use them nearly every day. Ok, so they aren't mine but they are pretty sweet.
Agilent MXA spec an
Rohde & Schwarz SMU200a
Best spec an in the history of mankind is the HP8566b. Found one on ebay for only $2900. Better than the $35k MXA
[url]http://www.ebay.com/itm/HP-8566B-Spectrum-Analyzer-100-Hz-to-22-GHz
But these suck; techtronix ths730 handheld o'scope.
Ok, so I am a test equip geek. Sue me. I'll shut up now.
HP8565A 40 GHz spectrum is sitting on my home bench. Very good
to see how much interference an inverter, MPP, or other switching
controller is going to cause to my ham or other communications. A
matching 1 GHz digital frequency synthesizer sits next to it.
As for the THS730, it has a very unique feature. The 2 probe grounds
are floating, they don't have to be connected to the same potential.
Very handy to check the input & output of an isolated power supply.
That is what I got it for. Of course it is a handy storage scope,
which I can run off my 12V car battery.
As for a voltmeter, it doesn't cost a fortune to get a few decimal
places accuracy, easily good enough for this kind of work. The
low level Fluke on my bench will resolve down to a micro volt.
Bruce RoeLeave a comment:
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The SMU200 is way overkill for what we do, but probably more applicable to what you are talking about, cell stuff. The only good thing about it is the way you can program modulations into it. Ok, thats not the only thing, but in some ways for us it's like using a saturn V to get on your roof. They took away our real o'scope and gave us a headless network one. I hate that thing.Leave a comment:
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Well actually Agilent and Rhode & Schwartz are used a lot with Telephone Companies and Cellular Telephone companies. I am from the Telecom sector, and my company does a lot of electrical and RF work for Verizon and ATT to name a couple, and we have both Agilent and Rhode & Schwartz test equipment. I know what you mean about expensive as one of the Agilent Spectrum Analyzers cost as much as some new cars.Leave a comment:
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I know it's no good for solar but I like them. And yep, HP broke into two divisions, Agilent for the 'professional' stuff. You know, what the gov't buys. They spend oodles on this stuff but we can't get a decent DVM. This also made me think of when I was a kid. Made the mistake of using a PSM6 (analog meter) to check a 300v power supply test point...with it set to read amps. All the magic smoke escaped from the box and I got to fix it. At least I didn't have to pay for it. All you tax payers did.Leave a comment:
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Kno wall that equipment, but RF test equipment is useful for solar power, and Hewlett Packard no longer makes test equipment. HP sold all that to Agilent.Leave a comment:
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cool test equipment?
I like these. Use them nearly every day. Ok, so they aren't mine but they are pretty sweet.
Agilent MXA spec an
Rohde & Schwarz SMU200a
High-end vector signal generator for research, development and production of communication systems with RF characteristics and baseband characteristics.
Best spec an in the history of mankind is the HP8566b. Found one on ebay for only $2900. Better than the $35k MXA
But these suck; techtronix ths730 handheld o'scope.
Ok, so I am a test equip geek. Sue me. I'll shut up now.Leave a comment:
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Sunking, i like how you think, more stuff less fluff...Leave a comment:
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Learn to read. I have a FLUKE meter. Fluke is top of the line professional equipment and it cost around $900 for what I got. Extech are good meters for a DIY budgets at $50 to $100 price range. Which is the greater number? $900 or $100?Leave a comment:
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DC Clamp on Meter
usual $50 from the same source using code EMC313. Bruce RoeLeave a comment:
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I guess it goes without saying, but avoid shirt-pocket or ten-dollar special multimeters. Just because they are digital doesn't mean they are accurate.
I started cheap, and when I took my at-rest SOC voltage measurement, I thought I was doing fine at 12.2 volts for a rough 50% DOD. I upgraded to a Fluke, and found that I was really at 12.0 volts. Not good. A ten-dollar meter is a nice way to kill expensive batteries.Leave a comment:
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