Excel tips for min/max report

When putting together the min/max report, the following links came in handy:

To create the secondary axis, select a data series, and select "Format Data Series", then in Series Options find the option for "Secondary Axis".
https://www.extendoffice.com/documents/excel/2019-excel-make-two-y-axis.html

How to turn on the X and Y axis labels: Find the + sign for "Chart Elements" floating on the right side of the graph and select "Axis Titles". Also you can do any combination of X primary, X seconday, and Y axis labels:
https://www.extendoffice.com/documents/excel/1570-excel-add-axis-label.html#a2

Histograms are built in for Excel 2016. Also I found by trial and error that in order to restrict bin boundaries to the number of desired significant digits, the overflow bin has to either contain some data or be close to the first bin:
https://trumpexcel.com/histogram-in-excel/

Excel has a STDEV function: https://social.msdn.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/0d8edea2-f08e-41b7-b120-8ac08855c23b/difference-between-stdev-amp-stdevp?forum=sqlanalysisservices

Here's a nice article explaining Mean, Median, and Mode: https://www.purplemath.com/modules/meanmode.htm

Keysight 36312A quotes

Because the new site design makes it practically impossible to get to the page where I can request quotes, This is an attempt to bookmark the page here:

https://www.keysight.com/main/partnerfinder.jspx?N=1%20187629&pageMode=RS&cc=US&lc=eng&nid=-35673.1215251&pn=E36312A&ct=PRODUCT&pid=2804535&jsUrl=true

Opto22

This is the opto isolator that Juan loaned to me:

https://www.opto22.com/products/dc60s3

The DC means that it's rating applies to DC, the 60 refers to the voltage, the 3 refers to the max amps.

There is only one data sheet for all these SSRs:

https://www.opto22.com/support/resources-tools/documents/0859-solid-state-relays-(ssrs)-data-sheet

LVDS vs PECL

PECL is a diehard NASA revival of the discredited ECL technology from the 1990's. Some links:

The Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=LVDS+vs.+PECL

A nearly perfect comparison of the characteristics of all kinds of driver technology: https://www.vectron.com/products/literature_library/Signal_Types_and_Terminations.pdf

Add folder name to file name linux

I had a bunch of misnamed files throughout a directory tree that I had to fix the names of to have a common prefix with the name of their folder appended. Actually it was the name of a folder two levels up.

Theoretically a single-line 'find' command with the right -exec should be possible. However, encapsulating an awk script within a mv command hanging off of find, even with xargs proved to be too tricky, and I ended up just creating an echo statement with the mv commands and then taking the echoed output and putting it into a shell script.

Here is the final find-xargs-awk command line which generated the stdout that I pasted into my shell script. In this case, the original files are in ./$TL/$SL/ and $TL is a date code and I wanted to find the oldfile which had the wrong date code on the front and rename it to a new file prefix with the desired datecode on the end:

find . -name "*oldfile.csv" | xargs -I '{}' echo {} | awk -F'/' '{SL = NF-1; TL = NF-2; print "mv " $FILENAME "./" $TL "/" $SL "/newfile_" $TL ".csv"}'

Here are some relevant links turned up during researching this:

Here's a super simple example of using find to rename files. The commenter here likes xargs too much when it's unnecessary: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/227662/how-to-rename-multiple-files-using-find

I tried using SED to split up the directory path but it's way too hard to get it to treat slashes as delimiters, plus the result keeps the delimiter for some reason: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/16643288/sed-to-extract-text-between-two-strings

Still trying to get sed to work, here is a nice comparison of the same task with parentheses in different languages: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/108250/print-the-string-between-two-parentheses

Here is an example that is a lot of what I needed with my two directory levels, but aside from generally reminding me how to use awk I didn't end up stealing a lot of this: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/277231/how-to-get-second-directory-name-in-the-perforce-file-path

Here is the example that I stole most of my awk code from. It has several great examples, including using a for loop (which turned out to be largely unnecessary for me) and the kint of using the built-in swk variable FILENAME. https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/134212/extract-file-name-from-path-in-awk-program

Here is where I got the other part of my awk code using the NF built in variable. The example is in a for loop but I was able to do the same thing with find and xargs: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/643372/append-name-of-parent-folders-and-subfolders-to-the-names-of-the-multiple-files

Here is an example of a super fancy xargs command with find: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10972002/batch-renaming-files-in-command-line-and-xargs

Here is an example where somebody was just not doing xargs correctly, and the answers eventually converge on just using the -exec feature of find: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/90886/how-can-i-find-files-and-then-use-xargs-to-move-them

Here is another example of a for loop for somebody that is trying to do something remarkably similar to what I want to do, but these examples weren't actually very helpful: https://superuser.com/questions/516082/add-folder-name-to-beginning-of-filename

Find files, list contents with line length maxium

I needed to parse a directory tree and list all the files of a particular type, list the directory name, print the first few lines of each file, with long line lengths trimmed. I also wanted to only get the particular types of lines out of that initial listing, which are ones with the date in the first few characters.

Here is my massive final command:

find . -name "*.csv" -exec echo {} \; -exec head -n 21 {} \; | cut -c -70 | grep 2018 | grep -v DATE | grep -v UTEND

The beautiful parts of this were: 1) two -exec functions for my find command. Yep you can do that. 2) The cut command 3) a chain of greps to get the date and cut out other lines that had the date that I didn't want.

Microsoft Word 2016 list of tables missing table numbers

My document is having some of the weirdest list of figures issues I've seen so far, thanks most likely to the wonton cutting and pasting that I did early on in my rewrite. The main issues seem due to cuting and pasting text which had a figure with a caption, in which case the new figure number didn't update, and furthermore was invisible to group updating as well. After manually updating the caption number it would respond to group updating, but then I started having a new problem where the caption would appear in the list of figures, without the figure number!

Several useful hints in this forum thread: https://answers.microsoft.com/en-us/msoffice/forum/msoffice_word-mso_other/lost-references-to-captions-in-cross-references/89e88734-c0c5-4e6f-a0d2-c51b8d17ad14

Insert a check box in Microsoft Word 2016

To make a check box in a document in M$Word, you can either insert a graphic of a square, or a soft-copy clickable check box. The only graphic of a square that I've been able to find is kind of shitty, the soft-copy clickable boxes are actually nicer. This article describes both methods. I've been using the square under "Geometric Shapes" while this article describes finding one in "Wingdings" so maybe this is better:

https://www.top-password.com/blog/insert-a-check-box-in-word-2016/

Excel combine two columns into one single column with values alternated

This answer worked great:

https://superuser.com/questions/539255/how-to-merge-two-excel-columns-into-one-the-other-way

In my case, since my data started at row 24 and I wanted first column first and second column second, I modified the top answer into the following:

=INDEX($A$24:$B$1000,QUOTIENT(ROW()-22,2),IF(MOD(ROW(),2)=0,1,2))

This uses the Index function, with source block, row number out of source block, column number out of source block. For some reason the row offset had to be -22 instead of -24 or even -23.

February diversions

Politics:

Article about the hastily-arranged anti-Iran-sanctions conference, which was full of all kinds of contradictions since Trump and Pence are usually about caving to America's enemies.
https://www.vox.com/world/2019/2/15/18225218/warsaw-summit-2019-iran-meeting-conference

The tip of my research into Trump's national emergency, which revealed that strangely there have been more than 50 national emergencies declared in modern times, and about 33 are still in effect!
https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/politics/2019/02/15/what-exactly-national-emergency-here-what-that-means-and-what-next/WvRZAgv1THUZLXTeAZQNUM/story.html

Work:

The article from Maxim for how the MAX1818 circuits in the load box are being configured as current regulators:
https://www.maximintegrated.com/en/app-notes/index.mvp/id/4404

Diversions:

Breathless review of The Lego Movie 2:
https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/02/lego-movie-2-isnt-just-amazing-its-also-the-solo-we-always-wanted/

A nice photo of models of Pathfinder, Opportunity, and Curiosity together showing differences in scale (this photo posted as a result of the news that Opportunity didn't reboot after the last dust storm):
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/42/PIA15279_3rovers-stand_D2011_1215_D521.jpg/1920px-PIA15279_3rovers-stand_D2011_1215_D521.jpg

Fyre Festival documentaries: https://newrepublic.com/article/153095/fyre-festival-huge-scam-netflixs-fyre-documentary-scam-too

Led Zepplin lawsuit: https://www.phillymag.com/news/2019/02/11/francis-malofiy-led-zeppelin/

Latest on the israeli moon lander, including some details on the star tracker problem:
https://m.jpost.com/Israel-News/Israeli-spacecraft-launches-Beresheet-heads-into-orbit-towards-the-moon-581575

Newest thinking about adult-developing food allergies:
https://tonic.vice.com/en_us/article/eved5w/why-do-some-people-suddenly-develop-food-allergies-later-in-life?utm_source=tonicfbus&fbclid=IwAR38mOLmGW6FgZEIMnfbQ4oRAgb07vLkZ_WbM3Tzd41pzmRHMJz8OJBNTRk

Crazy experiment which caused evolution of single cell bacteria into multicellular structures:
https://www.sciencealert.com/scientists-have-witnessed-in-real-time-a-single-celled-algae-evolve-into-a-multicellular-organism?fbclid=IwAR3C4HjTOz084z6EPFh1FyNkF7KPeCtitIyExS-V3a52G7uHBHlIGCWHxCc

A deep review of some theories on the topic (it sonehow took half a billion years):
https://astrobiology.nasa.gov/news/how-did-multicellular-life-evolve/

Everyone around you is grieving:

https://johnpavlovitz.com/2019/02/21/everyone-around-you-is-grieving-go-easy/?utm_source=NationSwellfacebook&utm_medium=outreach&utm_campaign=NationSwellOutreach&fbclid=IwAR0-sdzmajBUHgCaE9wt6V2bewDG_oOnG4Csf_ULcOX_9WXPlGLd5twjyUA


Do viruses age:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/1t5u7s/do_viruses_age/


Sanders private jet usage during Clinton campaign:

https://www.politico.com/amp/story/2019/02/25/bernie-sanders-hillary-clinton-private-jet-flights-1182793

First and only cat in space (suborbital):

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Félicette

A fat rat stuck in a manhole cover. Amazingly, firefighters just released it back into the sewer:
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/amp/ncna976626

The humpback whale in the jungle turns out to be in a mangrove swamp:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/02/26/world/dead-humpback-whale-brazil-trnd/index.html

Michael Cohen's incredibly ghost-written opening statement:
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2019/02/27/michael-cohen-read-the-statement-about-donald-trump-here.html


Republican lawmakers ask for Cohen to be investigated:
https://amp.cnn.com/cnn/2019/02/28/politics/house-criminal-referral-michael-cohen/index.html

Disney princesses with modern careers:

https://amp.thisisinsider.com/disney-princess-jobs-2018-5?fbclid=IwAR0Ia-MlRmmyUQwUUW7WL4U7CAWPS3SRaglWwS2fYSq9chveCDBS2xOqMOM

Rear mount backshells compatible with jackposts

The go-to backshell for this is the one-piece Cannon ITT steel backshell, such as the DE24657 and its cousins.

Newark page for the DE24657:https://www.newark.com/cinch-connectivity-solutions/de24657/junction-shell-size-de-steel/dp/45F986#anchorTechnicalDOCS

The problem with this backshell is its coating of yellow chromate (apparently there is some zinc too). This may not be vacuum chamber compatible.

They make a clear coated one but it's oddly enough clear chromate.

Here is a link to the PDF of the full CINCH catalog. The DE24657 is on page 9: http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/671881.pdf?_ga=2.28253820.1338228539.1551109163-1653510471.1485545260

There are a few stamped sheet metal backshells that can possibly be used for rear panel mounting. These include the 3M 3357 (held together with a festive plastic nut on the back so it's not vacuum compatible), some two piece TE emi hoods with a very thin front channel (https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/TE-Connectivity/1-2308340-5?qs=%2fha2pyFaduj2ev0%252b1%252bYgy0scmK3sARzLM8%2f4k84RMN4W%2fcKQ6Zc%252bZQ%3d%3d), these custom one piece backshells: https://www.stahlmetall.com/pages/d-sub-rectangular-large-cable-entry-emi-rfi-shielded-backshell-metal-nickel-zinc-plated and something similar from the more reputable Plamco: http://www.polamco.com/bt-series-291/

Glenair has the super deluxe stainless-steel panel mount backshell series 500T009. https://cdn.glenair.com/catalogs/rectangular-connector-backshells.pdf In their same day stock the part number 550T009M1R3L0 is the E size, with no EMI gasket and strangely compatible with our milled panel thickness. In Octopart it shows that Powell sells it for $180 each in quantities of 10.

CINCH also made this wonderfully primitive looking single piece rear mount backshell called the 217 which includes designs with a straight exit and 4-40 tapped holes, but nobody sells them and they are probably discontinued by now

Here is a catalog page for one at Allied, which is linked to by a page for an electronics distributor in India: https://www.alliedelec.com/product/cinch/21715h-r/70544301/

Here is a fairly new looking datasheet for the 217 that still doesn't go a long way towards explaining what the weird extra piece is for: http://www.farnell.com/datasheets/22727.pdf

Octopart has some hits for the 9-pin version, including Allied and Arrow (both not in stock): https://octopart.com/search?q=2179H

The arrow link is revealed to be a "direct ship" scam: https://www.arrow.com/en/products/217-9h/cinch-connectivity-solutions

BNC right angle to BNC right angle 12 inches

Searching for a 12 inch BNC right angle to BNC right angle cable. Sadly it's a unicorn. Here are the closest matches that I found:

At Digikey, there was one but it didn't have a photo or drawing:https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=115104-15-12.00

Here's the drawing at Amphenol's site. It seems to have a large diameter cable with stiffeners on the ends so it won't work in my application inside an electronics box: https://www.amphenolrf.com/downloads/dl/file/id/815/product/6180/115104_15_xx_xx_customer_drawing.pdf

I remembered that Custom Cables Group LLC sells just about any combination of cable ends and lengths at Amazon, but strangely the exact combination of right angle and 12" was not available. Here are some close contenders:

I was finding lots of 12" right angle BNC to right angle BNC cables but they were mostly 75 ohm cables. I discovered that the search term RG316 limited choices to 50 ohm.

This one is 6-inch: https://www.amazon.com/right-angle-Patch-Quality-Shipping/dp/B01CWJ4J4O/

Another one that is 6-inch: https://www.amazon.com/right-angle-Patch-Quality-Shipping/dp/B01CWJ4J4O/

Another breakthrough was to also search for RG174 which is a slightly thicker cable that is also 50 ohm. Have to be careful to avoid RG179 which is 75 ohm.

Finally, this one is pretty close at 11.8 inches but oddly by this time I had come up an alternate solution that didn't require right angle: https://www.amazon.com/Right-Angle-Cable-Using-RG174/dp/B01GPFWJA2/

The problem with the 12" right angle cables is that they all of course had a large block for doing the turn with, and I began to realize that the clearance inside my case was too small to accommodate two of these blocks in addition to the connector. Consequently I found a way to orient the boards in the case that would allow me to use my existing non-right angle cables. However, with this system I was short one 12" cable, and switching some cables to 8" would also help, so I went back to Amazon to look for additional BNC to BNC cables. Here are some of those links:

Interestingly, here is a 12" BNC to BNC straight RG316 cable from another company, and it doesn't seem to have quite as long a strain relief on the end: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078SNS7C6/

Ocean Color Cubesat

Following yet another SpaceX launch, the fact that it included an Ocean Color cubesat caught my eye. It turns out that it is possible to find more info. Here are some links:

Here is a nice article in a trade publication from a couple of years ago which gives lots of info about the sensor and development program. It appears to be called SeaHawk. http://spie.org/newsroom/6691-monitoring-coastal-ocean-color-with-low-cost-cubesats?SSO=1

The one that launched in December was SeaHawk1 and it seems to have been built by UNC: https://uncw.edu/news/2018/12/Spaceflight-Successfully-Launches-64-Satellites-on-First-Dedicated-Rideshare-Mission,-Including-UNCWs-Seahawk-1.html

Dell Latitude e7470 plugged in not charging

My work laptop began not recognizing its charger cable. I tried a bunch of alternative chargers and mostly it didn't recognize any of them although interestingly there was one it would charge from for a while before it stopped charging from that one. I had some fear that perhaps the laptop was damaging each charger I tried it with, but I have been too impatient to systematically rule that out. Somewhat disorganized testing seems to have shown that the chargers are okay. A whole lot of research has revealed that the charger identification is done through the comically tiny center pin of the charger plug, and interestingly the charge power delivered through contacts the inside and outside of the outer ring. I learned that the communication on the center wire is a protocol called "one wire" which seems like a particularly sketchy system. It talks to a memory chip of all things in the charger, and this chip is called "The Dallas Chip".

Here is the final evolution of my Google searches for this issue. This one produces the best links: https://www.google.com/search?q=dell+latitude+e7470+plugged+in+not+charging

Here's the basic debugging chain presented as a funny video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XjB48jGjUVg

The debugging chain offered some hope in that the problem could be in the plug in the laptop, or the cable between the plug and the motherboard. So I got a cable and installed it but sadly this didn't fix the issue.

Here is the cable on Amazon: https://www.amazon.com/Eathtek-Replacement-Latitude-E7270-DC30100VI00/dp/B07HK61LDW/

I accidently lost a lot of my research trail when my browser crashed, but here are a few more links:

This is the mother of all google hits for this problem. It describes the cause of the problem and actually shows a person debugging the issue finding the Dallas Chip in a charger. It also has a link for stand-alone external battery chargers for Dell batteries, which is pretty much my only hope since the problem seems to be on the motherboard rather than the charger so I have to find a way to add charge to the battery for the moments between when I enter and exit the laptop from hibernation mode:
https://www.laptop-junction.com/toast/content/inside-dell-ac-power-adapter-mystery-revealed

Using SCP under Putty-CAC with PIV

Our Linux host is now PIV login only, so I have to use PuTTY-CAC to access it. The default procedure that I was handed was to also install WinSCP and use that with Pageant selected as a session handler once PuTTY-CAC was set up, but I didn't have an option to install WinSCP. Starting a PuTTY-CAC session with PIV causes Pageant to be started in the background. Theoretically I should be able to use that Pagent session to run pscp.exe but it didn't work the way that I expected.

Here's how to run and install PuTTY-CAC as required by our security policy: https://piv.idmanagement.gov/engineering/ssh/

Here's one of many identical readouts of the pscp man page. Pscp can normally just be run from a CMD window. Way down at the bottom of thie man page it has suggestions for linking up pscp with Pageant. Pscp didn't automatically authenticate using Pageant as advertised, and the -agent argument seemed to have no effect. The one which worked was using a saved PuTTY session name in place of the host. The example was confusing because it showed a download from a remote host, which I hadn't realized was a thing, but just substituting the session name for the upload host name worked just fine. ftp://ftp.fu-berlin.de/pc/network/putty/putty-0.56/htmldoc/Chapter5.html

Also here: http://www.straightrunning.com/puttymanual/Chapter5.html

Here's what my command line looked like with all the paths to things hard coded:

"C:\Program Files\PuTTY\pscp.exe" -r directory host-piv:/home/user

MicroUSB panel mount socket

I didn't want a PCB mount MicroUSB socket, I wanted something that I could mount to a panel and wire to in order to pick off the power lines. So far I have only found one option, a circular hemetic mount which isn't necessarily so bad looking. It comes in PCB pin options but also with a solder pad option.

Here it is at DigiKey: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/conxall-switchcraft/DCP-USBCB-SC/SC2114-ND/5213112

Lots of ones like these at DigiKey which are PCB mount: https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=USB%20micro%20USB%202.0%20Receptacle%20Connector%20Panel%20Mount%2C%20Through%20Hole%20

Here it is at Mouser: https://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Conxall-Switchcraft/DCP-USBCB-SC?qs=WOhmfB76lAZDzcHiw27Ogg%3D%3D

Here is the Conxall datasheet: http://www.switchcraft.com/Documents/npb_c716_sealed_micro_usb_connectors.pdf

Here it is at Newark: https://www.newark.com/switchcraft-conxall/dcp-usbcb-sc/micro-usb-2-0-type-ab-rcpt-panel/dp/14AC6615

Here is Sager's own page on the product line: https://www.sager.com/new-products/harsh-environment-connectivity-solutions/

Here's the kind of crap that comes up from a Google search: https://www.google.com/search?q=panel+mount+micro+usb+feed+through&oq=panel+mount+micro+usb+feed+through

TDK Lambda heater power supplies

Used almost exclusively by Mario, the TDK lambda supplies are cheaper than the Keysight equivalents, but they don't build one until you place an order:

Here is Genesys's store top page. Scroll down to see links for the 750W full and half rack units. I love the half rack units and would have gone for one of them if we hadn't been in such a hurry. https://www.genesysdcstore.com/

Here's TDK's site. It looks strangely out of date. However clicking any button from this page takes you to the Genesys store top page. https://www.us.tdk-lambda.com/hp/product_html/genesys1u.htmhttps://www.us.tdk-lambda.com/hp/product_html/genesys1u.htm

For reference, here is the equivalent Keysight supply. It is humorously duplicative. https://www.keysight.com/en/pd-839913-pn-N5747A/dc-system-power-supply-60v-125a-750w?cc=US&lc=eng

Current Clamp Probes for DSO6014L

Looking for clamp-on current probes compatible with our surplus Agilent DSO6014L rack-mount scopes. Agilent makes a wide range of current clamp probes, but many use an ungainly external power supply to achieve sensitivity, others are not the right type or too cheap, leaving just a couple of good candidates.

The basic probe is this 100MHz 15A range model. It is compatible with a wide range of Agilent oscilloscopes including ours. It has contacts for Agilent's proprietary "auto probe" system, which seems great except I later noticed that our 6014L's seem to be an antique revision that don't have the contacts so I'm not sure how this probe feature will work for us. The datasheet avoids revealing the probe's sensitivity as far as I can tell, but the range is about right for what we need it for. At $3.8K it's pretty expensive. http://www.keysight.com/en/pd-1912832-pn-N2893A/100-mhz-15a-ac-dc-current-probe

Agilent apparently makes a cheaper version of the 100MHz probe which is apparently only sensitive up to 50MHz which still isn't too bad. It's only $2.4K. http://www.keysight.com/en/pd-2202912-pn-1147B/50-mhz-15a-ac-dc-current-probe

There is a series of Agilent clip-on current probes which go up to quite high current ranges, which we wouldn't need, but these are the ones that require the external power supply. The lowest range probe out of this series has a 15A range similar to the basic probe, and interestingly its datasheet reveals that the lowest DC current that it can measure is 5mA. http://www.keysight.com/en/pd-2029388-pn-N2783B/100-mhz-30-arms-ac-dc-current-probe

This probe is the equivalent 50 MHz probe with a single BNC connector and external power supply.http://www.keysight.com/en/pd-2029380-pn-N2782B/50-mhz-30-arms-ac-dc-current-probe

Here is the power supply module for these current probes. Oddly, it has three outputs, and even odder it has $1000 price tage: http://www.keysight.com/en/pd-1062115-pn-N2779A/power-supply-for-the-n2780-83a-b-current-probe

These probes seem to have great sensitivity, but reading a little closer reveals that they are actually inline shunt probes, not clamp-on: http://www.keysight.com/en/pd-2229629-pn-N2820A/3-mhz-50ua-high-sensitivity-ac-dc-current-probe-2-ch?pm=PL

Rohde&Schwartz makes current probes, but they're mostly for high current ranges and are also fantastically ugly! Here is the basic probe that's closest to Agilent's. Also their specs for the probe don't make much sense as it is rated in V/A which is impedance?: https://www.rohde-schwarz.com/us/product/rtzc15b-productstartpage_63493-158914.html

The cost for the Agilent current clamp probes was a little hard to bear, so looking into cheaper options, Agilent makes a 100kHz probe (with a k) that's a mere $600. But it apparently has terrible sensitivity specs. It also doesn't have the fancy "auto-probe" feature, which makes it basically generic: http://www.keysight.com/en/pd-2329609-pn-1146B/100-khz-100-a-4-current-probe?nid=-32553.1066112&cc=US&lc=eng

Similar to the Agilent cheap probe, BK precision. makes one with about the same specs and price.http://www.newark.com/b-k-precision/cp62/current-clamp-probe-ac-dc-100a/dp/08X6498

Here's the cross-reference of probe compatibility to oscilloscope modelhttp://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/5968-8153EN.pdf

For some reason, here's a fancier catalog of probes, probably updated for newer scope lines: http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/5968-7141EN.pdf

Here is the online tool for comparing and contrasting probes. It doesn't seem to yield the same results as the documents, which calls its accuracy into question: http://www.keysight.com/en/pc-1000000101%3Aepsg%3Apgr/oscilloscope-probes?cc=US&lc=eng&pm=SC

One day I noticed that our surplus Agilent DSO6014L rack mount scope was lacking the "autoprobe" contacts that the basic current probes seemed to use. Clearly the current probe needs to be supplied with power to operate the sensor. So it seems that the basic current probe might not be compatible with the scope.

Interestingly, the photos of the DSO6014L in Keysight's catalog presently do show that it seems to have the autoprobe contacts. http://www.keysight.com/en/pdx-x202272-pn-DSO6014L/low-profile-oscilloscope-100-mhz-4-analog-channels

The datasheet for the DSO6014L has an answer buried deeply in the "Performance Characteristics: , where it says that the 500 MHz and 1 GHz models have "Auto probe sense and AutoProbe interface" but the 100MHz has just "Auto probe sense". Presumably this is not enough to support the N2893A and 1147B current probes. http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/5989-5470EN.pdf

interestingly, there exists a kit for adapting an auto-probe to a simple BNC scope using an adapter, as shown in this drawing, but it's a full $3000 of extra stuff, and supposedly this won't work for me anyhow because it's for 50 ohm impedance rather than 1M ohm: http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/E2696-92000.pdf

Here's more on the probe adapter: http://www.keysight.com/en/pd-155489-pn-N1022A/probe-adapter

LVDS to TTL Evaluation Board

Decided to find out what my options are for premanufactured evaluation boards for LVDS receivers so that I can verify the LVDS output of my FPGA board on a plain oscilloscope or logic analyzer.

I found several very nice boards, but none was quite right for my needs; at the time I was searching I was looking for for SMA connectors on both the inputs and outputs and having multiple channels.


I eventually settled on the fairly amazing 16-channel receiver board with the 100 psec slew spec that had headers for its I/O instead of SMA connectors. I decided to build it into a box with solder-cup BNC connectors to which I soldered twisted pair wires to go from the BNCs to the headers on the board. I was looking for an option for a panel-mount SMA connector that had flying leads that I could crimp header sockets onto but I never found one, and I didn't bother looking into solder-cup SMA connectors. There are lots of cheap SMA-BNC cable options to enable me to plug the SMA outputs from the FPGA board into my adapter box.

Here is the 16-channel board again: http://www.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail&itemSeq=225947001&uq=636283012596540141

Here's the user's guide for the board: http://www.ti.com/lit/ug/sllu013/sllu013.pdf

Here's the datasheet for the chip: http://www.ti.com/lit/ds/symlink/sn65lvds386.pdf

I looked for the cheapest possible rear-mounted solder cup BNC connector, and found this one which is super nice for only $8. But multiply that by 48 for a full 16 channels in and out and it still becomes expensive: https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=ACX1843-ND

As an alternative, here is the cheapest front mount BNC solder cup connector at only $3. Because this so far is my own money, I went with this one, coming up with the breakthrough that instead of having these connect to a full 32-row connector to the eval board, these BNCs would instead be wired to one-row connectors which I can plug into the header at whatever location I need; this allows me to feed the wires for this connector through the hole in the box from the front and slip the washer and nut on from the back. https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=A32341-ND

Here is the one row, two column connector that I used for the interconnect from the header for each BNC:https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=0050579002

When I first ordered the one-row connectors, I forgot to order the crimp pins. They're cheap. For no clear reason the manufacturer makes a dozen varieties, some more expensive than this one: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/molex-llc/0016020086/WM2510CT-ND/467802

I looked at a lot of exciting box options, but finally settled on this dirt cheap Bud box to start with, largely because the result would be fully surrounded by metal which would give my prototype box improved noise resistance: https://www.digikey.com/products/en/boxes-enclosures-racks/boxes/594?k=AC-1418

With that box, you have to buy the bottom cover separately: https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=BPA-1518

The evaluation board requires 3.3V. Fortunately it is easily possible to buy some 3.3V wall warts like this one: https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/cui-inc/SWI6-3.3-N-P5/102-3705-ND/5417822

This is the lovely 3-terminal chassis mount barrel connector that was used on the ASTM and which I also ordered for the Bud box: https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=EJ502A

To connect the 3.3V to the board requires banana jacks. Fortunately there are dozens of (uninsulated) flat-topped banana plugs sold that you connect to using a ring terminal: https://www.digikey.com/products/en?keywords=108-0753-001

Some ideas that I may want to pursue later:

It is really easy to buy panels with 16 columns of RJ45 holes. Could these be used as is for BNC connectors? https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/assmann-wsw-components/A-PAN-16-MOD/AE10606-ND/2391722
https://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/assmann-wsw-components/A-PAN-24-MOD/AE10607-ND/2391723

Vectorizer

I found a new online vectorizer that I like. The results are sometimes uneven but as with my other PDF to DXF tool it's a good enough starting place.

http://www.autotracer.org/

I also found recommendations for the online vectorizer 'VectorMagic' which seems nice but after it does the conversion it wants you to pay a monthly fee to download the result: https://vectormagic.com/

Here is the source for my starting image of the AWG, which is a Keysight 33521B: http://rfmw.em.keysight.com/spdhelpfiles/33500/webhelp/US/Content/__C_Quick%20Start/Quick%20Start.htm

That page for the AWG is interstingly an html-ification of the manual for the AWG, which can be found here: http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/33500-90901.pdf

The datasheet for the AWG, here, is nice but doesn't contain any line drawings of it: http://literature.cdn.keysight.com/litweb/pdf/5991-0692EN.pdf