Love it when we get kudos ...

1 Million Electronic PCBs ...

… on 12 thousand different board designs installed across a huge network. That's the level of challenge that METRO São Paulo engineers in Brazil started to tackle in 2002 with the help of ABI's BoardMaster troubleshooting system. By 2014, 50Million dollars of taxpayer money had been saved and METRO became a global reference for successful in-house electronic repair. The once considered highly complex 'Line 5' became METRO's most efficient line, with its electronics fully serviced using the BoardMaster, guaranteeing a healthy bottom line for the service department. 

Despite the recent changes in the political scenario in Brazil, it was great to hear last week that ABI Electronics is highly regarded as a key partner that made METRO's success over the years not just a reality but a true inspiration to other transit agencies.  #Repairdontwaste 

Link for more information on Line 5 https://lnkd.in/gJK74aP)

SLR-434M 434MHz Embedded Transceiver With LoRa

Saelig has introduced the  LoRa/FSK Smart Modem Transceiver SLR-434M - a 434MHz embedded receiver for reliable long-range industrial control applications. It incorporates LoRa® technology to achieve extremely long range for low bit-rate data with low power.

  The SLR-434M’s  excellent receiving sensitivity allows communication into areas once considered difficult for RF to penetrate, and making it possible to transmit 1800 feet or more.  The SLR-434M is also switchable to accommodate conventional FSK communication.

The SLR-434M can transmit data or operate in simple control systems using Circuit Design's dedicated command protocol from an external CPU or PC via an RS232 or COMport interface. The SLR-434M can process 8 I/O switching signals.  With up to 10mW RF output power from the SMA connector, the SLR-434M can be used in simplex or duplex mode on 137 channels.  It operates from a 3.5 – 5.0V supply, consuming less than 30mA when transmitting.  Its low power consumption makes battery operation possible with this sturdy 1.6” x 1.2” x 0.25” module. 

Applications include data transmission, telemetry, and control in buildings, water level and dam monitoring, tunnel and bridge condition monitoring, etc.

The TB-SLR-RS2 is an RS232 interface board for experimenting with the SLR-434M module. The built-in DB9 connector allows quick connection to the COM port of PC or PLC.  The board is equipped with transmit/receive LED, a power supply terminal, main switch and an interface to sub boards. The module can be used with a coax extension cable to allow optimum placement of the antenna according to the environment. A descriptive video is here: https://youtu.be/dl3LeEf3jfE

The SLR-434M is made by Circuit Design, a leading Japanese low power radio product design and manufacturing company.  

http://www.saelig.com/pr/slr434m.html

Why Would You Need An Isolated Output Function Generator

There are various selections of function generators on the market. Despite a wide variety, most function generators have common grounding between output signal ground and the instrument chassis earth ground. Hence, non‐isolated function generators cannot output correct waveforms for circuit tests such as bridge rectification, voltage doubling and choppers. You may get wrong conclusions!

More here: http://www.saelig.com/news/articles/20180222-isolated-channel-edm-en-saelig.pdf

Mitigating RF Pickup in Power Rails

Signal Integrity Journal just featured an interesting article from Teledyne LeCroy.  Though it features a higher-end model than we carry, the principles remain the same!

Measuring the noise on a power rail seems to be a straightforward task. However, there are some basic pitfalls that can cause incorrect, or even downright strange, results. Let's look at one of these challenges: RF pickup. We'll demonstrate the effect of RF pickup on a power-rail measurement, and then we'll show you an effective means of mitigating that effect.

But before we get into the issue itself, let's take a step back for a moment. It's always important to understand the capabilities (and limitations) of your oscilloscope, because armed with that knowledge, you can better anticipate what your measurements will yield.

If we're talking about measuring noise, and especially in the context of a low-level signal, something we really want to know is our oscilloscope's noise floor. How much noise is the front-end amplifier inherently producing?

Read on here:  

https://www.signalintegrityjournal.com/blogs/8-for-good-measure/post/859-mitigate-rf-pickup-in-power-rails

Have You Seen Our May Newsletter Yet?

30 Years!  On April 28, 2018 Saelig reached a significant milestone: we now have been serving the USA and international markets with superior products and customer care for three decades!  Saelig started in 1988 in my house with the goal of bringing to the USA the industrial products I discovered from around the world in trade magazines  that had "bingo cards" (remember them?) to field product inquiries.  I knew that many of the unique foreign products and components I found would benefit USA-based electronics engineers  and so I contacted more than 100 of these overseas companies with an offer to act as an on-shore technical and sales resource.  And the rest is history!  As we have grown, we have helped to establish American sales for many companies - such as one early USB chip company - offering services to our suppliers that no one else does, including submitting press releases and writing technical articles as a complimentary service.  In recent news, our ABI Electronics PCB repair equipment has been providing substantial saving to our customers, with one company saving a $40,000 board during one training week!  Take a look at our website and the >80 companies whose products we promote at the best prices.  We evaluate each company for product quality and uniqueness and eliminate unsatisfactory lines. What else makes us different?  Take a look at our  Values Statement.

Please celebrate with us and send your story to feedback@saelig.com of how you have benefitted from the products or service from Saelig.  We trust we have made a difference to our customers and suppliers.  But of equal importance to me is every one of our employees, who would testify to my goal of trying to make Saelig the best place they have ever worked.

Read on for more news ... and Happy Anniversary to us!
Here it is!  http://www.saelig.com/news/newsletters/saelig1805.htm

Oscilloscope ESD/EMC Training Tomorrow!

May 16th!! Learn from Mike Hertz how an #oscilloscope can help with more accurate pulse measurements and #ESD compliance testing - from last year's #IEEE EMC+SIPI Symposium  http://snip.ly/reswe

Radiated Noise Measurements With TekBox TEMcells and Siglent SpecAn

An affordable set up consisting of a Siglent Spectrum Analyzer SSA 3021X and a Tekbox TEMcell can be successfully used to measure and reduce radiated emission issues.

The setup of the DUT inside a TEM cell gives a very repeatable result without the requirement to accurately re-position the DUT after every improvement modification. While EMC probes are ideal to exactly locate/identify the source of emissions on a PCB, the strength of the TEM cell is its capability to exactly measure the relative improvement with respect to the emission amplitude after modifications in order to achieve compliance. It is also very practical to measure complete emissions of a product consisting of several separate devices and the interconnecting cables.

The test setup requires only little space and can pay for itself rapidly, avoiding expensive anechoic chamber costs.

  

Actual use example here: 

70 Picosecond Fast Rise Time Pulse Generator

The newest addition to our digital delay generator lineup - a 70 Picosecond Fast Rise Time Pulse Generator - is the BNC Model 765.

Here are a few quick specs and highlights of the Model 765:

• < 70 ps rise/fall time (20%-80%)
• 7" touchscreen display
• 2 or 4 fully adjustable channels with maximum 500 MHz repetition rate
• Pulse width from 300 ps to > 1 s with 10 ps resolution
• Trigger in to output jitter < 35ps RMS
• Continuous, single, burst, gated, external trigger modes

Learn more here:
http://www.saelig.com/berkeley-nucleonics-digital-delay-pulse-generator/model-765.htm

Humor At Work?

Here at Saelig the air is filled with puns.  It's a catching disease that anyone can join in.  (There's even a pun in the headline of this blog.  Humor is at work, bringing folks together in a congenial and almost competitive way!  But never in a cruel way.  I must say I hate practical jokes and have banned them here...

Beth Goldman in a recent blog states that humor can be hazardous at work - can it get you fired? She firmly believes in using humor as a way to improve connections, collaboration, relationships, and all that other good stuff - to have fun at work. It improves the atmosphere and makes everything less serious when used appropriately.

Read here article here!

The Fine-Tuning of the Universe: What Does It Mean?

Fine-tuning, as it applies to the universe, is the idea that the conditions that allow life to exist in the universe can occur only when certain universal constants lie within a very narrow range of values. If any of several constants were only slightly different, the universe would be unlikely to be conducive to the establishment of life.

All modern scientists agree that the universe seems to be fine-tuned for life. There are so many features in our universe that, if they were slightly different, life could not exist. The universe in which we live gives the appearance of having been designed with incredible precision.

For instance, there are 31 constants in physics that seem to be set just right, and these fundamental constants are set just right for life to exist. Furthermore, these constants are completely unrelated. Douglas Ell uses the analogy of walking into a control room for the universe and finding 31 separate dials that have been set with great precision for the existence of life.

Sir Fred Hoyle, the British astronomer and one of the twentieth century’s most significant scientific thinkers, said:

“A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with physics, as well as with chemistry and biology, and that there are no blind forces worth speaking about in nature. The numbers one calculates from the facts seem to me so overwhelming as to put this conclusion almost beyond question.”

Paul Davies says:

“There is for me powerful evidence that there is something going on behind it all … it seems as though somebody has fine-tuned nature’s numbers to make the universe. The impression of design is overwhelming.”

Even the noted physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking was impressed with the fine-tuning he saw in the universe.

“The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron … The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life.”

So what does all this mean? Well there certainly is disagreement, but no scientists disagree with the existence of fine-tuning. In fact in the field of physics it is considered a scientific fact.

When the Big Bang occurred billions of years ago, the matter in the universe was uniformly distributed. There were no stars, planets or galaxies—just particles floating about in the dark void of space. As the universe expanded outwards from the Big Bang, gravity pulled ever-so-gently on the matter, gathering it into clumps that eventually became stars and galaxies. But gravity had to have just the right force—if it was a bit stronger, it would have pulled all the atoms together into one big ball. The Big Bang—and our prospects—would have ended quickly in a Big Crunch. And if gravity was a bit weaker, the expanding universe would have distributed the atoms so widely that they would never have been gathered into stars and galaxies.

The strength of gravity has to be exactly right for stars to form. But what do we mean by “exactly”? If we change gravity by even a tiny fraction of a percent—enough so that you would be, say, one billionth of a gram heavier or lighter—the universe becomes so different that there are no stars, galaxies, or planets. And with no planets, there would be no life. Change the value slightly, and the universe moves along a very different path. And remarkably, every one of these different paths leads to a universe without life in it. Our universe is friendly to life, but only because the past 13.7 billion years have unfolded in a particular way that led to a habitable planet with liquid water and rich chemistry.

https://thecenterbham.org/2018/05/03/the-fine-tuning-of-the-universe-what-does-it-mean/

Which Capacitor To Choose?

Capacitors are manufactured in many forms and are used in electronic devices to couple signals between stages of amplifiers, as components of electric filters and tuned circuits, as parts of power supply systems to smooth rectified current, or decouple power lines locally. Different types are used depending on required capacitance, working voltage, current handling capacity, temperature stability, accuracy, etc. Each has its own performance parameters and application areas.

This site is thorough and very helpful: http://snip.ly/1qs1w

In this video   ABI's Sales Manager talks with Irish Rail's Electronics Repair Manager Ray Holden, who extols the virtues of in-house electronics repair using ABI's System 8: http://www.saelig.com/category/MFR00134.htm

In an exclusive interview, he reveals the company's strategies to eliminate the prevalence of discarding failed PCBs and electronics modules and seeing how easy it is to repair them with the right strategies.

https://youtu.be/cMs8uBm3a0E

10 Reasons To Use an Automated PCB Tester

1)            ABI’s System 8 is a range of modules dedicated to the test, measurement, fault-finding and repair of virtually any type of analog and digital PCB. The tests can be carried out at component level  as well as at PCB level.

2)            This PCB is an example that includes a variety of technologies, devices, and interfaces, very similar to many modern industrial PCBs. ABI’s engineers selected a range of tests that are exclusive to the System 8 range that would allow any repair technician to troubleshoot a similar PCB.

3)            The Signature Analysis Test is the most common and safest way of testing unpowered PCBs.  An AC signal is applied to a device and the current response with reference to ground is measured and plotted as a voltage against current graph, producing a “signature”.  This signature is specific to the device or test point and will reveal different types of faults such as leaky capacitors, shorts, broken tracks, internally damaged components and more.  The System 8 range offers the unique ability to automatically vary the output signal frequency while the measurement is taking place.  The result is plotted in 3D, demonstrating the impact of the frequency on the device under test.  Several parameters can be adjusted and the results from a good board can be stored for later comparison.  If you prefer, you can have good and bad boards side-by-side being compared in real-time.

4)            Once it has been determined that a PCB can be safely powered-up, there is a wide range of additional tests that can be carried out on the reference PCB and saved for later comparison.  From the edge-connector, you can drive logic signals, read a voltage, generate V-I signatures, and save connection information.  If a Bed-of-Nails is available, the test results can be obtained from multiple test points at the same time.

5)            ABI can supply test clips for virtually any type of package.  You can check, save, and recall vital information from a working IC, such as voltage, connection configuration, V-I signatures, and thermal references in a matter of seconds.  This applies even when the part number is unknown.

6)            (AFTER “IC IDENTIFICATION” 2.38)  Should you want to identify the function of a house-coded or  unknown IC, the System 8 identifier will test a good working device and try to locate a corresponding part or parts already in the library that have the same function this very IC.

7)            The Logic Test Generator will help you develop custom functional tests for your logic devices and PCBs.  Each channel can be configured to match the devices input/output requirements.  The system will learn the good results coming back from the device or PCB, save and compare them.

8)            Thousands of parts are already available in the System 8 library, allowing you to functionally test a vast range of logic ICs in-circuit.      

9)            Analog ICs can equally be functionally tested in-circuit by choosing the part in the device library.  

10)          ABI’s System 8 offers a range of built-in high specification instrumentation, such as a 3-channel digital oscilloscope, an arbitrary function generator, a frequency counter, a digital multimeter, multi-channel I/O and more.  Waveforms, test results, as well as the instrument settings , test-flow procedures, and pdf datasheets can be saved, drastically reducing test set-up times.  

http://www.saelig.com/category/MFR00134.htm   

SCP boards for fit-and-forget light-powered products that can recharge themselves. Existing products can be modified by removing batteries and plugging in an SCP to create a self-powered, no maintenance device.  http://www.saelig.com/sol-chip/sol-chip-pak.htm

The patented Sol Chip Pak™ (SCP-R2801) Power Modules offer 24/7 non-stop functionality by combining state-of-the-art solar cells, a rechargeable battery, and advanced power management circuitry. These power modules include all the components that are required to harvest energy from ambient light, charge a built-in rechargeable battery, and deliver a stable voltage to a load. Sol Chip’s patented technology integrates solar energy conversion with very large scale integration (VLSI) techniques to produce unique ambient light harvesting devices that can even extract energy from office lighting to provide constant power. These versatile boards, based on Sol Chip’s unique Saturn cells, provide power even in office light conditions.

The output voltage of these "everlasting solar batteries” is regulated to 3.6V, but other voltages are available by request to suit alternate applications. Versions are available with 1, 2, 3, or 6 Saturn solar cells depending on the power needs. The 6-cell version provides an average output current of up to 750uA from the integrated solar cells, with up to 1.5A peak current. The capacity of the 3.6V onboard rechargeable batteries in the series is 190 - 1100mAh. 

Low Cost USB RF Signal Generators Should Be in Your Next RF Project!

Low-cost Universal Serial Bus (USB) radio frequency (RF) signal generators have recently come on the scene in the wireless world. They promise to be game changers for many reasons. Until these devices came out, a prospective buyer had two choices when it came to RF signal generation solutions. The buyer could either purchase a $20K+ benchtop box with all the bells and whistles, or they could purchase a $6K narrowband “synthesizer,” either hard coded to one frequency, or with an RS-232 programming port to figure out. Both of these solutions would typically take eight weeks to deliver. They are generally build-to-order components.

USB RF signal generators are actually a hybrid approach to both of those options mentioned above—they can be much cheaper and deliver in a couple of days. A great USA-made example is Windfreak Technologies’ SynthHD Pro Dual Channel Microwave Signal Generator for $1,979. This price is actually cheaper than some RF test cables.The device has two independent channels that can tune in 0.1 Hz increments from 54 MHz to 13.6 GHz. The SynthHD’s RF power is adjustable in .01 dB increments from -50 dBm to +22 dBm. It also has many modulation features including FM chirps. The relative phase between the two channels can be adjusted in .01 degree increments.

The SynthHD signal generator will generate sweeps. The sweeps can be single channel or dual channel. The device can sweep up or sweep down. It can also ramp up or down amplitude while sweeping. The sweep can be controlled with an external trigger to either perform a full sweep per trigger, or perform a single step. In dual channel mode, you can program a constant frequency offset between the two channels for the sweep.

The SynthHD signal generator will generate hops. The GUI allows the user to program up to 100 arbitrary points with a frequency and amplitude in dBm. This table is stored onboard in nonvolatile memory. Like the sweep mode, the user can then have an offset on the other RF channel, hop up the list, hop down the list, and work with the trigger input.

Additionally, the SynthHD signal generator will digitally modulate FM, AM, and pulse. FM can be a typical sinusoidal signal, or it can also be a chirp. AM can also be the typical sinusoid signal or it can be ramps. The modulations can be combined. Combining a pulse and a chirp allows the user to set up a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar signal. You can even combine this with the sweep function. As an electronic warfare example, you could sweep a pulsed waveform across a range of frequencies. Rates can be very slow, or in the case of FM, up to 5 KHz. Of course, all of these features can be saved to the device. It will begin sweeping on power up without a PC connected! 

More here:  http://www.saelig.com/category/windfreak.htm