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Getting my oscilloscope off the bench

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Muzzerboy:
It's amazing how scopes have evolved over the years, to the point where you can get a half reasonable example for £100 or less. A modern 4 or 6 channel 1GHz scope from Tektronix these days is still the price of a car (up to or over £30k depending on the options, plus annual "maintenance") and you can fork out over £25k for one single optically isolated (high common mode) probe.

I don't know if you've seen the spectrum analysers that are available these days. I have a TinySA Ultra (6GHz)https://www.tinysa.org/wiki/, which cost me £150 from Mirfield Electronics. https://www.mirfield-electronics.co.uk/tinysa-ultra-spectrum-an-new/ - Something like this would have cost as much as a house when I started out and although it's not traceably calibrated or instrumentation grade, it's not far off.

And then there's the IR cameras - https://www.xinfrared.com/products/infiray_p2_pro_thermal_camera....

Joules:
All similar lines here, yep got the TinySA Ultra and older version.   Bought the first TinySA to see if it was worth me getting the RIGOL 1.5Ghz SA+tracking generator.  It's a nice bit of kit and had looked at making the down converter so I could look at 2.4Ghz.  Still use the TinySA to check what I am connecting too as it's cheaper to blow up its front end.  Then the Ultra came out and pushed the range to 10Ghz, so got one.   What a bit of kit, with hindsight I wouldn't have bothered with the RIGOL, but it does all link into my LXI test setup.  Also got a NanoVNA F V2 as it was a fraction of the cost of a return loss bridge for the RIGOL.   The kit available for the amateurs is just amazing these days, all this gear can be used for pre compliance testing  saving orders of magnitude the value of sending to a testing house and having a fail and rework for compliance.   The hard part is learning to use it all.

Yep, thermal camera here is a TOPDON TC001  used in PCB repair, watching bearings and general servicing where you are looking for a hot or cold (leaks) spot.  The above is gear I only used to see in university labs 30yrs ago.

Muzzerboy, you mind me asking what you do ?

Muzzerboy:
Almost 40 years in power electronics, the last 28 mostly in BEV/HEV systems and components - this combined my love of cars, bikes, engines etc with electronics and it's been a very interesting career. Did a fair bit of RF work when I was younger but that mostly stopped once I got my licence G8XCN when I was in my late teens. I think making it legal took away some of the excitement!

Recently have been seeing more work in aero, marine, off highway and even defence.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/murray-edington/

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