I bought the SDG1020 last month in Shenzhen for 270$. It works according to spec afaict and is fun to use. A 2 channel 20 MHz generator plus a
200MHz counter for that money is a steal.Regards Werner Dahn
RCA's downfall began when the Japanese came and said, "We can sell you your low-end TV for cheaper than you can make it." They stupidly took the bait rather than embarking on the kind of investment in cost reduction that might have saved their company. Of course, that's the benefit of capitalism--badly run or uncompetitive companies disappear, rather than hanging around being a drag on the proceedings like government entities *cough*NASA*cough*.
Cheers
Phil Hobbs
-- Dr Philip C D Hobbs Principal Consultant ElectroOptical Innovations LLC Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics 160 North State Road #203 Briarcliff Manor NY 10510 845-480-2058 hobbs at electrooptical dot net http://electrooptical.net
Has anybody yet figured out what the ISS is for?
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
A DDS based ARB is trivial, and can switch frequency at any time, with uHz resolution, and can do sweeps, chirps, FSK, FM, PM, whatever. We've done several ourselves. It takes about 1% of a small FPGA to do the DDS stuff.
-- John Larkin Highland Technology Inc www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com Precision electronic instrumentation Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators Custom timing and laser controllers Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators
What model do you have? Sorry if I'm too lazy to look back through all the posts if you mentioned it before.
-- _____________________ Mr.CRC crobcBOGUS@REMOVETHISsbcglobal.net SuSE 10.3 Linux 2.6.22.17
This one:
As John said, hopping the sample rate wouldn't be so difficult, I just don't see an application for that right now. If you wanted to generate or simulate something with a distorted data packet maybe but I've never had to.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
My concern is this: If we as a nation let technology slip out of our hands piece by piece that way, what's going to be left 50 years from now? We'd all be gone by then but we have a responsibility towards the next generation and the one after that.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
It's because the sold qties are low and the finance guys naturally insist on amortizing the NRE in due time. Due time in financial speak usually means 3-4 years max.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
To keep astronauts in business. If you haven't noticed, there isn't much else left for them to do, other than yak about AGW.
I think the deal with Chinese gear is as a self-contained box they work, but programming is another story. These people live off of bootleg copies of MS XP. The programmers are ESL, so the manual could be better. I like my Rigol scope (not my only scope), but I think their software is just crap. You can't believe the amount of crap I had to do to get it working on win 7 64 bit. Pulling DLLs from the dark corners of the interwebs. At least with the scope, you can put the data on a thumb drive and process it outside of their control.
That said, I'd be very concerned if I had to program some Chinese black box with a modern OS. If the black box has some linux capability, then I would be less concerned.
Kept a bunch of Russians busy so they were not selling the technology for what it was REALLY designed for (threatening to kill people in job lots and smashing all their things).
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
-- "it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
In the future, everyone will have a reality TV show. Remember, according to Ronald Reagan, you can have a total service economy! [I'll cut your hair and you can cut mine.] Those without reality TV shows can blog or podcast.
The market doesn't support manufacturing businesses. They prefer get rich quick schemes. For example, Instagram, a service that takes good photos and turns them into crappy photos. Facebook, Groupon, etc.
The only hope for actual manufacturing is for government research to build the initial product and then commercial enterprise to build it to scale.
Leaving NAFTA, WTO, revoking China MFN stats, etc. would do great things for the USA.
So far, knocking on wood, it has always worked. The software for the arb generator appears to be pretty solid and they even threw in some sort of "etch-a-sketch" if you felt like creating a waveform that way.
The SW for the Instek scope crashes quite often. Some cheap .NET stuff. But it's free while some bigger outfits often charge a bundle by making it an option. At least they used to.
The main reason I use the SW is often that I now have to wear glasses.
1.5x for reading and at least 2.5x for 0603 or smaller SMT soldering. With the big PC display I don't have to switch between these two glasses. Just the 2.5x size suffices and I can set those far on the nose so I can peek above them and see the scope plot. So the PC is, most of the time, a glorified magnifier :-)-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Well, yeah. But "real" services such as electronics design is something a country can live off of, provide a good chunk of it is for export. I provide strictly a service (electronics design) and some clients are outside the US. So I guess I am a net contributor to our foreign trade balance sheet. This doesn't offset the myriad Walmart shoppers that push us towards a trade deficit but it's at least something :-)
As Steve Jobs told our president shortly before Steve passed away, those manufacturing jobs will not come back. All we can do is slow the exodus of even more such jobs. Afraid that will require a major shift on the hill.
It can also alienate us, plus it would accelerate inflation.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
But they can easily make more. Buying their production just gives them cash to build more capacity.
But it *is* a lot more productive to have you designing electronics than making WallWorld junk.
I was just reading an article about how it wasn't the cost of labor that pushed Apple to China, rather the regulations here. If they need to build an iWhatever plant, they need to build it *now*, not dick around with permits for ten years.
Exactly.
There was once an inventor who came up with a brilliant idea to solve this last problem. He's so famous for doing so (and a few other incidental things) that they put his picture on the $100 bill, above all Presidents, even. I even wear the invention. It's called the bifocal lens. ;-)
Depends on how much gets produced, how much margin and how much of that is exported. Only exports really count, in our case.
Exactamente. Less red tape. I have been part of corporate location decisions. They happen frighteningly fast and are usually irreversible.
Under the current administration lots of things have gone to pots in the red tape area. My taxes are an example. The stack of paper I get from my CPA/tax guy is now much thicker, it takes longer, and the fees I have to pay (essentially those are compliance costs) are significantly higher.
[...]-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Yeah, some day I'll have to bite the bullet and go to an optometrist. So far I've used the Costco-type generic reading glasses. In the lab anything other than real glass will get scratched up. Most glasses are not glass anymore. When $10 buys a new pair, ok. On a $500 pair that's a different story.
But I'd almost need trifocals. No correction for using big tools, driving, walking and so on. Then 1.5x for reading and stuff, 2.5x for SMT.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/
Get your prescription glasses from China. A fraction of the cost and just as good, without the fancy designer frames etc.
Best regards, Spehro Pefhany
-- "it's the network..." "The Journey is the reward" speff@interlog.com Info for manufacturers: http://www.trexon.com Embedded software/hardware/analog Info for designers: http://www.speff.com
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