:-)
Peasants!
Nothing except handmade rag paper here :-)
-- "Electricity is of two kinds, positive and negative. The difference is, I presume, that one comes a little more expensive, but is more durable; the other is a cheaper thing, but the moths get into it." (Stephen Leacock)
That's one mighty expensive battery option:
Yeah, but you wouldn't want to know what mainstream manufacturers charge for this stuff. It's a boutique accessory, very few people need it, meaning low sales volume and somehow the NRE has to be amortized. Part of life :-)
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Yes I have the 2102 and I was interested in the battery option too until I seen the price!!!
To bad its so pricey it would be handy to have for portability and for certain measurements. All that should be needed is a low power smps and a switch and a battery how they milk $500.00 out of that is unbelievable. I guess 90% of that price is there installation fee? I didn't know Labour in Taiwan was so pricey :-)
But other then that I have no complaints with the scope 2 years old now and no problems at almost daily use. For 1k Canadian its worth it.
I've got the 2204, the big one. Nice scope. I don't know what is part of this battery pack but I am not sure if it's as simple as a LiIon pack and a charger. There may need to be an inverter that makes the different voltages the scope needs.
Look at it from a biz perspective: If 200 customers per year order this option (and I almost doubt it's that many) all the R&D effort needs to be recouped and typically that must be done over 3-5 years. Among other fields I work in medical electronics and there it's the same, low volume gear carries high price tags. Has to, else it wouldn't be designed.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Our FLIR ir viewer came with two batteries. They look like old camcorder batteries but have different terminals. They have finally died, and FLIR wants $250 each for replacements. Luckily, the thing can be run from 12 volts DC, so we just use it plugged in. Battery life sucked anyhow, even when the batteries were new.
They want $600 for a new charger.
John
The Rigol is only $404 at Dealextreme:
See my blog for a review and teardown.
Dave.
-- ================================================ Check out my Electronics Engineering Video Blog & Podcast: http://www.eevblog.com
Maybe you could have it re-celled at a larger battery store. But battery life won't improve, there are some things that just aren't meant to be run on batteries. Instek claims the big GDS-2204 can run about 3h on a charge but I guess that only applies if the battery is fairly new. Charging is done gently, over 8h. It's a 73Wh battery.
No surprise there :-(
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
That's what we get for our battery charger, though it does charge five at a time. I guess that's only $125 each. ;-)
e t
In the day, the Asian manufacturers would use wall warts since that was the item that got the UL and other approvals. Also the manufacturer of the wall wart was on the hook. I don't have any Taiwan test gear, but I'm surprised they take the AC into the box. If they designed with a DC input, making the box run off of batteries would be a snap.
Regarding market, there are field service situations where you can't get line power. It does sound funny since you are testing electronics, and that has to be powered. But there are solar based installations. There is a break even point between the cost of getting power to a site versus solar. The advantage to solar is the environmental studies are only at the site. If you run power lines, there is always the chance a study will be required to see if any critters will be disturbed by your power pole installation.
I haven't seen any solar cell sites yet, but solar repeater sites are common enough. Also solar powered remote sensing facilities are common. They use COTS satellite internet like Wild Blue.
5*125=625
-- Greed is the root of all eBay.
But not scopes. I have never seen any serious scopes with wall warts.
Yes, or some weird group claims the lines are creating "electrical smog" :-)
However, for under $100 you can get a little inverter suitcase that provides over 100Wh worth of mains power, or more if you drag in a deep cycle battery.
Still, the only situation I can see where you truly need batteries in a scope is when climbing a pole. And that's rather rare with a scope, although one Rhode&Schwarz spectrum analyzer came with a serious backpack.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Keith was probably including the credit card merchant fees :-)
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
Rounding error (I really don't know what our price structure is).
ope
ehat
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:-)
.This goes back to the use of cheap ass inverters versus sine wave output inverters. Those $100 inverters are OK for a soldering iron, but I don't think I'd power any instruments with one. My hundred dollar inverter ruined a hundred dollar notebook power supply.
Regarding the wall wart, my point was they could have gone this route. But perhaps these Chinese scope vendors started out doing OEMing, and the US companies wouldn't stand for a wall wart, or more likely soap on a rope.
That is highly unsual. Laptop supplies are switchers, they rectify the mains and should be perfectly happy with modified sine. Or was that a cheapo laptop supply despite the high price tag ...?
What doesn't run well on a modified sine is motors. When the power goes I have to turn the potmeter for the wood stove stove fans way up so they reach the same throughput as with pure sine. Plus they are noisier because you hear the harmonics.
I don't think anyoe would accept a scope with a wall wart, unless it was super cheap.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
The Fluke Scopemeters are wall-warted when they're charging the battery. The early models were kind of clunky but the current generation are pretty decent, if a bit pricey.
-- Rich Webb Norfolk, VA
Ok, but I bet they aren't meant to be used during charge time. I was never a huge fan of those things.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
CE stickers are cheaper by the reel.
Our 4-channel isolated-channel TPS2024 uses a wart supply, and it wasn't cheap.
We use warts for all our products except where the power requirement is too high. One recent gadget is a 3U rackmount spectroscopy controller with an embedded Linux PC, hard drives, digitizers, arbs, all sorts of stuff. It runs off a wart.
John
[...]
Ugh. I am happy that my Instek 2204 has a real built-in wideband PSU. No looking around where the wall wart is after arriving at a client. Any standard power cable fits. It even came with a genuine Bri'ish power cable.
For fixed installations wall warts are ok, although a nuisance at times because they clog 2-3 positions on a power strip.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com/ "gmail" domain blocked because of excessive spam. Use another domain or send PM.
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