Signalhound USB spectrum analyzer

Same thread came up on Tekscopes. You'll need a login to view:

A lot of responses there, however.

That's like comparing the Greenbay Packers (or the Ajax soccer team in Nico's case) with the boys from the local highschool :-)

Even those things would not deter me at all. I mean, if someone offered you a Rolls-Royce Corniche for $4k and it had a wee dent, would you turn it down?

The power utility will also be very happy :-)

I'd rather get the good old stuff, HP-85xx. IMHO it was (is) more useful. The topper in my case was a "modern" analyzer targeted at the EMC market. Cost as much as a Lexus sedan. It oozed tons of radiated emissions through its display.

Right, and the even older 8565B that I paid < 200ukp for on ebay and fixed up even has the 300 and 100Hz resolution bandwidth option. The lo is stable enough to handle that without the stab on as well and without having to wait 2 hours for everything to warm up and settle down.

If you are prepared to do the work, you can keep the older hp kit running essentially forever. Same for any of the other quality stuff, tek, fluke and many others...

Just so :-)...

Regards,

Chris

Thanks. Looks like I'll have to wait to be approved for membership, first.

Jon

FYI, the Signalhound has a free API that you could use to write an application to do a EMC sweep from 10hz to 4.4Ghz. But you need someone to write the application ;(

Cheers

Thats peanuts for me if the API is somewhere near usefull :-) The biggest challenge is not ending up writing a complete GUI application but just stick to a few buttons that take very specific measurements.

You can do that with an (old) HP meter and GPIB and LabView.

snipped-for-privacy@puntnl.niks (Nico Coesel) wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@news.kpnplanet.nl:

Have you gone through some of the cheaper ones at

Heres two

I know we all would like the latest and greatest but unless you're Trump you are going to be operating within a budget.

I haven't used a spectrum Analyzer since school so I couldn't really comment on either but maybe someone here who has and uses one regularly can tell you if one is good for what you want it for.

Good luck

Phil Hobbs wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@electrooptical.net:

I didn't say that. I said it's a gamble and its more money then I would care to gamble with. I'm not a peasant but I'm not Rockefeller either.

I said in my other post that I haven't used one in a while but does he really need a high-end one for EMC pre-compliance testing or could he get by on a $2k one I linked to in my other post? I know the Instek one has been around for at least five years so it must be good for something.

It's probably fine for lots of things. I don't do a lot of EMC work, but I do a lot of high performance analogue and electrooptical stuff, so I really care about the ability to measure close-in phase noise, for instance. Birdie hunting isn't my usual use for a spectrum analyzer.

I've got a whole pile of great stuff on eBay for two or three cents on the dollar, which makes the late lamented WW2 surplus bonanza look expensive.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

(Hunting for a TDS 694x scope and an HP 5373A frequency/time interval analyzer at the moment. Those ones are more like 8 or 10 cents.)

What you do get with a surplus hp or tek item is the guaranteed accuracy of calibration which you *will* need for emc work. Depending on the frequency range, you should be able to find an affordable unit. Pay a bit more and buy from a dealer and and you get the warranty as well as known good specs and repeatability of measurement.

There's no substitute for quality and it's just not possible to build a quality sa for less than a few thousand $ new price, irrespective of what they tell you...

Regards,

Chris

Prices seem to go up quite rapidly with traditional scopes faster than 1GHz or so... unless of course you can sample and then things like Tek 11802C's are dirt cheap for 20GHz.

I'm noticing a lot of Agilent E4406A "transmitter testers" available inexpensively (e.g.,

I already have an 11802 with half a dozen plugins, but I need some single shot capability. Sampling scopes aren't always the absolute most convenient things to trigger, either.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

I ended up buying an old Advantest R3261A (9kHz to 2.6GHz with the serial port option) from Ebay. It needs a bath and probably a new picture tube. Relative to other spectrum analyzers I think I got a good deal but I still feel I paid too much for approx. 20 year old equipment. I also had my eye on a much older Tek 496P but someone else just paid the asking price.