Episode: 2551
Title: HPR2551: Calibrating Calibration
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr2551/hpr2551.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-19 05:25:31

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This is HPR Episode 2551 entitled Calibrating Calibration.
It is hosted by Enable and in about 25 minutes long and carry a clean flag.
The summary is Enable talks about calibration issues with the SIDL and SDS 1200 and 220XC oscilloscope.
This episode of HBR is brought to you by AnanasThost.com.
We get 15% discount on all shared hosting with the offer code HPR15, that's HPR15.
Better web hosting that's honest and fair at AnanasThost.com.
Hello, this is NY Bull and I talked to you today about another piece of equipment.
This is a new edition to my bench here.
I bought a proper oscilloscope, I wanted one forever and sometimes I felt like I don't need
it, I just wanted it because I do have another scope I'll talk about, it's a smaller handheld
and I have some small little tiny oscilloscopes that carry around with me portable ones.
So I figured you know I have enough to do my hobby electronics scope wise but Mrs.
Sanway Bell wanted a new vacuum, we have a vacuum, we have a nice vacuum, she wanted
this little, it's not little, yes I suppose it's little, she wanted a plug-in battery
operated like super duper vacuum that's light enough for her to just run around the
house and vacuum all the stairs with and I said we don't need a vacuum and then it clicked
at me I go hang on, I don't need a new oscilloscope and you don't need a vacuum but shall we
treat ourselves?
So they were about comparable in value and she said sure and it was like you know we
had birthday presents and it's neither of our birthdays so here it is, it's on my bench,
this is a segment, I've been hearing a lot about this one, I think it's trying to compete
with the very popular Rigole that's out there, a four channel, this is only two channels,
if I've gotten to a pinch and I wanted four channels I don't foresee it but we'll see
how it goes, I could always use this scope and my other, uh, signal in over here, yeah
I'm pointing, can you guys tell which direction I'm pointing, it's a podcast bill, this
is a S-D-S-1202-X-E, it's still in the box, it's still taped up so I guess you'll get
like a little unboxing here because I've never seen one in person, I had a knife somewhere
there's one thing I'm curious about with this and I hope I don't get bitten by it, these
do have a known defect, they forgot to populate two capacitors, they forgot to populate two
capacitors and when you're changing levels, I'll talk about the probes and how you compensate
the probes but without those two capacitors when you would compensate your probes and change
the levels on the scope, the compensation would drift and that's not supposed to happen,
I'm opening this for the first time now, I hope I got one of the newer models, I think
the older models are flushed out of the system now, let's see, so, uh, power cable, wow,
it's lighter than I thought, smaller than I thought, let's put this aside here, it's like
the size of lunch boxes when I was a kid but a nice big screen on it, so the first thing
I need to check is the model number to see if this needs to get boxed right back up and
go right back to Amazon, does have a carry handle, that's some portability to it, where is the
serial number, son of a bit, unicorn, this is the one that has a known issue,
calibrated September of last year, there, this is the one that has the known issue, this is a BA
series and I want a BB, so this might be the shortest podcast ever, this was calibrated on 2017,
so this needs to go back, okay so I just contacted Amazon about this, this unit has a known
manufacturing defect that was fixed in October of 2017 and I got a unit that was calibrated in
September of 2017, so right, they might be selling old stock and did I just get like the last
few of them, anyways I went through the Amazon return process and then I got up to the point where
it said do we want to refund or do you want a replacement, and I really want a replacement, I want
this scope but I had no idea how the person that's going to pick this off the shelf is going to know
if it's a BA model or a BB model, the BA model is not the problem, there are capacitors missing
on the scope probes and did I say this already, maybe, I did say this already, yeah as you change
your levels on your voltage, the compensation on your probes change, anyways you can look it up
online, it's everywhere, so I got to this point on Amazon where it said do you want a replacement
or a refund and since I want a replacement I can't guarantee that I'm going to get the proper
you know a newer replacement, it also said a button said call me, I've never seen this, I don't
return things, I get the right things all the time, so I don't return things off to Amazon and
so I tried this, I put in my phone number and it either said call me or call me in five minutes
and I press call me and like one second later my phone rings and there's a woman that is there
to help me and I talk her through the problem and she says I don't even know what this thing is
and I said well it's a device to measure voltage over time and she seemed to understand that
and I told her there's a manufacturing defect and the manufacturer their response to this is they
will send you the surface mount capacitors and you install them yourself, now if anybody's
seeing some surface mount components these are little tiny fiddly things it's like you take a
pencil and you break it and the size of the lead that breaks off that's how some of these
components get, now I'm comfortable doing that but I'm uncomfortable spending $400 on something
that I have to fix, so I talked with this lady on Amazon, they didn't seem to have a problem
doing this, they're going to send me a replacement, it's going to be here in two days, I'm going to
open the box and see if it's a BB model or if it's still a BA, if it's a BB I'm happy, they're happy
but they do know, it seems like they know this is kind of being an issue, it's in all the comments
and I might not be the first person that contacted them about this, they said if I get another BA
model they're going to take the scope right off their page, so maybe that'll get
signalant to address this a little further, there should have been a recall at least
or there should have been just, if they don't want to fix them, just take the defective units off
the market, count it as a loss and well I hate to say it but they go out to some landfill somewhere,
however I want the scope, I have another signalant scope, I have a signalant, this is a SPD 330X-E
that's my voltage supply, 30 voltage supply, I really like that, I like my signalant portable,
I wanted to get this, I wanted to be happy with this signalant scope, I got a place for it on the
bench already and I just, I got bitten, so let's see what happens in two days, I'm going to get a new
unit, I'm going to look at it and then the next day this lady that called me is going to call me back
and say did you get the right unit, did you not, so if I get the right unit, I'll be happy,
if I don't get the right unit, signalant's going to have to address this I guess,
but what I'm curious about is if I get the right unit and I say hey I'm happy, I got the right
unit, it just, everyone washes their hands and the next customer's going to hit this again and
they're going to get a BA, until they get a BB, so this is another one of those, well I guess
everyone on my HPR's goes on, I'll be back, I'll be back, I'll be back, but it's going to be
at least two days, so here is your pause, I should get some more of that time passing music,
okay, so it's two days later and here is another box from Amazon and I did open it downstairs
and it is a BB, so I don't know what's going on, if it's completely random, if you're going to get
an old scope or a new scope, I don't know if the old scopes go out and if the person isn't
savage to the problem, none the wiser, if they complain they get a BB, I wouldn't think Amazon's
doing that, I've been a customer of Amazon for over 1999, I think I signed up so, and I've never
had a problem with them, either buying things or returning things, and in fact it dawned on me
today that in all that 20 years, this is the first time I ever talked with them, this first time
they ever heard my voice, so I've never had to contact customer service, but however, customer
service was really, it's pretty good, you don't have to jump through hoops like wait on hold or get
passed around, you tell them, I think, I'm doing it again, I might have already said this two days ago,
but you tell them to call you and your phone rings, I like that much better, so let's pull this
out of the box, I can continue a little review of the unit, and I think I'll turn it on,
and just talk about probe compensation, since that is the prop, oh you know what, I still have the other
the BA downstairs, sitting on the table, I didn't want to open the whole thing, because I didn't want
to open the probes, I opened the BA, the plastic of it, and I read the serial number, and I wrapped it
right back up, I put it back in the box, it's downstairs, now that I got the BB, I can open this,
I can do a little review of it, I can test my probes, I can compensate them, talk about compensation,
and I could go down, since I opened the BA, and use these probes, so I don't have to disturb
that package any further than I already did, and maybe I can do the probe compensation on the BA,
and I can show aside by side, I got two probes, and I'll do one probe in the BB, and one probe in the
BA later, so let me just deform this,
cigarette likes to use funky colors, the probe, you've got yellow and pink on this one, a lot
other ones are like reds and blues and greens, what is it on there, they're cigarette,
upon my cigarette power supply, it's one channel's green and one channel's yellow,
I like it, it's neat, does this have stance, it sits very low, oh nice, okay it has stance,
so you can tilt it up, now I got the screen facing me better,
I had a more proper angle, speak properly though, I already lost that, okay, let me plug it in,
watch after all this, I'll plug it in, the smoke comes out, let's bend my luck,
and there it goes, I just heard the mailman go by, and he's bringing me another package from Amazon,
see I'm still a loyal customer, thanks Amazon, I had to get a tool for work, because I dropped
mine off an eight foot ladder onto a concrete floor, and all the plastic parts broke,
if anybody wants to look up what a roto zip is,
mine's not going to be rotoing or zipping,
this is the patented bill ramble where you're doing something else,
so, okay, when you, as soon as you plug it in, the light starts slow flashing like you're
in standby, I don't know if that helps it boot up faster, let's try the first boot,
couple clicks, screen, boot screen,
and a second click, okay, well you heard it, you heard me click it on, and you heard the beep,
and now I'm, we're finally out of screen, ooh this is a nice, nice steady trace, the one,
my handheld, my S, S, H, S, 810, the trace is always like a little wiggly, if I really get
up close to this one I can see a little wiggle, but I like how nice and steady this trace is,
so probe compensation, no matter what scope you get, if you get one of those,
you know, cheap kits that I've talked about in other HPRs and build it up,
or you get a nice like some $5,000 scope, you've got to compensate your probes, and I'll talk
about it here, so this is the yellow one, let's put it in the yellow channel, so each scope is
going to have a, an output for your, I'm sorry, I'm just looking at the probes, they're nice probes,
these are 200, yeah 200 megahertz probes, okay, so each scope has a little output where you hook
on your probe, it'll tell you what the output is, in this case it's one killhertz,
set the trigger to auto, I got to figure out how to run this thing, the buttons are in different spots,
so the quickest way is to find the auto setup, a lot, it scopes these days having auto setup,
you can hook up to whatever you're measuring and hit this magic auto button, the old school
people will call it cheating, but I just, I want to compensate my probe and I want to get there
quickly, so I found, at first I was hitting an auto button down here, but that's in, I find that's
in the trigger bank, it's right above the trigger bank, a blue auto setup button, so right now I do
have a square wave, it's a little, it's a little choppy at the top there, I can see it's a,
it's coned towards the left, so coned, and that's my own term, but, and what you need to do is
adjust your probe to get rid of any like overshoot or undershoot, so if you've got a nice square wave,
if it starts to look more like a parallelogram in either direction, you have to adjust your probe,
anytime you switch probes, you get another probe or you put your probe over into another scope,
which I probably, well, I suppose I'd never have, yeah, I never will, because these will be
200 megahertz scope probes, and in my other signal, the portable, it's always going to be 100 megahertz
scope probes, okay, so I gotta zoom in, because I'm a little zoomed out now, oh, it's nice and fast,
my, oh, that's nice, my other one is pokey, you press a button and you wait like an agonizing,
you know, it's not even a second, but when you want something done and you press a button and
nothing happens, it's noticeable, let's see, I might cut out some of this waffling, because I'm
figuring out how to use this at the same time, so my voltage, okay, I just turned that click,
I'll be quiet and you listen to the click, so that is when you're going from the two volt range to
the one volt range, a little relays clicking in, that is where the issue is in the BA, I'm trying to get
my square wave bigger so I can compensate my probe, oh, here it is, the horizontal, oh,
I guess I got to learn this thing, so actually this probe is pretty well compensated,
zoom out, I'll take a picture here, I've zoomed out,
it's saying it's one gig sample second, all right, it's right at one,
killerhertz, which is what the output on the probe compensation is,
and I've zoomed out to this picture I'm showing here, so you can see one full square wave,
each probe will come with, oh nice, this one comes with the smaller DNC connectors,
each probe you get will have a little plastic screwdriver,
if I can get it out of the bag, and on the probe itself is a little tiny somewhere,
I got to pull the probe off, this one's on the bottom, a little tiny place to put the screwdriver in,
oh, this one's not all plastic, it's got a little metal tip on the top,
and there is a flathead screw in there, ah, there it is, I forgot to leave the probe in 10X,
I was down in 1X and I'm moving that screw back and forth and it's doing nothing because
the amount that I'm moving that is so minute, so now I'm in 10X, let me retake my picture
I want to zoom out a bit, bring that down a little smaller, okay, here you can see this picture,
you can see that's not a nice square wave, it's overshooting at the top and then you get this
little ramp down, it goes to the bottom, it's overshooting, so when you move that little screw,
you can correct and get a nice square wave, I just, boy, you can really overshoot this,
this is where they are saying, okay, so now, well, sometimes it's so fiddly tweaking these,
when you pull the screwdriver out, it moves a little bit, let me just bring that back where it was,
that looks pretty, no, I'm going to go more, probe compensation with NY Bill,
it's got to be entertaining, right there, now I got a nice, perfect, this probe is calibrated,
when I do the BA comparison in a bit, I'll do this other probe, what color is that on the pink one?
By the way, if you're not familiar with scope probes and you get like a kit or you know,
whatever scope, the tip of it, it's like a plunger, you pull it back and it's got a hook and you
can grab onto, that's the, the turn for that is a witch's hat, so you pull it back, it's got a
grab thing, you can go in, grab a wire and let the spring go back and hold it for you, if you pull
the witch's hat off, just pull forward, then you got a proper little probe, you can go in and probe
things on a board, or you can, these probes will stick right into a, a breadboard, if you're working
on something, so just know that this witch's hat is removable, okay, here is the BA on the left,
and the BB on the right, I haven't touched anything on the BB, here is the first boot of the BA,
you can see my pink probe from my BB, this is going to get confusing,
and it's yellow slot, so I keep both yellow traces, when I first hit the auto button,
this is what the square weight looks like, you can see the, it's really overshooting,
I got to compensate this probe a lot more than the other, so let me see, bring that down,
it's a nice square weight,
all right, there, I've got the two scopes matching, now if I bring down the voltage until I hear that
click, then on that, there are the BA, yeah, there it is, I don't know if you're well,
so the BB, I click into the one volt range, and my square weight stays constant, that's what should
happen, when I click down on the BA suddenly overshoot appears again, so what are you supposed to do
now, now I got to compensate for this overshoot down on the one volt range,
so all right I make it a nice square wave, now I'll click back up into the two volt range,
and now I have undershoot, so yes I just confirmed that the problem is there, I'll take one more
shot of that, there's the undershoot when I click back up to the, so that was nice that I still had
this other scope down there, just to prove to myself that this is an issue, and here it is, I'm looking
at it, all right, so now I got undershoot on two volts, if I go down to one volt, I'm back to a
square wave, so between two and one volts, your probe compensation goes whacking, so everything
I'm reading on the internet, it's true, here it is, I'm looking at it, all right, I'll box this
BA back up, turn it off, and let me just, oh that's nice, the BNC connections are nice and
there's no wiggle room in there, it's nice and tight, shutting down, please wait, okay,
this has a little shutdown procedure, one thing I did notice, I'll go into like a small review of this,
it does have a little fan, like a little word to it, but it's nothing like a big honken old tech
tronics I have in the basement, one of those big bolt anchors, that thing sounds like a jet engine,
it's two channel, 200 megahertz, one giga sample, one thing I was interested in seeing, but I'm
gonna have to learn this scope more, it has a persistence mode, so if you have a sine wave going
and you click this persistence mode, it kind of shows you it's going to be hard to explain
it's a visual thing, well I'll leave that to next time, maybe I'll go in, after I learn this scope
a little better I can go into more in depth review of it, this is just the initial like unboxing
and I wanted to talk about the issue between the BA and the BB, and it was nice that I was able to
confirm the issue between the BA and the BB, because I'm just going from what I'm reading on the
internet and seeing in some YouTube videos, but yes, those guys are all correct, the BA has an
issue, so I'll wait for Amazon to call, they're going to call me on Sunday of all things, and I don't
know what to tell you if you're interested in buying one of these, because it really is a nice scope
at this price point, at this 200 megahertz, the screen is awesome, that's a really nice screen,
I like the layout, one thing I don't, well I shouldn't nitpick on other scopes, so one thing that
kind of bothers me on some other lower-end scopes is when there's just one vertical and horizontal,
and you have to click a button for which probe you want to do, so you're constantly, like
this has its own vertical voltage, and it has its own position for both pink and yellow channels,
some other scopes, you just have two knobs, and you have to select if you're on the blue channel,
the green channel, I don't think I want to do that too much, but they call this an entry-level
scope, it's an upgrade for me, coming from that 100 megahertz portable, which is dog slow,
but what do you expect, when they can cram all that into that little handheld with a big battery in
it, four and a half hours that battery lasts, I've tested it, but this is my new bench scope,
I do like SIGLINT, it's going to go right next to my SIGLINT power supply,
and after I learn how to use it, I can give a more in-depth review, so until next time guys!
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