RoadTest Maintenance Update: Keithley KickStart, Tek PA1000, RSA306, Digilent ADP3450, Aim-TTi QPX750SP & SMU Thoughts

When the RoadTest is over, the torture is not over for the equipment. At least, that's what I like to think, as I try to keep my equipment busy doing more tests and making new discoveries. Nowadays, with most equipment, they aren't exactly static objects either as firmware and software upgrades are released over the life of the instrument which can iron out bugs, add features and improve performance. Such upgrades can be applied by the end user, although with some level of potential risk (e.g. failure of power or communications could leave the unit bricked and in need of service). While the philosophy of some users is "if it ain't broke, don't fix it", my personal philosophy is to chase the latest and ensure the equipment is running at peak-performance. Who knows, you might encounter a bug that was fixed in a firmware release that you didn't choose to apply and waste time debugging a problem that wasn't yours to begin with! I've definitely had that experience.

While software updates on their own are not exciting, I decided to bundle up a few of them (some a little tricky, some first-time attempts) alongside some observations in the test-and-measurement market to hopefully lead to a more interesting read while also providing some hints for those who may own such equipment and be attempting such upgrades themselves.

Keithley KickStart 2 - End of the Road for KICKSTARTFL-BASE!

I begin my maintenance with upgrading Keithley KickStart 2. I was fortunate to be given a KICKSTARTFL-BASE as part of a good-will offering with the Keithley 2450 SMU RoadTest which encountered some difficulties. This was a floating license that unlocked the base suite of KickStart which allowed me to keep using it with the 2450 as well as the 2110 I had reviewed a long time ago. This isn't a software I use often, since I like to automate by SCPI commands using pyvisa but if I'm lazy and want to run a sweep, I would use it.

It has been a while since I updated, so it was surprising to see that the present version (at the time of publication) is V2.9.0.

What I was not aware of was that they were moving towards a maintenance license model for the perpetual license. This is a bit confusing, but it seems that perpetual licenses can have updates and support extended for a year with the KICKSTARTFL-SUITE-UP license and will maintain access even after the maintenance license expires; or users can opt for the new annual subscription license options for the whole suite or individual applications, but upon expiry you are locked out of the software entirely.

I feel this is a bit of a regrettable development - while KickStart has been making leaps and bounds in terms of supporting new hardware and adding new features, this was not a major-version release and yet existing license-holders are not given the opportunity to benefit without an additional investment. I don't see this as a positive, although I suppose paying for new features may be fair game.

What I feel is really broken is that you are thrown into an unlicensed state if you upgrade your KickStart to the latest version (as I did), rather than just being limited to features available at that version. If you want to go back, you better hope you have an archive of the installer as Tektronix doesn't offer downloads for anything but the previous version, V.2.8.0 which does not support KICKSTARTFL-BASE at all. It would only be fair if you were cutting-off users at a given version that you at least make the final version available for download, rather than just leave them high-and-dry, especially if they didn't update their software regularly.

Now, I'm not sure if it's a wording error or if it has to do with the date of my license, but I found V.2.7.0 which I had previously installed seemed to work just fine with KICKSTARTFL-BASE:

Despite this warning inside the license manager ...

... I still had access to all base apps and they were not in a trial state. Perhaps I am lucky or perhaps they meant that support would end post-2.7.0, but nevertheless, by sheer luck, the last version I had installed seems to be the last version supported by KICKSTARTFL-BASE without the maintenance subscription. The upgrade subscription isn't actually offered locally, but Newark lists it at US$202 right now which is perhaps peanuts for a company to afford. For an individual? I think that money could be better spent elsewhere, so I'll continue coding as I normally do and using whatever features are already available to me.

Tektronix PA1000 Power Analyzer & PwrView

At this time, I was also checking out the Tektronix PA1000 to see if there had been any developments there since my review. It seems not to have had any firmware upgrades since my review, with the software stagnating not long after with a few compatibility issues with later versions of Windows. That is why I still had a Windows 7 machine, later a VM, dedicated to running PwrView to ensure I still had access to the IEC Standby Power Test which is its "killer application".

Unfortunately, the product page bought be some bad, although not unexpected, news. Tektronix has quietly discontinued the PA1000 and PA3000, both formerly Voltech products. It seems the discontinuation also caught others by surprise, by its quietness.

I have a feeling that the power analyser is probably not a market segment which sells in large volumes, but selling oscilloscopes with power analysis software options and relatively expensive probes is likely a more fruitful strategy and may actually be more profitable. Users can analyse cycle-by-cycle events much in the way an oscilloscope resolves the time-domain down to nano-seconds while a digital multimeter does not. However, just as oscilloscopes did not render DMMs obsolete, I feel that an oscilloscope-based solution has some potential downsides - expense, complexity of set-up and potential accuracy issues with low standby currents depending on how it is probed. Perhaps it's a sign of the times, as I also noticed the Rohde & Schwarz HMC8015 Power Analyzer also being discontinued, although Hioki and Yokogawa (amongst others) still seem to be in the market.

For all its quirkiness, I've grown to get along with the PA1000 so I will probably keep using it for as long as I can. One of the key issues, though, is the PwrView/PwrView64 software which seems to have issues under Windows 10. As I use it over the network, the first step is to add the IP address into the networked instruments panel:

From here, however, things usually go downhill. The next step is to add an instrument ...

... and running under Windows 10 frequently results in No Instruments Found. If I install this same software and configure it the same inside a Windows 7 VM, it finds the instrument with no problems.

It was then I discovered that this was likely a timing bug - if one "ticks" the Include Virtual Instruments box during the scan and then un-ticks it, the instrument magically appears and can be connected. While the window "chrome" looks all broken under Windows 10 because it was not designed for this theme, at least the software can work without needing a VM or a Windows 7 machine!

Tektronix RSA306 Real-Time Spectrum Analyzer & SignalVu-PC

Not to be forgotten, my Tektronix RSA306 Real-Time Spectrum Analyzer has been getting quite a bit of action too since its review - I've taken it into my workplace, flown it across states and ran experiments in the field with it. It's been quite the trusty companion. In all this time, SignalVu-PC seems to have gotten quite a few updates which I have been keeping up with.

But then I noticed something odd ...

... the software updates under the Support page for the RSA306 just kind of ... stopped.

The RSA306B is a face-lifted version of the RSA306, differing with a rubber wraparound featuring chunky feet at the corners and captive USB lead. This launched not long after the RSA306 review, but as far as I know, is identical from a specifications and hardware point of view. In fact, it even occupies the product URL for the RSA306 ... so it probably is the same.

But the software listing for the RSA306B seems to be updated with a newer version of SignalVu-PC. I downloaded this, and to no surprise, it worked just fine - so don't be fooled by the Tektronix website!

Digilent Analog Discovery Pro ADP3450 Linux Mode Image

The Digilent Analog Discovery Pro ADP3450 has been quite a useful tool, not least because it basically acts like a Linux SBC ... and who doesn't need another one of those on their network?

To keep things up-to-date, I decided to update the WaveForms software, which also allowed me to update the firmware of the ADP3450 via USB in the device detection screen as in this post. But perhaps the more important thing to update is the Linux Mode Image to keep the operating system up-to-date.

Unfortunately, while one can do basic package updates from the ssh or USB-serial terminal on their Linux Mode device, deploying a major update requires reimaging the device entirely which causes all data and customisations to be lost. Before deciding to upgrade the Linux Mode Image, one has to be sure they are prepared to lose everything already installed and any data recorded on the internal eMMC. Assuming that you are, the update file and instructions are posted here, but in practice, the procedure is somewhat complex.

The update requires the unit be connected via USB, a serial terminal emulator be connected to the virtual COM port at 115200bps and a USB flash drive containing the update files be inserted into any port on the ADP3450. To initiate the update requires rebooting the unit into Linux Recovery mode using the Boot Mode selector in Waveforms -

Unfortunately, this is where things went off the rails for me ...

The first attempt resulted in this U-Boot printout - it just didn't detect a USB stick at all. You can type the "reset" command into the terminal to give it another try, but I just couldn't get it to detect my first USB stick at all. It seems that when it reset the USB buses, this results in the power being switched off and back on to the ports. If the USB stick doesn't initialise fast enough, it just won't be detected! This was the result with a Kingston DataTraveller G4 64GB.

So I tried with a different USB stick, this time a Kingston DataTraveler Exodia 32GB stick and instead, it reported time-outs on transactions indicating the USB controller was not happy with this stick either. If one reboots the ADP3450, they will find it reboots right back into Linux Recovery Mode and there seem to be no instructions online about how to exit this, as the unit will not be detected by WaveForms unless it boots into something! Luckily, I have the solution to this after some experimentation - see the next section!

Third time is the charm, as I used a Toshiba 8GB USB 2.0 stick and it came up right away with the kernel image details. It takes some time, but it will boot and be ready for login (root/root):

As debug and terminal print to the same UART, it can be a bit confusing, but there is a sign-on banner in there!

After logging in, one can run the deploy-to-emmc command to write the image to the internal eMMC. A word of caution - the script will destroy all the internal data once run. It will also seem to complete and print out the used time, but it has not FULLY completed yet, as the filesystem is then checked and resized. If you select to reboot back into Linux mode during this time, you will have a BROKEN Linux Mode image!!!

Only once the command has returned back to the prompt can you then go back to WaveForms and change the boot mode back to Linux -

Fixing Getting Stuck in Linux Recovery Mode

In case you chose to reboot your unit into Linux Recovery Mode and have changed your mind about deploying an update, or just can't get any of your USB sticks to boot, there is a way out of this limbo of being stuck at the U-Boot prompt.

To do this, you should type "reset" into the U-Boot prompt and hit enter, then spam the space bar.

This should being you into Standard Recovery Mode which is also known as USB Recovery. This will then allow the ADP3450 to be detected in WaveForms and the Boot Mode dialog can be used to set it back to Linux. Note that even though it says you can press S for Standard and L for Linux mode, neither key appears to work in my testing! Instead, the space bar seemed to be the most reliable way to invoke anything outside of Linux Recovery Mode to resume normal booting.

Aim-TTi QPX750SP Programmable 750W DC Power Supply

Since my review of the Aim-TTi QPX750SP, I haven't had many major use cases requiring such a large amount of power, so it's been benched for a bit as I do other experiments. Nevertheless, a firmware update has eventuated, so I thought it would be good to update my unit with the latest.

To do so requires downloading the firmware from the site and the Firmware Transfer Utility. Extracting the firmware ZIP file allows the .ttiupd file to be selected which describes the update.

A nice feature is that update can be done over LAN as well - I really dislike having to finagle a USB cable into a stack full of equipment, so that's a big win in my books.

The software transfers the files to the power supply and the update is not performed until the unit is power cycled.

For each of the files containing firmware, the unit removes the existing firmware, programs the new firmware and verifies it. Once it has completed, the unit will continue to boot.

The screen will confirm successful update once it has booted, although all values are reset to defaults. This is not unusual after some instruments perform an update to avoid inconsistent operation due to changes in parameter storage.

But this had me wondering ... just how does the firmware transfer utility work? Grabbing out Wireshark, I discovered it uses an "undocumented" SCPI command called FILE. Very nice ... but don't use this if you don't want to cause trouble!

Year (or two) of the SMU?

It seems also to be a very interesting time in the test-and-measurement market. Earlier in the year, I reviewed (under loan) a Rohde & Schwarz NGU401 Source Measurement Unit, which is a new entrant in the field ordinarily dominated by Keithleys. The Keysight B2901A/B2902A/B2911A/B2912A were all discontinued on 1st December 2021 at the time, and I didn't know what was happening, mulling that perhaps Keysight would leave the field. But I was ultimately wrong as they have now announced their facelifted black colour-scheme versions under the B2901B/B2902B/B2911B/B2912B/B2901BL/B2910BL model codes. Since Rohde & Schwarz introduced the NGU-series home-grown SMUs, the ADCMT units they previously co-branded have disappeared off their website, although I'd never seen nor used one. While Yokogawa is in the market too, I haven't seen one in-the-flesh and don't feel they're quite as bench-oriented as the others.

Imagine my surprise when I saw this post from markedwards (Director, Aim-TTi Instruments) introducing their SMU4000-series. It is always refreshing to see another entrant into the market - at the moment, the SMU4001 offers +/-20V while the SMU4201 offers +/- 200V but with quasi-constant-power envelope rather than the "rectangular" ranging as is common in most SMUs. It claims to be smaller than most as well, having an A4 footprint and can be linked through an external adapter to form a two-channel unit. It's not quite the 60W monster of the NGU201/401, but with a 25W power rating, it is slightly beefier than the 20W-rated 2450. On the surface, the SMU4201 isn't a bad match for the Keithley 2450 as it offers a fairly similar power and voltage range. Settling time is quoted slower, but the tests may not be under the same conditions. In terms of accuracy, the specifications seem to suggest they are neck-and-neck with the SMU4201 besting the 2450 occasionally, and seemingly offering a lower offset error on many of the ranges.

That is a most interesting development to see - I wonder whether one of those might turn up on RoadTest. But that being said, what sells Keithley SMUs is not only the capability, but the software library and on-device TSP scripting capabilities which are quite powerful. While other vendors do have their own software (in the case of the SMU4000, there is Test Bridge SMU), the quality and support in various use cases will vary. Nevertheless, it seems the SMU4000-series is host-driven similar to the NGU401, but at least it does have a decent 100k onboard reading buffer unlike the NGU201/401 which should make certain time-sensitive tasks (e.g. sweep) easier to handle. Best of all, compared to the 2450, it seems to be notably cheaper - almost by 20%.

Conclusion

To get the most of your equipment requires some level of maintenance which could include updating software and firmware, which is likely to improve performance, reduce bugs or introduce new features. This can take many forms, but is not entirely risk free. I personally like keeping everything up-to-date when I can, so I've gone ahead and documented some of the discoveries along the way.

As vendors begin to see software as a revenue stream, I suspect subscriptions will be more commonplace. It is unfortunate to see what has happened to KICKSTARTFL-BASE being "chopped off" without the last version available for open download, but I guess paying for new features is not entirely out-of-the-norm. Better forewarning of this would have been nice, as would be with the discontinuation of the PA1000. The RSA306 showed a happy side to this - the unit is still supported on the latest version of SignalVu-PC even if the listing on the site doesn't seem to agree.

Updates for the Digilent ADP3450's Linux Mode image may seem simple at first, but it seems their USB reset and detection routine just doesn't wait long enough for the USB to get ready. It's also not got perfect compatibility with certain USB devices (as do many SBCs), so whether it works or not is really a bit of a pot-luck game. At least I discovered how to exit the recovery mode, which isn't seemingly documented at this time.

Updating the Aim-TTi QPX750SP uncovered an undocumented SCPI command, but also gave me a chance to see some of the latest launches in the test-and-measurement market. It seems these past few years have been the year of the SMU - Rohde and Schwarz and Aim-TTi both entered the market, while Keysight dipped out for a sec to do a facelift. The Aim-TTi certainly looks like a decent competitor to the 2450 on-paper, although sometimes what sells the unit is not so much the specification but also the software.

Hope you enjoyed this "maintenance release" regarding previously RoadTested hardware ... any questions or ideas, let me know in the comments below!