The year is drawing to a close, which means it’s pretty much holiday season once again. But many moons ago, I recall seeing a banner on element14 Australia’s storefront which linked to a community competition titled “Ready for Tomor...
If you’ve read my last blog, you would have seen my review of the first-half of the Grand Prize from the Experimenting with Thermistors Design Challenge. Of course, this leaves me with the second half to cover … and in true Gough fashion...
So far, it seems I’ve been having quite good luck with my entries in the “experimenting with” style design challenges, as sometimes it’s the simple things that are interesting to me. Case in point – the Experimenting wit...
It's been a busy time for me recently - aside from the busyness of work that never seems to abate with the slow transition back to "work-from-work" which now involves teaching course co-ordination duties, I've also been finalising my contributions to...
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 obj...
It wasn't all that long ago that I took the step to get myself acquainted with KiCad and start designing PCBs for manufacture in my spare time - in fact, just two years ago. But since then, I could not have imagined that vendors such as JLCPCB could ...
Having recently finished my blog series for the Experimenting with Thermistors Design Challenge, and taking a breather on a RoadTest at the moment, I found some time to embark on a project that I had wanted to do during the challenge but did not have...
To have won the grand prize for the Experimenting with Thermal Switches design challenge was a great honour - it was the first such design challenge I had ever entered. But I couldn't help but give the Experimenting with Current Sense Amplifiers desi...
After receiving my prize, is it no great surprise that the first thing that I do is to take it apart? Alas, this was not in vain - this was all part of analysing just what sort of upgrade potential the Legion 5 has and to actually perform the upgrade...
It's been way too long since my last posting here at element14 ... but I suppose that's not unexpected as I've just been flat-out busy with work and a myriad of other commitments. Just recently, I put quite a bit of time into reviewing a ...
It’s been a few months since I delivered my Keysight Smart Bench Essentials RoadTest Review. While I had done as much as I felt was possible within the two-month period, there were a few loose ends that I promised to follow-up later.
Time got t...
Christmas seems like so long ago, but with a mixture of component shortages and logistics delays, my Secret Santa items only finally arrived this week while I was away interstate! At first, I thought Christmas may have been cancelled, but thanks to&n...
This chapter focuses on what it’s like to use the instruments on-the-bench, without considering computer-based remote control or connectivity. This is the way that many instruments, traditionally, would have been used at undergraduate level uni...
The “secret sauce” that ties the instruments together and makes it a smart-bench is the PathWave BenchVue software. Four individual apps are used with the EDU-series instruments – one for the Oscilloscope, Power Supply, Digital Mult...
Now that most of the hard (review) work is done, I can do what I’ve wanted to do for a while which is to take a peek under the covers (perhaps venturing into full teardown) to see what makes the instruments “tick”. How did they mana...
While it is acknowledged that instrument performance is perhaps not the primary focus for a cost-sensitive bench targeted at undergraduate-level laboratories, because of changes to the RoadTest plan, I felt that it would be worth running some tests j...
In this section, I will explore the state of Test Flow automation as it presently stands with regards to the Smart Bench Essentials Kit.
Is Test Flow Still Alive?
When I proposed my review, I was very excited to have the potential to try out the Test...
This chapter will examine the instrument’s LAN-connected web interface capabilities and design. For further information about instrument remote control performance, please refer to Chapter 8.
EDUX1052G Oscilloscope
The home screen when loaded ...
Before the Keysight Smart Bench Essentials kit can be pressed into service, there are a few tasks that must be completed to configure the equipment for operation and ensure that it has the latest firmware that improves instrument functionality and so...
The kit has all arrived, so it’s time for a mega-unboxing where I take a look at each of the units from all sides and see just what is included with each device. By doing so, we can also understand some of the features of these instruments, alt...
This chapter focuses on setting the context of what a university electronics laboratory bench looks like, including the various challenges that academics face in running their lab programs. I will examine some of the creative solutions which have bee...
In this exciting blog post, I will take apart the Digilent Analog Discovery Pro ADP3450 to see what it’s made of and how it’s been designed. This post will include a few nice photos of the internals along with a listing of some of the maj...
This chapter will cover a number of instrument performance tests that I conducted to ascertain the capability of the instrument and verify its specifications compared to its datasheet. This is perhaps the most exciting part of the review, not least b...
