This item arrived on my desk today (thanks Terry). Mestek model CM81, Digital Clamp Meter. It's inexpensive, available on Amazon. It's made in China, Shenzen. It's Cat III, 600volts. It has a lot of fea...
A team at Imperial College London and M Squared have built a new navigation device using a quantum accelerometer. The large device is made with ships and trains in mind. (Photo via Imperial College London) GPS is essential for navigation and sin...
BrainGate2 is an electrode system implanted in the brain that lets you text, send emails, and browse the internet with your mind. Two people send text messages using BrainGate2. (Photo via BrainGate) Imagine being able to fire off a text message...
A team at Purdue have built a new eye implant using magnets for a more reliable and safe implant. The implant cleans itself using microactuators when exposed to a magnetic field. (Photo via Purdue) Glaucoma is a common, yet serious, condition th...
Peter, Jon and I are building a Programmable Electronic Load. In this series, I'm using test automation to characterise the device.I'm now including an oscilloscope to add up to 4 additional measurements to the test recordings. The process tests...
IntroductionContinuing on from the disappointment of the Flir IM75 I decided to move away from looking at specific insulation testers and looked more towards an insulation multimeter on a par with the Keysight U1461AU1461A Hence the MG302 from ...
One of my favorite tools is the Flush Cutter. I like them so much that I have seven of them right now. Yes besides the Multimeters and Bench Power Supplies I have also have a flush cutter addiction. In the course of my daily play in the s...
Introduction Following on from the Flir and Chauvin Arnoux units, I decided to take a look at what Fluke offered and how it would compare to the Keysight and Megger units that I have also reviewed. Megger Road Test ReviewKeysight U1461A Fau...
Connecting the thermocouple sensor to instrumentation must be done carefully to optimize accuracy and minimize cost. The resultant temperature measurement is only as accurate as the sensor and its interface. The thermocouple produces only a sma...
Everyone is familiar with the USB Batteries that can be used to charge a cell phone and which can themselves be charged off a any standard USB port or charger. A while back I began using one type of these batteries to power some of my small projects ...
IntroductionDiodes (or p-n junctions) make extremely low-cost temperature sensors! They are convenient, especially since they can be included on the silicon as part of larger designs into integrated circuits (ICs) - it costs almost nothing to include...
Hayabusa 2’s landers will study the surface of Ryugu and send photos and samples back to Earth. Hayabusa 2 making contact with the asteroid. (Photo via JAXA) News like this is why we're here. Back in 2014, Japan’s space agency, JAXA, la...
This miniature satellite may change the way we track weather patterns (Photo from NASA) It seems no matter how many advances we make in technology, no one can still get the weather right. That may change with NASA’s latest development. The agenc...
Audi’s 25th Hour Flow Research shows more smart cars on the road will decrease traffic, but it won’t be enough to solve the issue of congested roads. A look at how smart cars can improve traffic flow. (Photo via Audi) At the end of a long day, y...
Part of Google’s guide to bringing native hearing aid support to Android (Photo via Google) According to the World Health Organization, roughly 466 million people suffering from hearing loss. That number is expected to grow to 900 million by 205...
Those who rejected Google Glass as a useful device could be regretting it, as Glass could be helping in the treatment of autism in children. View of a patient’s information displayed on Glass’s screen. (Image via Nature) Glass is a device that G...
The team of researchers is looking to make MRIs up to 10 times faster. Increased scan times may take some of the dread out of MRIs. (Photo via Getty Images) MRIs are important procedures used to detect brain tumors, brain injuries, infection, an...
IntroductionThis short blog post discusses an attempt to make test leads for hopefully better measurements! Measuring small resistances is really difficult with the usual 2-wire measurement with multimeters. The multimeter will measure the resi...
In 2015, researchers set out to track bees to understand the reasons behind the slow decline in bee population. Honeybee carrying a tracking device (Image from RBG/KEW) According to Darwin’s theory of evolution, the species that survive are the ...
Introduction This blog is to document my attempt to build Jan and Peter's load. I'm trying to catch up with Jan, who iscurrently way ahead of me, so I can start doing measurements. Although I normally prepare blogs in full before posting th...
IntroductionThis blog continues my series of comparing some insulation testers to the Keysight U1461AU1461A that I have had issues with and the Megger MIT420/2MIT420/2 that I carried a road test review out on for element 14 last year &nbs...
IntroductionOne really useful use-case for a VNA is to characterise antennas. When radio transmitters operate, the signal travels with virtually no loss over a cable (often a coax cable) and then is radiated by an antenna. But some of the energy may ...
Peter, Jon and I are building a Programmable Electronic Load. In this post I use LabVIEW to automate the measurements on the load itself. I'm buitlding an automated test setup to characterise its behaviourThe process tests the load for a range of vol...
Peter, Jon and I are building a Programmable Electronic Load. In this series of blogs I'm building a LabVIEW library of reusable components In this seventh article I introduce the first advanced block: Raw ADC control. LabVIEW has a set of ...
