excellent news! thanks, Justin.

[julian]

PS, extra thanks for the heads up on the PCB antennas.. I just went to get a log periodic, and then my curiosity got the better of me.
🙂

here’s my haul that just arrived.

Any pointers to good wideband LNAs that are buyable or makeable for a nice price would be appreciated.

• This reply was modified 9 years, 5 months ago by julian. Reason: attach picture of right file size

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Good to know. thanks!

Well, I had it running on a PC with native USB3 ports today.. got some really useful views in RTSA mode. Of one of our radio transmitter designs at work doing something momentarily funny.

Looking forward to having it running on my own PC as soon as the new expresscard adapter shows up.

Thanks Justin,

From reading about USB3, it looks like 900mA is a standard port capability of a USB3 port so in that case, its interesting signalhound even needs two USB plugs to go to the computer?

Anyway – I ended up getting an expresscard54 form factor card that will sit flush in my laptops socket, but it has space between the two USB3 ports for an “external supply” from one of my USB2 ports to boost its power out if need be. Unfortunately I couldn’t just run out to a shop and buy it, so am waiting for it to show in a few days.

In the meantime I should have access to another PC later today or tomorrow with proper USB3 ports so I can at least check it works on a normal PC before trying out the adapter…

Sorry to hassle you guys but I’d really appreciate an answer if anyone knows the actual current consumption needed, or even an “x works for me” if someone reading this has done this before… (Even a “we don’t know” if nobody at signal hound actually knows, would at least let me know I’m on my own and should just buy the more conservative non-mobile option..)

I want to get moving with using this spectrum analyser, and would really appreciate a chance to not waste time and money buying the wrong thing this weekend.

thanks!

oh… well, here’s another person a little disappointed about the BB60A not being included here.

That said, I haven’t bought a TG module to use with it, so no real harm done.. (though I was actually working out when I’d plan to buy a TG before reading this) Guess I’ll just concentrate on working with broadband noise, with its limitations, for now.

Hey Jared!

Good point about peak and average – not so hard to do and nothing new to be developed for that..

Well.. I ummed and ahhed, and went for the lowest expense buy available to me, so now I have a BB60A (2nd hand, ebay… a bit less money than a new SA44 is over here, and about 1/4 the price of the new bb60c… I’m excited to play with the RTSA capabilities, and, well.. when I eventually feel the need to upgrade to a nice flat noisefloor and reduced spurious and better specs, I’m hoping this rumoured 20G unit will be out) Unfortunately I can’t run it yet as my laptop has no USB3 ports.. (d’oh!) looking at getting an expresscard adapter ASAP to run it, but need to know about current draw… came back here to ask that, actually.

Those PCB antennas look like a lot of fun. I have been sort of wanting to start learning enough to design my own for a while, but like to tell myself that a lack of simulation software is holding me back… That said if I’d just started with making them to basic theory and tweaking and testing them a year and a half ago I’d probably have some decent understanding and experience by now! oh well..

I ended up getting tekbox near field probes like this but minus the wideband amp and the wooden box – now I kind of wish I’d got the amp and box too… http://www.tekbox.net/test-equipment/tbps01-emc-near-field-probes-tbwa2-wideband-amplifier They seem quite like the beehive ones. Recommended, if you are interested. Today they did a great job at showing where a local oscillator in a configurable radio was dropping out of operation. At some point I’m going to try making my own using RG405 rigid and compare response to these.

That diy TEM cell looks like it might be too much fun to pass up. You have to give us a report on it here once it’s up and running, and you’ve had a chance to use it.

aaah great! yeah – it *seems* that quasi peak could be relatively easy, on top of all the other stuff you already have working. Though I was not sure if it’s something that needs to run in the actual capture unit itself, or something that can happen in the PC software… if it’s relatively easily doable in software I’d really appreciate it. (in fact – if that BBApp repo on github is your latest work on Spike, and it is a matter of finding the peak detect code in there, I’d be tempted to try and have a go at it)

Seems like, for an RTSA, whose advantage is picking up all the instantansous blips scanning analysers can miss, this would be a very nice addition.

Not a lot of general purpose and hobbyist affordable analysers seem to do it (rigol DSA series has it as an option) and it seems to me that more and more engineers are caring about precompliance these days. So having a specific EMC tool like that, I think, would get you some good attention. (Then you could also market a kit of calibrated antennas for 9k – 30MHz, and at the price those go for you’ll be laughing all the way to the bank… 🙂

aaah… yeah. Point 1 kind of kills it for serious measurements. Hadn’t thought of how those aspects of the approach might effect the measurement quality so badly.

But very good to know that it’d still be an option for doing some basic rough measurements.

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