Hi! I'm super excited about this one haha thank you very much to Omicron Lab for sending in this baby in this very sexy case which I believe is optional extra. But let's check it out. Let's check out the Bode 100. We'll have a look at all the stuff but oh hang on! Oh I just smell versatility.

Look at this. We've got the Omicron Bode 100. Basically, it's a vector network analyzer, but different to the RF vector network analyzer that we looked at in that previous site siglent video. This is a much more versatile bit of kit for your average, you know electronics design engineer.

Let's take a look at it. So in this box we get to passive probes which I think are optional extras. Well, I think everything's basically optional extra I think you just buy the base mode 100 unit, but I'm very excited about this. We've got a wideband injection transformer.

We'll go into that I've been wanting one of those for ages w thinking about building my own. that'll have to be a separate video or look at passive component measurement. Another passive component measurement Chesty chest. G should take a look at a power supply.

Then we just got various probes and things. a test board, whatnot, various Co axes and stuff like that. Cool. Let's check out what this thing can do.

So what is this thing and why am I so excited about it? Well, it's basically a vector network analyzer as I said or an impedance analyzer whatever you want to call it. But it does have vector network analyzer capability, but instead of as we saw in a previous video being for RF type stuff, this is basically from DC 250 megahertz bandwidth, so it's much more, much more useful for more practical electronic stuff. things like you know, measuring the stability of control. So because ie.

power supplies which I'm going to have to do a totally separate video on because that's like a 30-minute whiteboard thing in its own right via one of these our voltage in action transformers and I don't. So I don't think I'll be able to demonstrate that in this video. Maybe we'll have a look so that allows you to measure the performance and stability. and I calculate what sort of output capacitors and things like that you need for not only your own DC to DC converters, but for off-the-shelf linear regulators and stuff like that.

You can do complex impedances of various components. So I've done that before in an old video which I'll link in down below where I used a red Pitaya to measure the impedance over frequency up to I think 40 or 50 megahertz like this one does. but I used that red pitaya to measure the parameters of a bypass capacitor that you typically use on a board and that video. Well, we did get a plot out of it, but was a bit Me: You know a bit how you're doing this, You know.

The Bode 100 is a professional bit of kit for actually doing those sort of impedance measurements on individual components, capacitors, inductors, and all sorts of things. We could do things like measure the complex impedance of power planes and the effectiveness of bypass capacitors I Want to do a whole video on that? Yeah! I'm being given the frequency range you can measure resonance stuff for things like our near-field communication stuff you can measure the performance of crystals, piezo transducers, and of course you could do I like filter swept filter performance curves you know, amplifiers you can do EMC stuff a whole range of stuff. so having a DC 250 megahertz vector network analyzer, impedance analyzer it's a much more useful bit of kit for your average you know, electronics engineer just designing, you know, like piece of non RF type stuff. It just allows you to do a whole bunch of things.

and I can't wait to see like I can just think of like half a dozen a dozen videos off top my head that I could use this bit of kit for that. Really? I didn't have the capability to do it before this, so thank you very much Omicron for sending this baby in I've been actually trying to get my hands on like a you know, like a hundred megahertz or a you know DC 100 megahertz vector and network analyzer. You know, like secondhand old? you know HP or Agilent one or something like that on eBay but this is like a modern USB type one and it's got all the software bells and whistles that we could possibly need. So this will be a review video and I won't be tearing it down in this video.

I'll link in a separate tear down video at the end if you want to see how this baby works. and basically it's we've got a signal generator and their output 0 to 50 megahertz. I'll put up the specs here so that you can see the entire performance specs for this thing and then we have basically got two inputs in here. Now you don't have to use them all the time you can get depending on the measurement configuration.

The thing that you're actually trying to measure, you might use one or both of these inputs here. And as I said, everything's optional with these. a wideband injection transformer like test jigs for passive art components, your wacky a little surface mount component in there, and a probes that that's just isn't that? just sex on a stick. Look at that.

Unbelievable. And then we've got our main you know, which is actually a very nicely designed a constructor. I Really like it. We've just got a 10 watt plug back in put here and Earth in our terminal.

You might need that depending on your system configuration and a simple USB type input. So this is a very nice bit of professional kit and it wannabe for the price because this is about 5000 US bucks and you might choke at that. But hey, try and get a professional you know, vet and 50 megahertz vector network analyzer for less that can do all the stuff this one can I think you'll be hard-pressed They included some pros which feel very nice at Wow that's ridiculously sharp. Unbelievable.

It's probably than vice probit Nicest probe I've ever felt the rubber on that beautiful made in Germany Ah, this is just absolutely gorgeous. Just got to feel this thing to know how good a quality this is manufactured by Pmk is it I don't know I Designed for Omicron and it's open. It's just a ten to one scope probe probe probe 50mm with because that's the bandwidth of this thing and 12.5 puff. It's not particularly low capacitance which might be important if you're doing that.

you'd have you know active prose or some other solutions but that is very nice. But they're optional and this been a kid is a wideband injection transformer. the W wit 100. They actually make a couple of these.

One is designed for like even lower frequencies than this one. It's a physically a much larger unit has to be to get a bigger transformer. and it's a one-to-one transformer. This one I think goes for about 600 bucks and you might think that's ridiculously expensive for just a.

It is literally a transformer inside a one-to-one transformer. but try and get one Hertz to 10 megahertz characters I'll put up the characteristic response of this thing and try and get that performance out of a wideband injection transformer. It is ridiculously hard to get a flat bandwidth like that out of this thing. Anyway, this is used for doing voltage injection into DC the DC DC power supplies.

Basically, you put it into the feedback path of the voltage divider and that's how you actually get the magnitude and phase response. the characteristic response of a DC to DC converter that allows you to I Check No. I'm allowing you to analyze the stability of the circuit with various loads or choose the correct output and capacitor the correct. ESR All that sort of stuff.

designed a deist DC to DC converters. As I said, that is a whole couple of videos actually in its own right. But suffice it to say this is the go in price for injection transformers. You can like kind of do it yourself and you know you can even use like a mains transformer as an in, you know, a crude, you know, Clayton's injection transformer.

but you know nothing beats this. If you have to measure a DC power supply, you're going to be forking out the five or six hundred dollars for a proper injection transformer. And if you think the rest of the stuffs expensive, this SMD adapter that just allows you to put your SMD part in there and this spring. it's beautiful.

Adjust it like that as well. Fantastic. This thing is like a thousand bucks just for this contact SMD adapter. But if you're serious about you know, testing passive components, then you know it's nothing to pay something like this for a good test sheet.

Try and build it yourself just in time. And for those who are just pulling their hair out over my pronunciation of Bode um, that's how it's commonly pronounced here in Australia not in Bode, not Bode, not Bode A I Know that's how the guide pronounced his name, but that's not how it's commonly pronounced here in Australia So just deal with it. Alright, that's how I call it. It's the Bode 100 and of course, no expensive bit of measurement kit like this would be complete without.

of course you, a requisite calibration and conformance certificate that'll keep your A QA manager happy, no doubt. Hello Markus Mark Marky Mark and the Funky Bunch hmm Mark Wahlberg In a previous in a new life is he giving up the movies anyway? And we get one for the injection transformer as well, which is fantastic, which is what you'd expect when you pay your 500 bucks and the test adapter as well. so you know it's all there. Fantastic! So this is basically one of the most professional bits of kit you can actually get for doing our frequency response analysis.

you know, a vector network analyzer stuff up to that 50 megahertz thing. So let's take a look at the software here because that will pretty much explain everything because I've had a quick play around with it and it looks very impressive. Of course it's all about the software in a case like this. you know, like the hardware's are like impressive in its own right, but it want to be for the money.

But really what you're after is the software that allows you to do. you know, really simple stuff like this. So let's have a look at the bode analyse a suite 3.1 - that's the one that came on the CD I'm not sure if there's a newer one I'll try not to chop off some of this here, but basically looks like we've got some recent I haven't done those. Uh, but let's have a look.

We've got Vector Network analyst VNA and we've got impedance analysis as well. And the good thing about this is that it shows you actually how to hook up the individual items and what they actually do. So in this case it looks like we've got three of them. didn't expand them all should by default.

Anyway, we've got transmission and reflection analysis. So yes, it can do S parameters just like the Cyclin RF VNA that we looked at. it does S11 and S21 does it. Yes, S11 reflected in S21 transmitted, which is your basic two-port vector vector network analyzer.

And you can simply just start the measurement right here. Or we can do gain Phase Analysis, which is your basically basic frequency response transfer that you get for a filter or something like that. So in this case, that's your device under test. You know it could be a simple RC filter or anything like that, or it could be an amplifier or whatever.

and this is how you hook it up the output. here. you're measuring the output directly where you measure in the input directly on Channel 1 and the output on Channel 2. and we can do what reflection with an external directional couplers as well.

So if you're into our measuring directional couplers and stuff like that, Beauty This thing will do the business. So and in terms of opinion, Impedance Analyser Look at all these. Look at all the different stuff it can do here. This is just ridiculous.

but it's great. This is how much effort they've gone to in the software and this is really what you're paying for is the finesse in the software. In this case, you know, because the hardware is not worth $5,000 right? It's like and and this little adapter here is not worth you know, $1000 right? But it's the it's the research and the you know. Even though it's greater build quality as these things are, they're not physically worth that.

but you're paying for all the software and in R&D and everything else. So anyway, we can do one port just reflection analysis so can we do like you know, maybe distance to fault or something like that? We should be able to see things like that. Basic impedance analysis as well and so that's what we can use this thing for the impedance analyzer adapter. the WB core the W SMC adapter so that allows us to measure our capacitors or inductors other surface mount components for to get a frequency and phase response over sorry, a magnitude and phase response over frequency shunt through.

We'll probably use that for measuring. We'll just get a gain response plot of the injection transformer shall we shunt through with through resistance series through voltage and current. So if you had a current probe I assume they sell a current probe I haven't looked or you could use like a you know and off-the-shelf one or something like that. Assume you can calibrate the input and stuff like that so you can use your standard voltage probe and current probe to measure that.

and or you can measure external bridges. so it all just installed quite nicely. There are no issues I just plugged it in, no drivers to dick around with. It just worked.

So let's go in and let's try the impedance analyzer shall we? for going to start measurement Then it did when I booted it up before it did actually go through a calibration procedure which took a minute or two. I'm not sure if it does that doesn't look like it's not looking like it does at this time. Maybe it was only the first time it started or something. so it has probably got the hardware inside to allow automated calibration.

All right. So let's go in and measure a what your prom don't know if you can see it but a naught point. One Nano Farad I think it's a Ona 5 ceramic cap so as I will link in at the end. I've done this with their crudely very crudely with a cobbled together a system with a VNA with a red pitaya to give us the magnitude and phase response of was it just magnitude? I Can't remember a response of some bypass capacitors, but this is the professional way to do it.

So anyway, let's have a look at the software and see what it has to offer here. Now look at all the axes are course, you can do logarithmic or linear axes like that, level, constant or variable and you can shape the level two which is a very interesting thing which is really quite valuable. If depending on the frequency you're at, you may find that you get lots of noise at sort of low end or high end or whatever depending on the thing that you're actually trying to measure and then you can actually shape. They use this tool to actually shape.

how can we do it? I Guess we've got to just add the points in here. Reference levels: Full frequency range: I Haven't I Haven't actually tried this. but you can actually shape this output signal level based on the frequency so that you can give you are like a greater signal-to-noise ratio depending on the type of thing that you're actually measuring. So if you're getting lots of noise and crap on your waveform at a particular frigate, a low end or a high end, for example, you can shape the output signal level to give you a higher level to compensate so that you get greater signal to the noise level.

And that is the attention to detail you get in a professional bit of software like this. They've thought of everything that's absolutely fantastic and there we can set the receiver bandwidth. So he said I Start Frequency: 40 megahertz It does go up to 50 megahertz. This better kits basically DC to 50 Meg which pretty much covers most stuff you know you would deal with in electronics in basic electronics design.

Over that, you sort of start get into the high inside of town. You know you'd probably be using a you know, a twenty thirty thousand dollar a bit of VNA kit from you know, the likes of Keysight or something like that. Anyway, Ah, full range we can. that just gives us open short load calibration as well, which of course you need for a vector network analyzer.

We did get some loads in the I think we've got the calibration kit with it this. I Love. Check it out and this has this screen will change depending on which particular mode that you're in. wearing the frequency response analysis mode at the moment and it shows us the internal of how it works in.

at the moment. we can we have got the 50-ohm turn. No, we don't I think it's forcing us? Nope. I have been able to do that before I have been able to switch the 50 ohm internal 50 ohm load off and on.

Ah, Anyway, um, it's not limit and it does let you do it at some stage. Anyway, you can see that the internal output path here can actually measure the internal reference and the receiver - can do that. So that's how it's obviously using. There's two receivers inside, so that's how it can get the S11 reflected power coming, the reflected measurement coming back.

So anyway, you can set all that stuff up. So we've got our cursors. so let's go from a hundred. Hertz Let's go over the full range shall we? 50 Meg You have you type in Meg and we don't want to go really low frequency.

otherwise it takes too long. Now you know if you set it to 1 Hertz can take like minutes. We haven't set it up, it's not letting us do it. I'll get back to you.

Ah ha. it's not actually gonna let us do this without. This command is currently disabled - calibration is required so we have to go through the calibration first. I hadn't actually used this impedance response one before, so calibration it is.

And of course, that makes sense because we have to compensate for the jig so it's not gonna just let us run the test willy nilly is it? And that's why we have this screw terminal thing here which allows us to open it the open. We're doing over the full frequency range so it's compensating for all of our jig overload occurred. Whoa. I'm not sure what happened there, but don't I just ran it again and it was fine.

Maybe that was a glitch in the matrix I am wearing a very steady key pair of jeans on today. It's not good. I'm sapping everything okay. and then we take that back out and we do the short.

Beautiful and load well. our load resistor in the box. we did actually get 100 ohm at naught point. one percent calibration resistors Nice.

So I'll put that in there and is really quite good that they force you to do this because otherwise if you inexperienced you will just well if you're just excited to play around with it like I was, you were dumb just to run the test and you'd get something and and you know you'd think that's your response. but you're not compensating for all of the leads and everything else. and that test fixture that's an inductor in its own right in there with the shaft and everything else and you know you've got to compensate for that. Otherwise, you know they're forcing you to do a professional measurement.

So let's do our load by default. It was a hundred ohms and Oh short delay time so that you can manually switch it in the thought of everything. Little touches like that, it was like you wouldn't think of that from day one when you're writing this software and that would come about because I wouldn't it be nice if like oh, it's frustrating and I've wish it would delay by five seconds means I can run over and like press the shorted out or something like that. So there's a hundred ohms.

Beautiful! We're ready to go and it's enabled our measurement now. Cool 0.1 Mike hundred n cap back in there and okay, let's run from hundred Hertz to fifty Meg I'm just going to leave all the stuff default. We'll figure that out later. We don't want to run continuous.

let's just run a single sweep. that wasn't very exciting was it. We can auto optimize. Look at that.

and here's what I'm talking about in terms of that shaped variable and we can shape the level. So we're getting all this noise down at the low frequency end of the spectrum, so our signal levels obviously too low, so we need to boost that up to compensate there. And by the way, I Do like this receiver 1 and receiver 2 signal levels. Let's just run that again.

Let's just run a single sweep. We can see receive a level 1 book. the green bars went up. They'll turn red if they're going into overload so you can see the signal level.

Would have been nicer to have them maybe longer or something like that. Don't know whether couldn't have spread them, you know, made them double that length or triple that length or something. but it's awesome that they have that because you don't want to be measuring down in the noise and you don't want to be peeking as well. But it does tell you if you get an overload by the way.

so that's what we can use our variable shaping. Let me play around with it. see if I can get it and we should get a smoother response down here. So we can do is double click here.

We're getting like 10 K I think below 10 K for example. Can we double click like that? And can we drag a second one? So there you go. That's fantastic. So 10 Kilohertz, let's just do the 10 key.

Let's jump there. So well actually we want it above don't we 10? DBM higher at anything below 10 megahertz. So let's try that. but let's have a look note.

Receiver 1 Oh nice. II Got an extra Wiggles down in there? Uh-huh. So we can drag the reference level down like that. That's really groovy Innit.

Well, we get much greater variance now. let's go right up to 13. DBM There is that better? I Think that's a bit better than before I Don't know. Anyway, that's what the shaping tools for.

Don't stupid me. that was a peb cake I was actually measuring my one nanofarad not 100 n. So here's our hundred n response and that's why it was sort of like off the scale off the 50 Meg and we didn't get any response from that. So here we go.

But now we can see the magnitude and phase. that. What is it? Oh, we could use our cursor there I'm sure. Oh no, that's just.

zoom in. There you go. Can we reset? Zoom There we go. So now we can actually see the red trace here.

trace one which is the impedance and you can get reflection at admittance and it's absolutely fantastic. And or you can set war Oh Math Math: Ah, which function are that's it? Plus nope, how do I reset that? Nope. There we go. Anyway, we can see our classic response here at a dipping at a particular the resonant frequency for that particular multi-layer ceramic capacitor.

and I've done a whole tutorial video on bye Aska passes which I'll link in the end explaining all this. but there you go. We can actually measure like capacitor and that gives us a fantastic response. and you can see that the phase changes here drastically as well.

On the blue here it goes from minus 90 to plus 90 at that resonance point as you'd expect. But hey, if we can do one capacitor, we can do two to try and combine the responses. which is what I try to show in my previous video. So the hundred in our so the one in unfortunately the one that afarid I cap.

it's gonna be beyond the 50 megahertz range to get that resonant frequency. So let's do like a 10 micro farad or something. sokham. So let's combine a 100 N and a 10 mic cap in parallel and see if we can get the double dip response in there.

Alright, so there's our a spots for a 10 micro farad Oh 603 cap. Just someone hung low, one out of the kid. So I'll try and put both in there at the same time. Combine them and we should get the dual response in there happening.

one at the 1.8 mega whatever it is and the one at like 11 mega. Hertz. Okay, I'll just run that again because I just got another oh six oh three package. One happens to be around about the same resonant frequency there as I said, that's going to change in the previous video analyzing bypass caps.

That's going to change with the type of package that you have and all sorts of our construction things to do with the multi-layer ceramic capacitor. Anyway, so I'll now combine the two of those. Let's see if I can do it without soldering. don't have to dick around solder in the two if I can get both of them.

oh your tongue at the right angle, both to contact it once. Hopefully we already get the Joule response. Yep, No. I know we only get them on one response.

Bummer. Get this bastard, we got it. I've got to hold them together here, but you can see the broader response like this. In fact, let's let's do continuous.

Shall we watch this? Alright if I take my tweezers are there with you. There we go. there, we go. Can see the much broader response there, over which the the two capacitors combined is a lower resistance like that.

So now let me now. separate know what? Yeah, there we go, we're we're back to the single one. I only have to touch it slightly and you combine the two like that. Or if you go back to just the original one, Oh well.

the original one over here there we go. So you got that sharp response combined with the like one and a half Meg or whatever it is combined with the one. it's just over ten or eleven meg and they both together. They will give you a broader response.

Cool, huh? And that's a much better response that that's a much more professional, measured response than we got with our cobbled together red potato system, that's for sure. So then of course we've got our wire cursors here so you can set them up and you can get dildos as well for those things. so you know it's got all the functionality you need. so we can copy the image to the clipboard so you can put it in your design notes and meeting notes and things like that impress your boss? Yes, who was your? $5,000 well spent? No workers.

You know, something like this could easily pay for itself in next to no time. It's it's cheap for a professional bit of measurement kit. Anyway, Trace one and trace two. We can actually set like Y maximum.

like it the 10:1 milli so we can change our scale there. 10 milli Ohms like that can change your phase response axes as well so we can get reflection as well. Here you go for those curious and admittance which is basically the inverse because that's basically the definition of it. Instead of peaking down like that, peaks like that and have a look at the format's we can do make the choose Not the only one we can do magnitude in DB as well.

we can do I won't phase because that's where we've got down the bottom. Here we can do outdoor radiance. so those radiant fanboys, polar, real, imaginary Iris Lscs quality factor as well. The quality factor.

If you're capacitance, they're fantastic. We can do all this stuff and get all these measurements. Even the ten Theta as well. Terrific.

We can measure the performance of our components. Of course it would be really nice if this went higher than 50 Meg. But as I said, 50 Meg is really quite capable. For you know, the majority of basic electronics, our application certainly more than enough.

It's probably several orders more than enough for your like a DC to DC power supply analysis and stuff like that. But when you're analyzing components like this, especially the lower value ones, of course you need they you know the hunt. You need the hundreds of megahertz. Probably even a gig if you're into.

But basically, then you're measuring RF components and you need like an RF VNA Basically, and as you'd expect, you can actually do things like average in and stuff like that so can view. Here we can do average measurement. We can set ten sweeps that's enabled. Yeah, there we go completed sweeps so it will if you set it to continuous.

It's not a good waveform because it's It's fairly clean here, but you know we can change that. And another good thing is that you can go into view, auto access, placement and you can go one axis per chart. So there you go if you didn't want. If you didn't like your split axes on the left-hand side, there you can just separate them.

Brilliant. So we should be able to smooth out some of that if we did some average in for example. So if we turn on the average and just go for our continuous, we'll have to do that over a couple of sweeps. But that's one way to reduce your a bit of your noise and know that's a genuine response.

Ordinarily, we would have been able to get rid of that crap. This is not the best example. and let's just use the other test cheek actually to measure a top-quality Chung X Brain Brand One Hung Low Brand electrolytic. So let's whack that in and well, you can see it.

I've already got the response of it here. We can run that again, but you can basically see that you know the impedance is down. well. What is it? Let's go down.

Here You go. you're greening up there. you're by the way. You can just type in like if you wanted the impedance at 100 Kilohertz for example.

There you go. it immediately jumps over 80 20.78 to Milli Ohms. And this is why for a little edgy Linux, for example, they measure the ESR are typically a hundred kilohertz. That's what to specify that because it's basically resistive around that particular frequency.

But like, as you can see, like above, that the inductance is going to dominate and it's going to just go back up in impedance like that. So really, these are you know, electrolytic Slyke These I really only have a low impedance around. you know, quite a narrow range. That's why you know these aren't particularly good for like bypassing and I see for example.

and also what we've measured there is basically the the ESR the equivalent series resistance in milli ohms there 82 milliohms in this particular case at 100 kilohertz there. And so it allows you to measure all sorts of parameters if you capacitor. Not just that, but you know you can measure. You know we can go in there and measure Lqu for example.

for your Q fanboys, there you go. So that's where you want the Q right down there at zero. you know it's It's pretty good, over a reasonable range, but above that it starts to go to crap and then there's some. actually look.

it comes back down there. so there's some parasitics above. you know, the 10 megahertz that's making it come back down. So that's interesting.

So that is impressive functionality just for that. One thing, How do we get home? Do we just go new just for the impedance analysis here? But then we can do one port reflection and stuff like that. In fact, let's just try that live. let's just leave our coax flapping in the breeze.

Shall we do? Our one port Discard all our changes before and oh yeah, and you can save to like memory and stuff like that. Where is it? Yeah, Measurement to new memory and things like that, you can set up multiple memories and do all sorts of other stuff It's really quite cool. So anyway, let's just go single now. Sadly, I'm just using the coax like this.

Sadly, the you know it doesn't like doesn't seem to give us like a distance to fault kind of thing or anything like that. Even though in theory it should be capable of doing that, you could make it out, but it just doesn't have that functionality built in. unfortunately. So that's just regular reflected stuff.

So there's our Suffolk take off our 50 ohm even plug in a short can we? There's our short. hey, neat. But yeah. Anyway, that's just our single port.

our reflective measurement. Okay, let's do our wideband injection transformer. I'm very excited about this for power supply measurement. As I said, because we're working on the micro current and other stuff and I'm definitely psyched to do videos on this.

so let's see if we can get a performance plot if this thing. It came with the little isolated adapter because this is I'm not sure the isolation voltage of this thing, but you know, like several hundred by the way. made in Austria thank you very much. Probably a hand hand where I'm by nude Austrian virgins the transformer in there no doubt.

So let's do a they shunt through shall we? Let's give it a bill, discard what we had before. let's go. So we wondered I it's got ten megahertz, so let's go to twenty Meg Shall we hundred? Hertz And let's just let's just leave everything default and sweep that and there is our response. Bingo! So this is our impedance magnitude plot and you can see at 10 Meg Bingo it's just going to town a 10 Meg So they were right with the 10 Meg bandwidth.

but that's the impedance based the impedance of the thing. but let's go measure the amplitude response I Just wanted to show you the impedance there. so let's go back through and we can now go gain phase. Let's give that a bill we will need need our T piece for that.

So then we go channel one on there and are we good to go? Discard: Okay let's just set standard levels and let's give it all we need that 20 Meg 10 Hertz to 20 Meg We can go further than that. yeah see how it is slower at the start there if you went to one heard so that probably take a few minutes. So boom and then boom Oh she shot up. Oh okay oh yeah, there we go.

Didn't have our 50 ohm Terminator on. so let's redo our 50 ohm Terminator do that again because our Magna cheese shot up there past 1 megahertz and we should find it. should now roll off. So let's do that again.

but check it out. It is basically rule a flat I'll zoom in on this. Can I zoom in while it's doing it? You bet I Can There we go. So up.

look at that that is. You know that is magnitude in DB So it's Rule A flat. Leave that rule a flat up to pretty much up to 1 Meg buff and then it's going to drop off. you know.

And then at 10 Meg I'm not sorry. past 10 Meg we can get our cursor there. You can actually measure that. It does.

It doesn't really snap. Would have been nice to have like Auto I Guess that's the only thing that's missing I don't seem to have seen it as that like auto peak detection and stuff like that that. that would have been nice to have that. But yeah, at 12.6 Meg there it's rolled off.

So there you go. to get rule A flat response like that in a to 10 megahertz is just insane. Let's go down to 1 Hertz and we'll see that'll actually take a while I think yeah, it's not. It's not doing anything at the moment.

Yep, there we go. It's just gonna take a while. but to get a rule of flat performance on that sort of injection transformer over that bandwidth? Wow, that is really nice. You have a hard time doing yourself, you know? So if you think you're five or six hundred bucks for an injection transformer which is the market rate for a good injection transformer, I'm not aware of any really cheaper I'm not sure if anyone makes any cheaper than like five hundred bucks or something like that.

That's what you plan for. You're paying for that performance. Good luck trying to get Er and off-the-shelf Pulse Transformer or Solar Widen your own. You might be able to wind your own if you know what you're doing, but a lot of experimentation.

You spend more than that and then in hours just trying to dick around trying to get that going. But anyway. I Look down at one Hertz There, it's bug roar. But if you need to go even lower than that for specific control loops and stuff like that, then they do sell a much physically bigger one because it's got to have a physically bigger transformer in it.

That goes. Basically, it's down to DC which is ridiculous I'm not sure the exact frequency. Anyway, if you think this one's low frequency performance is good, they sell another one which is even better. There you go.

that's just fantastic response. Brewin And if we go in here and have a look at our transmission and reflected our S-parameter VNA Stuff let's go in here. Let's have a look at our hardware setup. So this is our transmission and gain.

So this is S21 parameters of course and it shows how the internal reference has been switched. Oh look, we can live switch it. There we go. Beautiful and even it's realized what we're doing and has changed it from S21 to is the frequency response of the duck.

That is really nice. I Like that. Brilliant. Anyway, so there's our Stu one set up and users receiver one in Colonel.

So even though I've got the coax hooked up here, it's not actually doing anything in that particular mode and impedance and reflection there. Of course we don't need anything else so we can do out S11. so let's just run that now. If it's just still got like just the transformer hooked up, there you go.

so there's our gain and their reflection as well. Now the really good thing about this is that because we got Trace 1 and traced to its put them on here. but check this out and this is what the signal analyzer didn't have. Let's say we wanted a polar plot for Trace 1.

Bingo. We get ourselves that polar plot there and that's optimized, but it knows that Trace 2 is a magnitude reflection magnitude measurement. so it splits the screen like that. and we can actually use our cursors like that to go to show the relationship between the different display systems because that's all they are.

We're measuring the same thing. Whether it's a polar plot like this or a magnitude frequency response like this, it's exactly the same thing. It's just a different way to actually display it, so that's really cool. It has that capability.

that's just awesome, but you know, if we wanted, we could, well now we can do the impedance there. That's it's. just really very impressive capability to be able to split those. And if we had a larger screen I'm sure we'd be able to display more there.

There's our Nyquist Wow There's our imaginary. can we zoom in on that optimize? The optimized zoom works really well. Just get you straight in there. Beautiful.

This works so well. I'm very, very impressed with this. It's great. and of course you might have noticed there that our our gain because we're doing gain here.

Then we don't have a Smith chart response because that is only applicable to the reflection thing. So we'll have to go down to trace. I Mean we could do it up here. Let's do it up here.

Let's let's select reflection okay and then our measurement and then our type. Bingo, We get our Smith chart and now VSWR and so bingo. we're in like Flynn and that, um, I'm kind of disappointed. Does that scale with the window? Yeah, it does.

So if you had a bigger screen, you're gonna get a bigger response on there. So that's groovy and you can combine the two. I Mean if you wanted to have your polar you gain polar plot down here, you could do that. Hopefully.

Yeah, it didn't make a fool out of me. There you go. That's fantastic. And then you can just move your cursors along on both of those and it.

Let's scale this one. Optimize that. Ah, look at that. Beautiful.

That's just. it's just brilliant. Like you know, imagine if this thing went to a gig like it'd be, it'd be fantastic. But that's the problem with these sort of vector network analyzers.

They're basically either designed for your lower frequency in like this one like DC 250 Meg or DC to 100 Meg or whatever it is or they're designed for your more RF stuff. So they might start at like 10 kilohertz or something like that and go up to you know 5 gig, 10 key, 50 gig if you want to spend $100,000 you know, stuff like that, so they're You know this is designed for the lower end sort of stuff, which if you're not into the RF side of things, this is much more useful for power supply measurements are larger, larger component bypass component analysis and you know as I say you could probably do some ground plane analysis with it and a whole host of other stuff. So it really is incredibly useful. And it's it's money well-spent This is a professional tool I Haven't encountered any issues with it so far.

It looks very, very polished, but that's what you expect. This is one of the best measurement solutions. One of the best measurement kits for this sort of you know, DC 250 megahertz, lower end VNA type stuff. It's just all-purpose design that's basically the company does some other stuff, but this is their basically their main product.

their main focus. No wonder it's very polished. and once again, you can do gain calibration on here and you can do impedance calibration. There's one thing I think is missing here.

and when you actually go back out and come back into this function in force you to recalibrate every time I Don't see an option to actually save the calibration at all I mean saving is just the just the bode file or whatever. so maybe that does save it I don't know, you know tests or whatever. Will that prevent us from doing that every time? I Don't think so I'll test that. by the way, you can export our PDF report Excel Fantastic wine.

Tried to know no idea what Touchstone is I'm sure few people are screaming at me. You know what told you I use Touch codes Touchstone everyday. Um yeah. Anyway, very comprehensive so look right? So I've saved that so we can open.

Okay, so let's go back out. Stick around here. Start measurement P Dance Analyzer Bingo We can't write. We're forced to redo that calibrate.

Then if we go test there we go. Oh yeah, yep, there we go and saved it. Nice they thought of that. Brilliant, well done and for this adapter here, check it out.

We got a very nice little short end load. you can see the on the back there. there's a short on the top and there's a the hundred I am required hundred I'm on the bottom and that can just use pull that back and that just goes in. Does go in there like that so you can do your our open short load compensation beauty.

Okay so what we're gonna do now is have a look at an intermediate frequency filter there and also a crystal I don't know what the frequency is there I can't read it so we're gonna have a squiz at that. And let's go into our s parameters: transmission reflection measurement. Here we go discard changes and let's go in to 100 kilos to 40 megahertz. Another thing that's probably going to be like a an 8 megahertz crystal or something like that.

So I've got it hooked up the crystal first. let's just use all default parameters Oh Bingo! There we go. Looks like something's happening around about 12. Let's go to Auto Optimize and let's do that again.

There we go and you'll notice that it does the dual sweep there because the it's got to change when it does the device under test the S21, it's got to do one sweep for that and then and then it does the other arrangement which is the reflection so it can't do those at the same time. It does those as different sweeps so look at that. There we go, it looks like we've got you know, 12 megahertz. So let's go in and let's say I know six megahertz to give that a bell.

Hi! There we go. That's much better. We didn't see it before, we didn't capture the reflection on there because we weren't in enough. If we actually get some more points on that, we'll get higher resolution on that.

Whoa, look at that. That's serious business. There you go. Got some artifacts there that we didn't see before, so let's actually yeah.

let's go Ten Meg 214 Meg Shall we? Wow Look at that? You can really see. We can actually zoom in on that if we really wanted to. There we go look at that. but that is our that is our resonant frequency of our crystal.

just a smidge under 12 megahertz there. it's not quite bang on is it? So by the way, this I believe does have like a 2 ppm crystal reference in it. It's pretty good. 11.5 Meg 12.5 Meg There we go.

let's give that a ball. Bingo! Wham Look at that boom and there's a reflection characteristics. There you go. I'm by the way, we can add oats as well, so that's handy.

Just when you do your screenshots and stuff like that described in your test setup and things like that, that's neat. Someone was thinking. So this is actually really cool because what it shows us is the multiple resonance of this crystal. These are the two primary ones I Mean we can reset the zoom.

They're like we've got other ones here, but they're lower amplitude. What we're interested here is these two points here. Now one of those is going to be the the series resonant frequency and the other one is going to be the parallel resonant frequency. Depending on how you load the crystal and actually resonate, it's gonna have slightly different.

So if we actually go in there and for the reflection, if we get the Q here it is. let's have a look at that. Oh, we're off scale. Let's Auto Optimize there.

Look at that. There's our parallel resonant frequencies and that one is close to pretty close to 12. There we would have to, you know, go finer and get like an Eleven Point Nine, Twelve Point one or something like that. or simply just get more points.

There we go. Whoop Whoop et dude. Ah ha ha. Beautiful.

Ah, fantastic. So that's a smidge under smidge under twelve. There you go. Eleven Point Nine Nine Seven.

There you go. You can calculate the calculate the error there whether or not that's error in this crystal, which probably isn't as good as the one inside the bode 100 because I believe it's a 2 ppm class job, but isn't that neat? There you go. Oh, and we've got a memory display on there so we can. Actually, that's the good thing about the memory display.

You can actually overlay previous results and stuff like that. Fantastic! So you don't have to like post-process any of this stuff. You don't have to export it and you can, you know, do it inside the program and then do that one nice PDF report or screenshot beauty and you see the ridiculous amount of ridiculous value of Q there for the for the crystal. look at that.

the 21 20 mm something like that and 0 down here just an either side. That's how selective quartz crystals are because they resonate at that one frequency and that's it. That's what makes them Brewin So hopefully you can see by this that this is a brilliant tool for analyzing I'd Like just components. crystals are resonators, filters, piezo ceramic transducers, and stuff like they would love to have had this wind.

I Was walking working on underwater hydrophones and stuff like that to characterize them. You know we used you know, not as modern instruments as this to do that back in the day and this is just fantastic. We can go and go to town. with all the different measurement options and stuff like that.

It's brilliant. This is just something you can't do like you can kind of like cobble this together with other tools. but I like know you get this and you do the job properly and we should be able to do some more analysis through some sort of through where's the through one if they yet series through they call it there it is. So let's do that.

Discard changes So we're not doing our VNA so we're not going to get any reflection type stuff from this, but we can run our 10 Meg to 14 Meg there zip-a-dee-doo-dah zip-a-dee-ay so we'll just zoom into that. But we'd better actually perform a through calibration on this thing. So let's try that, shall we? So Peanuts Calibration Full range. Let's just flip do the full range through calibration start.

So we're taking out the cables we're compensating for that. beautiful done. Advanced Settings We don't want any of that open short load. Not not worried about that.

so we're good to go. So let's actually widen that from 10 to 14 megahertz and do a sweep on that. There we go. Now we should be able to I actually work out the parallel capacitance of this particular crystal.

Okay, so to get our parallel capacitance, let's turn off trace. hit 2 here because that's annoying. Instead of impedance, let's go to admittance. Ah, do we have to redo it? Nope.

Auto Optimized. There we go. So what we want to do is go away from the resonant point. We should be able to change their units.

Well, the format. Yep, there we go. It's the parallel capacitance. CP Beautiful land that should give us oh sorry, wrong one.

Ah, let's go up here. Admittance: There we go. Parallel Capacitance. Tada.

And bingo That gives us the result up there. There we go. So we want to go away from the resonant optimize. There we go.

Want to go away from the resonant point and you find that the trace capacitance there it is just over smidgen over half. Abi's deke over three. Pico Farad's fantastic Because The crystal. Of course.

The reason that we're able to characterize this crystal. It's because it's not just a capacitor. You know, it's not just the two plates with the quartz. It has parasitic components.

just like any capacitor does. There's a series resistor, series inductor, and another series cap in there, basically in parallel with that. But now there you go. We can measure directly with this thing.

But the parallel capacitance? Brilliant. So from those resonant frequencies there and these measurements, we can calculate things like the series inductance. You can calculate the quality factor and all sorts of stuff. Our to do, the ollie or the parameters of your actual crystal under test.

Fantastic. It's just using your basic car formulas for your equivalent series of your crystal and I just switched over to our IFR filter there, which should be a standard ten Point Seven Meg. And sure enough, I'm still on the admittance parallel capacitance range here. and sure enough you can see the see the peak there at.

yeah, well basically yep at Ten Point Seven Meg Beauty. But of course you know that's you don't have to do the admittance. You can go back and do all your other stuff and single up. Although up tomorrow there we go.

Whoa. we see that impedance go right down to bugger it. Well, not buggery, but you know it goes right down there at that resonant point. And once again, we're getting this noise and crap in here cuz they're there like it's right down.

Now we can because it's right down in signal level. so we can fix that up by ever changing our magnitude or we might be able to change our receiver bandwidth. Let's go down. Let's drop that by an order of magnitude down to 30 Hertz and let's sweep that again.

And yep, we're getting an improvement. It's gonna be slower of course with the receipt and with the lower receiver bandwidth, but we should see is clean up a tad bit more accurate. Yep, yeah, go back to 300. Drop that down to 10 DB Run it again.

Yeah, it's a bit better. There you go and a whirl. What was that? Can we go 2-0 Not gonna overflow are we look at our receiver signal level down there? Nah, it's hunky-dory. There you go.

So we were right down in the noise there. pretty much so I Think we'll leave it there. There is a ton more stuff I can do with this thing which I will save for other videos I'm because I don't want to spoil it. Things like I'm definitely gonna do a separate video on the wideband injection transformer and using that to do voltage injection which is one of the techniques to do power supply regulation, stability testing, and stuff like that so we can.

It's a whole bunch of videos. if you want to see me do, They've got a suggestion for me to do a video on something now. I've got this bit of kit here in the lab. There's just no shortage of stuff I can do videos on.

It's absolutely fantastic, so thank you very much. Omicron Lab Obviously that's gets a massive thumbs up. It's just that you can argue. Yeah, it's a lot of money to pay, but the software looks very professional, very comprehensive.

Haven't found any issues and I haven't done a teardown? Yep. I'm gonna have to do a separate teardown, but I'm sure the hardware is really nice in anyway and I want to see? hopefully? Ben see inside this white band injection transformers haven't potted it I don't know. Feels a bit hefty but yeah, this is a brilliant bit of kit. and if you you know if you got a lab budget or something like that and you're wondering what else to buy, you know and like five grand is suitable.

Get something like this if there's just so much stuff you can do with it. Especially like if you're in the power supply designer stuff like that, something like this is an absolute no-brainer Maybe muck around with our PCB you know by pliers and bypassing and stuff like that. Let me know in the comments what you would what type of video you'd like to see with a bit of kit like this. It's just absolutely incredible.

So yeah, I think it's worth every cent. So yeah, it's not forever, every lab and yes, it is pricey. but I'm not really aware of as comprehensive a solution as this for anything less cost if there is. let me know and I'll check it out.

But yeah, this is just absolutely fantastic. I Love it! I'm just picturing all the videos I can do with this. Fantastic Anyway, hope you liked the video. If you did, please give it a big thumbs up.

And there should be videos at the end here. Hopefully they tear down. Maybe if I get that done and uploaded at that I might release them at the same time I don't know Anyway, hope you liked it. As always discussed on the Eevblog forum down below.

Catch you next time.