And hot on the heels of the last mail bag comes yet more just keeps flooding in. The ever popular mail bag segment where I open my mail live and if you want to send me stuff, send it to that crazy Aussie Bloke Bulam Hills BC PO Box 7949 Borham Hills New South Wales 2153 Australia not Austria All right I've got two items today. Actually, stick around for the end cuz I've got a very special huge box as well. so it's going to be three.

but uh, yep. here we go. Two padded envelopes? No idea. Let's have a look at the first one.

First one here looks like it comes from the Old Dart in England because it's her majesty. Royal Mail Beautiful. Um, there is no, uh, there's the customs declaration says it's a switch. Someone sent me a switch.

Worth a whopping 5. Thank you very much. Um, no idea who uh sent it. there's no info on there at all.

Use my trusty Victorinox here and let's open this sucker up. Oh do we? Oh, we have another postcard I Love postcards Here we go. How do you pronounce that? Alsam? excuse me if I'm pronouncing that incorrectly. but um, Alsam? perhaps in North Noro.

Excellent. Look at those lovely castles or as they call them over there stately homes I Don't think they are cuz the castles aren't much bigger than greetings from the Old Dart Awesome, thank you very much still. Anonymous I Love it. It is the Old Dart Indeed! Oh no.

Here we go. it's John hi Dave this is the Cami Lance C Controller. Oh beautiful I mentioned on the Forum I Hope your camera plays nicely with it, if not Chuck it on. eBay Love the blog, thank you very much John Yes he saw my um tear down of the uh oh sorry my reverse engineering of the lanc uh bus thing and um he had some sort of uh onoff button switch hence why it's I Guess he called it a switch on the Customs form that talked to the Lan SE uh bus.

So let's get in here and give it a look and it's just that there we go. Oh and it is. It is literally a switch. great and apparent.

Yeah, it talks uh oh, what is that? Hang on, we've got there. two little LEDs oh that's right. it had um indicator LEDs on it or something like that and uh, it just hooks into the Lan SE bus and switches the thing off and on. Well here we go.

I'll do it. Live here. I'll open up the side of my camcorder. you can't see it, but there's the Lan C remote.

I've plugged it in is now plugged in and it is flashing beautiful and it's a start stop thing. so I'm going to stop it now presumably no, no, ah fail does nothing. oh no no, come on a bummer. and no I couldn't see any difference in the LED when it uh goes when I press the start and stop button.

so oh bummer might might have to probe it though. um to see if it's actually uh, sending anything and if you're wondering what the thing's actually uh for, it's designed to like mounting your helmet. Um, you know, if you're on a motorcycle or something or you know you're doing some other Adventure Sport and you got one of those helmet mounted uh cameras. It's designed to plug into those and uh, tell you to give you a visual indication in your uh helmet whether or not your um your camcord is recording or not.

But clearly it, um, it doesn't work with a Canon bummer. It's probably Sony only and it's from Sky Tools. M.. it's a weird web address, but there it is.

and this one here comes from CNC design in Tada Let's have a look Finland Hi to all my Finnish viewers. If that's the correct terminology, let's have a look at the stamps here. Beautiful Comes priority mail. It cost 245 finish.

Um, is it the finished dollar? I'm not sure, but um, there you go. Lovely. That's the finished flag. Hope I'm not saying that wrong.

That' be really bad. Anyway, let's open this thing up. See what we get here should be interesting coming from CNC design. so it's maybe it's something that's been CNC machine? that would be really neat.

What do we have here? Some black cardboard? I'm sure it's not black cardboard, that's just stiffening. Oh oh look at this Beautiful. We have a big etched name plate. oh from CNC thank you very much CNC Design.

Fi with a dash in the middle CNC Das Design. Fi Check them out for all your CNC needs. This is etched I can feel that beautiful look at that Eev blog Electronics Engineering Video blog. It's um, an aluminium uh plate and let's oh, maybe it's got an adhesive back? Does it or no? that looks probably like it's um, a a metallic uh stick on thing but that is that is beautiful that is.

Maybe you can if we get it up close here we can see the uh etched nature of it. Perhaps I'm not sure I can stick that outside my window as my um, cuz I don't have anything. it's just you know I don't have any sign on my door and what else do we have here? This is beautiful. They're name tags.

They've obviously got a uh, like a adhesive backed um uh clip to stick on stick on the back of these name tags. and for if I get the work experien student in, they can wear the Work Experience name tag. that is brilliant And check this out. We have a uh a metal name tag David LJ and caution magnetic.

Yeah, it uses the neodium magnets. these ridiculously oh, they're stuck on okay right. they're built into that bottom plate there and this thing. Yeah, they're really powerful, those suckers.

Neat. Look at that like you could. It's almost a thin tie clip kind of thing. If you want to wear your name tag on your tie clip.

um I'm not sure what this is. Hey, we got a cleaning cloth of some sort and oh, what's this beautiful? Don't turn it on. Take it apart etched. It's like a gold.

well, a brass. uh, back in beautiful with the screwdriver. That's fantastic. Only problem is, is that supposed to be? Is that supposed to represent a flathead? Maybe should be a Phillips Perhaps.

but hey, that's fantastic. Don't turn it on. Take it apart. Beautiful.

And what else do they do? Well, it looks like CNC Design do everything. It's A It's like a dog tag. There you go. EV Blog Dog Tag beautiful David L Jones fantastic and I found a letter inside Hi Dave Me and my brother run a company named CNC Design.

We mainly make signs and tags, but also CNC jobs Milling custom parts Etc Our website is sadly only in finish and Swedish but your viewers from SW Finland and Sweden might find it interesting. not directly Electronics related but computer CNC uh really goes hand inand with electronics. It sure does cuz you need like front panels and stuff like that. Really important.

Uh, really enjoying the video blog so I thought I'd send you some goodies for the lab and I know how much you love the work experience student so who knows, maybe you have an apprentice there someday Now you're equipped. Cheers from Finland Thank you very much Frank KY Sand I I'm hopeless at pronunciations Sandis Sanquist I'm sure it's a silent V Anyway, thank you very much Frank That's awesome All this gear. so please check out CNC Design. Fi Beautiful! And if we zoom into the dog tag here, you can really see the Machining the diagonal marks from the Machining drill bit I'm assuming or however they do it so that's you can clearly see them in there.

Look at that, it's remarkable. And likewise, on the screwdriver there you can see the see the Machining all inside there. it's just drilled it drilled out all that detail. As I said, we've got a surprise here.

What do we got? Look, get excited Agilant! Technologies Get, it's a bit. it's been beat up a bit this old box. it's uh, it's I think it's been around, uh, the world a few times. but I'm excited I Know it's in here so I won't spill it so let's open it up.

Oh I can cut the tension with a knife no pun intended because I am cutting with my Victorinox mini champ. Oh, this is terribly exciting. Let's look at what we got here. There's two items in here.

Tada Woohoo! We have a calibration certificate. We have some paperwork. Brilliant! First of all, let's check out this box and this one comes from Agent in Melbour care of Simon Roger Thank you very much Simon and Tada What do we have? We have a box inside a box. It is a 2 GHz active probe Beauty and excitement for my German viewers Made in Germany you little Ripper Excellent! Let's have a look at this.

2 GHz active Pro It's um Agilant I Believe it's fairly new. Oh look, it comes in a lovely case. Look at that zipper case. Now this is the N27 96a probe.

It's their Uh New 2 Gz model, so let's check it out. They've also got a cheaper 1 GHz model. about half the price. This one's about 2k.

Um, they're 1 Gz models about 1K Oh, look at that. Beautiful. Excellent. Let's have a oh look at this lovely and it's a um.

single-ended uh active probe. By the way. Active probes come in single ended and differential. This is only a single-ended probe.

Jeez, that's that's bit of weight in that bit. Hefty I Love it. But here it is. let's take it out.

Oh, multicolors. use any color you want for the channel. and here's the end of it which plugs into the scope. As you can see, it's 2 GHz one.

The advantage with these Um active probes is that they're high. They're still high impedance, but very low capacitance. One megga, ohm, one paa farad and that's like you know order of magnitude. uh, better than what you get with a standard 10:1 passive uh probe.

That's why. hence they're active. They've got a Fet amplifier in these things and they're designed to be used with a 50 ohm output termination and they're designed to plug into um, a compatible scope. of course, in this case, Agilant, you wouldn't be able to use it with other Uh Scopes because they get their power uh from the pins here and then the Um firmware in the scope can Auto detect that this scope's plugged in so it can tweak itself for that nice little rotating catch there to uh, actually release the thing.

So you plug it in, you pull it, you plug it in, and then you release it and it hooks on there hooks on the B andc to uh, hold that in place. Very nice. and the probe here is really funny. It almost looks like a pro drawn or sorry, a shrimp for you Yanks Um, it's quite funny looking.

It's got um, two little bug eyes here. they're actually LEDs which uh, you can turn on to light up, um, the place that you're probing. so the spot that you're actively probing. that's I think that's quite.

uh, neat. And it's got two little pin connections here which then you can use with all the various attachments we've got in here to uh probe your circuit under test because the big thing with active probes is probing. Um, you know you can't just have some big antenna. uh, ground lead just flying out from from the thing If you really want the utmost in Signal Integrity You have to use the shortest leads possible between the probe.

Here this will have like the Fet input buffer will be in here so it's not. The signal is not just going straight down the coax there. There'll be an active amplifier in there Fet amplifier and that's how they get the one pea farad input capacitance because it's right there. You don't have to worry about all the capacitance of the probe and the you know.

And even if it's over here on the circuit board, you've got capacitors going across the circuit board so the Fet will be right at the input there. and if we have a look at some of the attachments we get, we got little pins that we can plug directly into those so it forms a little tip. So and if I plug one of those into the tip here, they're actually, uh, Razor Razor is sharp. Absolutely, you know, Needle sharp there.

And we've got this other interesting little attachment here and you're probably wondering what that is. Well, you've got to get this ground pin over here to your circuit, very close to it. So what you do with this one? Careful not to. These things are so razor sharp.

Really, it's just ridiculous. Um, we plug it into there and that gives us a very nice sh. And once again, that tip there is razor sharp, needle sharp and that gives us a very effective way to probe our circuit with our ground right next to it. And that's the absolute lowest inductance path that you can possibly get.

So you'll get the full bandwidth with that sort of probing When you're probing your circuit like that. and that this because it's got a bit of springiness and rotation or rotation to it, if that's a word. Um, it does actually allow you to probe around quite well and then apply pressure to both of them to penetrate. You know it to.

The reason their rays are sharp is you got to penetrate, um, the, uh, oxidization on the solder joints and things like that. But you can probe directly in there at full bandwidth. and for more convenient probing, they've got some, uh, easy hooks here you're probably familiar with those, and logic analyzers they're really handy and uh, they can just plug directly into these things as well. and uh, you know they're going to have a slightly higher inductance? Uh, of course, so your bandwidth wouldn't be as good using those, but they're very convenient and they can now plug directly into .1 in um, header pins as well so you can plug them straight into test points on your boards.

and uh, we've got a bunch of copper shielded uh, is that adhesive back tape so you can, actually, um, solder these onto your board and use those as a big ground plane that you can probe with as well. Very nice addition. And there's yet another ground attachment here. once again, designed to plug into there.

and uh, once. it's pretty flexible so you can plug that sucker directly into there and then use that as a flexible probe. Uh, flexible ground probing solution I Like it. Yet another flexible thing.

There's this pre bent ground wire like that and it can rotate around and you can use that as yet another flexible grounding and probing solution. I Like it. They've thought of everything it seems. So with that little probing toolkit that's included, uh, someone was thinking that contains, pretty much, um, every accessory you would need for uh, gigahertz level probing in this case, 2 GHz probe.

And when you're up in that sort of frequency range, probing is everything going to have to do an entirely separate video on this? um, showing you the difference between uh, you know, probing with an active probe and using a standard passive probe. and I got a business card with it for any questions on this probe, please contact me, he's obviously the probe. Guru Jay Yong Chang Business Development Manager in Digital Test Division in Scopes at Agilant. Brilliant! Thanks! Jay And they've got this uh, little cheat she here of recommended probe configurations and uh as you can see we got the bent one there.

you see the light light up the uh thing. Really neat and different probe Solutions you can get with all these accessories I Love it. So let's plug it in and see what happens. Probably have to use both hands here.

There we go. It's grabbed that in place. And why wa an unsupported probe was detected on Channel One? Remove the unsupported probe and press. Okay, What? You got to be kidding me.

This is supposed to be compatible with this scope. What's going on? All right? I've updated my firmware I think that could have been the issue I had an old version so let's try it again. Fingers crossed I Guess it. it's not complaining.

Beautiful. Let's go into probe One. Yep, look, it's already. Uh, no.

Hang on, What's it done? Probe: Let's go go in here. Yeah, there it is. Probe Menu N 2796 a 10 to1 probe probe uncalibrated. There you go and sorry I'm going to be a party pooper.

What? I'm not going to, uh, show it in this video. going to leave it to another dedicated video. but check this out. There's the button for the light.

it's on the side. That little bump there beautiful little micro switch in there. Excellent. I Love that.

Sorry, you'll have to wait till next time. and what do we have in here I wonder? Well, it's always great to get something that costs more than a brand new car. and this one does. It's A Pang What's a P Fang Well, it's short for pulse Function Arbitrary generator.

Brilliant. Well, pulse functionary Arbitary noise generator cuz it generates noise as well. a What a sexy bit of Kit Hang on. Oh yeah, it's got that high priced Agilant smell and it's an Agilant 81608 I Seen they keeping the stupid number tradition alive here, but it's what is it.

It's a basically four instruments in one. It's called a P Fang or a pulse function arbitary noise generator. So not only does it combine pulse generator, but it's got a function generator. It's got an arbitary waveform generator and a noise generator as well.

And it's 350 500 mahz beautiful. And I'll give you a sweep of across it. Look at those beautiful gold BNC connectors. Lovely.

It's got, uh, multiple output channels. of course, two output channels. It's got the obligatory knob and it's got a large graphic LCD And that's about it cuz I Just wanted to show you this puppy more to come later. Sorry, but I'll just leave you with this.

Check out the number of decimal places there. Count them one through the 12. Oh Beauty Going to look forward to playing with this thing more in future videos. Catch you next time.