Agilent 33250A Waveform Generator

[@Edmilho]

Amazing equipment! Here in Brazil it is very expensive. It's about the value of a popular used car. Congratulations on the video and the channel!

[@calfee62]

A bonnie and a joy forever. That's one professional grade piece of kit. We hobbyists depend on Moore's law to bring those specs, but it takes 10 years to do it affordably. Really enjoyed the video!

[@lolilollolilol7773]

You can now buy decent chinese made arbitrary function gens for dirt cheap. I believe it can output a 10MHz 5V sine wave Else you have Siglent that makes a good one.

[@merashallan]

That's a nice piece of kit and it couldn't go to a more deserving person! I hope it comes in handy for future projects!

[@NackDSP]

I spent many years twisting the knobs on one of those scopes and that model generator on my desk at work. Connect them to a PC and you can automate a lot of testing. I would load a heart waveform into the ARB and use it for testing heart monitors.

[@andreas9238]

As for that snot on the caps Agilent/HP generally used silicone based stuff. That should not cause an issue in decades. Arbitrary - as you certainly already figured out (but people watching this might be asking..)- lets you define your own waveform, like a sound file basically. Great if you need specific test signals. The scope's input was set to x100 probe (right menu) so everything the numbers on the graticule are scaled by a factor of 100. As for that handle on the generator, keep it well stored as they tend to get brittle on some of these instruments so even if you don't need it yourself it might be a searched-for spare part.

[@ChipGuy]

9:35: Got a 33220A from Agilent and all the yellow T491 tantalums failed on mine. One after the other. But since I replaced them everything is fine.

[@Narwaro]

Also happens commonly on the 34401A.

[@starsiegeplayer]

Beautiful looking piece of equipment.

[@jurjenbos228]

Learnt a new word today in the expression "that's major cappage in there". Love you video, Fran! Always interested in the inside of what I am not allowed to open.

[@VeganAtheistWeirdo]

Having no experience with these myself, I was delighted when the display lit up in color. Nerds will be nerds, I suppose. 😂 Really enjoying Matt's treasure trove of donations -- what an MVP!

[@sasgeek888]

Very good demo using the oscilloscope! Surely the only way to show what the signal generator does

[@stuckathome5896]

You have a broken coil @12:21 (right to the DSP). You might want to have a look at that.

[@BobDarlington]

I noticed that instantly.

[@FranLab]

Hmmm... Didn't see that originally. Could just be superficial, as the unit seems to function without issues, but I'll have another look at it before I install it.

[@ScottfromBaltimore]

I'm glad to see that the scope is working well enough to play a role!

[@dosgos]

Bumbling around but with plenty of insightful comments. Great teaching methodology and fun to watch. Love this "new age" equipment series. Keep making them!

[@NullStaticVoid]

super jealous. That looks like an excellent piece of gear! I've got a BK Precision func generator and it's more than a bit flaky. Also it's output has a very limited range, which makes it annoying to interface with audio equipment that I want to test.

[@drskelebone]

Me: That's a damn good square wave. Fran: That's actually pretty damn good! XD

[@evilrslade]

Nice. I work in a commercial electronics lab, we have a couple of these. Decent quality for the price.

[@danielepatane3841]

I spotted a little ferrite transformer that sims to be cracked on the base ? Am I wrong? Nice equipment

[@abarratt8869]

There's certainly something adrift, blue ringed top, near the TI DSP? Could be that the contacts are holding it in place. Certainly worth replacing if one wanted many more years of trouble free use. It's getting hard to fix this kind of stuff. From where does one get Epson IC's these days?!

[@andreas9238]

@@abarratt8869 certainly that inductor (it is) seems to be on the loosey goosey side of things, a droplet of electronics grade silicone glue most likely would keep it where it belongs for quite a while though i don't expect problems there if the generator is living on its shelf for the time to come. but certainly something to keep an eye at

[@danielepatane3841]

@@abarratt8869 I agree it is getting difficult to obtain spare parts. Every time I go over ebay to buy a piece of equipment (I am not a professional only an amateur) I buy 2 pieces and if I am lucky I get one fully working.... 😀

[@Peter_A1466]

You missed the most interesting buttons! 😃 (Choose waveform and New waveform in the Arbitrary wave setting) Do you by any chance have some mixed TTL & CMOS board that would trigger differently if you have a complex wave with different level peaks? Could be a nice demo...

[@kensmith5694]

Yes, and: -- Using the triggering feature on the arb you can have it put out a complicated waveform any time a pulse comes in. I did this on an arb making it do the ups and downs of a short RS232 string for a test I needed to do. --Using the modulation ability, you can make a "radio station" that works for a few feet to a radio you are fixing etc. To do FM you need a frequency multiplier but a low efficiency one of those is not too hard to make.

[@andymouse]

Like a few youtubers she hasn't a clue what an arbitrary waveform generator is, showing it changing frequency and amplitude and being impressed ( "ooh that's so nice !") makes it clear. I have seen a number of reviews of these instruments and none of the popular channels ever talk about or test 'the Arb' that they love so much !....sorry it just gets to me !...cheers.

[@kensmith5694]

@@andymouse It is not a thing she needed to know in her career so unless she bumped into one she wouldn't know about it. It often happens that people are specialized in their knowledge.

[@extervision]

Very nice video, thank you Fran.

[@PicaDelphon]

Now this is what I really Like to See..

[@Oztinfrog]

That blue round thing at 12:18 looks like it’s cracked is that normal? I know nothing about electronics just like to watch these types of videos

[@fyphysics]

Where can I get an AC signal generator, where the voltage polarity of the signal oscillates between positive and negative, and I can set the frequency, from hundreds of Hz to several kilohertz?

[@steubens7]

at 12:36 the inductor near the dsp looks cracked

[@Peter-W1]

Hello Regarding OSC set it to 1x probe ,high impedance input and 1kHz sinus 1Volt top to top then hit autoset the black button se if it helps.

[@PatJones82]

Very interesting stuff. Thumbs up, Fran. :)

[@radiok2ua]

I like how your old scope on the left of the bench is marked like a railroad car. TCS&H Railroad. 🙂

[@UFOCurrents]

Fran, what are these used for? 🤔

[@SamiJumppanen]

Test signals for electronic devices/circuits.

[@FranLab]

Yea, what Sami said...

[@erind9999]

Useful for building and calibrating things like analog to digital converters.

[@perwestermark8920]

If you build something with an ADC, then this can generate different waveforms and you can test how the ADC performs. Such as measuring 50 Hz with more or less overtones. And it can simulate a signal - maybe a UART signal or an SPI pattern. Or play a sirene sound that you send through an amplifier. Or you can modulate the signal like a radio station, making the radio receive and play a 1 kHz tone. Or maybe you just need a sequence of pulses because you are testing some digital logic that is expected to react or maybe count based on the pulses.

[@Drakemiser]

Testing her test kit with a test kit.

[@abarratt8869]

Nice piece of kit! Accountants never understand this stuff. I'm still using an ancient HP spectrum analyser from the 1980s, vector display, the lot. It'll never, ever break. Probably not in cal, may not even be possible to calibrate it, but it serves a purpose. Yet, there's accountants who insist on writing off this kind of stuff in 3 years "for tax reasons". I have come across such creatures. I've have voted with my feet and elected to not work for them...

[@plemli]

You don't seem to understand the specific meaning of 'written off' in bookkeeping.

[@jurjenbos228]

@@plemli Bookkeepers don't understand the meaning of "written off" in real life.

[@plemli]

@@jurjenbos228 Unless you mean the stereotype, they do. If your accountant tells you to throw away equipment that's written off the books, throw away your accountant 😆

[@deltaray3]

Ha! I recognized that sticker from the movie Brainstorm. Nice

[@xail1047]

I am so amazed to see how the technology is changing, to say that today there are multifunction "multimeters" equipped with oscilloscopes and frequency generators with only a few chips and which work as well if not even better then that this frequency generator is only from 2009.

[@andreas9238]

basically you are right, even midprice equipment these days has a hell lot of features included. but still standalone gear like this one have their place and tend to do things better than "for free" addons on other instruments

[@charlesurrea1451]

Love that one! You have a 34970?

[@mlbabineaux]

Nichicon and United Chemicon caps...the good stuff.

[@merrittderr9708]

Nice acquisition. Not often you get a very expensive waveform generator for nothing. As to the problem with the scope voltage ranges, it looks to me like you have a 10X probe plugged in and have the scope setting for the probe showing 100X. I think that's going to really screw up your readings. Also, I watched the video for the scope and when I went back to take a second look, it appears to have disappeared from your channel. Was that intentional or am I doing something stupid?

[@merlin5476]

Why would it have a 10mhz input?

[@Richardincancale]

10 MHz input is for an external frequency reference oscillator in case the internal TCXO isn’t stable or accurate enough for the particular application it’s used for

[@merlin5476]

@@Richardincancale ok Thanks Richard.

[@nophead]

Probably to drive it with a frequency standard. For example I have a GPSDO which produces a highly accurate 10MHz frequency reference from GPS satellites.

[@erictourangeau3651]

Nice Kit 😀

[@Chiavaccio]

Great!

[@boredgrass]

The gods of user-friendliness apparently felt a need to make good on you...😉

[@hattree]

Cool!

[@jeffmaxwell2933]

Those are the exact same generators my school uses.

[@davidwood351]

I’d love to meet the brainiacs who designed that bit of gear.

[@rlgrlg-oh6cc]

The probe is set to 100X. That's why the voltage is displayed incorrectly. Set that to 1X for a simple BNC cable, or 10X if you are using a 10X probe.

[@JamesFord-mo7vg]

Yup fran always got cool stuff the woman got style

[@DerekDavis213]

Maybe you could offer 1440p or 4k video? PCBs and components would look so much better! Thanks.

[@rickharold7884]

Cool

[@ericablue32]

Wow! You have so much STUFF! 😂

[@CARLiCON]

AWG!

[@kyoudaiken]

You forgot the bottom middle screw! But who would have thought it's easier to put together than take apart. Really nice big of kit. Very over engineered. I think it will last you a very long time.

[@FranLab]

No, I put that back.

[@kyoudaiken]

@@FranLab Perfect!

[@UpLateGeek]

Just had to try every option. Like a kid let loose in a candy store and told they can try anything they like!

[@GGray-gg4yn]

Fran, You've been busy the last week or so showing us countless boxes lining endless shelves, scopes, meters, cables, connectors, and parts galore. We never see what generates revenue for Fran Lab. So what do you do with all of this stuff ?

[@andymouse]

Another review of an 'Arbitrary Waveform Generator' with the 'Arb' function quickly skipped over.