HP83522A - When you're too chicken to risk the SA

[@laptop006]

I picked up an MXA last year when the original A models started being sold cheap, I suspect a DC block and a 30dB pad might be my first call if I didn't just do a sweep against a power sensor set to a vaguely midpoint frequency to be confident enough that it wasn't going to destroy the frontend on the SA.

[@tgsoapbox]

Great point - My 8653E has the 30Hz option and that makes it very susceptible to DC which was another reason I wanted to check the 83522A before I started looking at THD - The 83522A doesn't have option 002 (the 70dB attenuator) so I really wanted to get control of the power before looking at it as well.

[@kanotech3458]

Very nice! Love the Automation and C# is a favourite. I have been doing the same to support my old instruments (slowly) however using the Keysight IO libraries. I'll be checking out your Git repo! Thanks for sharing 👍

[@tgsoapbox]

Hope you can use it - Basically I decided to create "device" classes as I need them to automate stuff rather than just doing manual testing - Not because I have a bunch of tests that need to be run but so that I can end up with code that covers the main functions for all the devices and can then hook them up for custom test apps - Eventually I'll move the classes into a single library/project that can be added to other projects but for now it is sort of by project/test need. Please feel free to do pull requests or issues if you want to provide feedback. BTW I think the VISA namespace is going to be the same for the Keysight libraries so you might just have to change out the reference to National.Visa to get going. Pop a PR or Issue if you try it out and come up with steps to port to the KS libs.

[@ZoopDragon]

Great video - and love the automation. Wish I knew some C# and not just HP BASIC! I don’t know the 83522A very well but was wondering if the power divot corresponded to the frequency where there is a band swa in the YIG harmonic multiplier?

[@ZoopDragon]

*Swap

[@tgsoapbox]

If you watch the next video you'll see the reason for the issue :)

[@citizenrich]

Nice, thanks for sharing.

[@tgsoapbox]

Thanks - Hope you find the code useful

[@soulrobotics]

Very useful video. I just bought an HP8350A +83522A + option 002 So i have no reason to be a chicken... Haha thanks for sharing. We have to also share our experiences. Nice c# skills!!

[@tgsoapbox]

Thanks - Hope you find the code useful - The one thing that you should check on the 002 is that all the attenuator segments work so that you're getting the right attenuation before hooking it up to the SA :)

[@willthecat3861]

I can't tell from the vid what S.A. tgsoapbox has (is it a 8563E?) ... if so it has a DANL of about -120 dBM ... a huge dymanic range.

[@tgsoapbox]

It is an 8563E - I just chickened out on blowing something seeing that I had no idea where/what/how these plug-ins I acquired worked.

[@willthecat3861]

I mean... thnx for the vid... and the work... but, to me.... an IMO... this seems like to most convoluted way to determine the max power of the S.G., over it's range. Well... maybe, I could think of a harder way.

[@tgsoapbox]

If you are just looking for a close measurement of what a signal generator outputs then you can absolutely use an SA for that. I didn't want to take the chance that the sig gen of unknown providence wouldn't do something rogue on the output but clearly, in hindsight, I could just have used the SA (I have many sensors but only one SA) However, a power sensor is going to get you a power measurement that is around an order of magnitude better than the SA and might be even more depending on the SA that you use. This is why most of the calibration processes for sig gens use a power sensor rather than an SA for their adjustment steps.