They don’t construct them like they used to. Or so the saying goes. Whereas the electronics of in the present day are vastly extra highly effective than these made a decade (or 4) in the past, there could also be an older take a look at tools format that you just actually like. Such is the case with the unique HP545A logic probe, which, in accordance with “retired” EE Robert Morrison, has the right type issue for debugging SMT circuitry. However…
At 45 years outdated, it simply can’t sustain with 100MHz or quicker alerts. So he did what any formidable engineer (with sufficient accessible time) would do and made an FPGA improve for it. The machine makes use of a SparkFun Alorium FPGA board (which additionally seems to be retired) and a 74ALVC04 hex inverter IC for sign acquisition and processing, together with a 1.3-inch OLED display screen to output probe outcomes.
Morrison added buttons to the probe for person enter, with lengthy presses switching between totally different modes. The probe’s floor pin was additionally modified as a second logic enter (accessed by way of a plug-in cable), which opens up its capabilities to I2C alerts and extra.
It’s a neat construct, although one caveat is that it really works in a simulated surroundings, however nonetheless wants real-world testing to confirm its operation. Code, and even an STL file for mounting, can be found, so you would run it by way of its paces and/or enhance on it your self. The code and electronics ought to work with different probes as effectively, although the holder will have to be altered.
In fact, in case you’re nonetheless developing with cool issues, are you actually a retired engineer? Can an engineer ever really retire? For higher or worse, I feel many people would favor to go away this world with a calculator and (customized) logic analyzer in hand, even when we’re not getting paid for our efforts!
