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That's a really good idea. I occasionally help troubleshoot boards that fall out of production test, and a VNA is a big timesaver at that job. I can see where a sampling scope would work as well.
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It has occurred to me to train a model on the S-parameters from the VNA, which is more or less the same idea, to help the techs at the factory and save myself some work. Especially since the same problems tend to show up more than once. Another shower thought I've had more than once -- but never acted on, or tried to patent ? -- is training on images from an IR camera. The Curvebug looks like a potential timesaver along the same lines, but I don't see a purchase link anywhere on either the demo video page or . I should probably look again after some coffee, I imagine it's there somewhere. -- john, KE5FX -----Original Message-----
From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of saipan59 (Pete) via groups.io Sent: Tuesday, April 29, 2025 8:28 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [TekScopes] vintageTEK new debugging aid Another thought, FWIW (just thinking out loud): For more analog-oriented circuits, a similar but different tool could be made by stimulating the DUT with a relatively fast step function, then capturing the response waveform (either on the same pin, or another point in the network). About 40 years ago, me and a colleague wrote up a patent application on a similar idea. He experimentally showed that with a sampling scope, there were small differences that could be seen in the step-response when a component was modified in a network. But associating with a particular component was difficult. My contribution was to make a neural network to analyze the step-response waveform, and thus point to a *specific* component that was 'not correct'. We trained the network on many simulated circuits (each with a component defect), then verified sample cases with real hardware. It was for a manufacturing process, to be used as a tool for debugging many identical boards (analog read-chain circuits for disk drives). The company (DEC) chose not to pursue the patent because it could simply be 'kept secret' in our manufacturing process. Pete |
