Category Archives: Teardowns

Teardown of a Philips dimmable LED bulb

Kerry Wong did a teardown of a Philips dimmable LED bulb: One of the first things you will notice about this light bulb is that the compact construction. Most noticeably the lack of the telltale heatsink fins. As a result however, the heat dissipation capability is greatly sacrificed. During normal operation when mounted pointing downwards […]

Teardown and repair of an Agilent 53152A 46GHz microwave frequency counter

Agilent 53152A 46GHz frequency counter teardown and repair from The Signal Path: In this episode Shahriar investigates a faulty Agilent 53152A 46GHz frequency counter. The instrument does not power on and shows no sign of internal voltage presence. Teardown of the instrument reveals a large PCB where all analog and digital circuity is contained. The power supply […]

Battery adapter teardown and Sony A6000 power-off current draw

  Kerry Wong did a teardown  of a battery adapter for the Sony A6000 mirrorless digital camera and measured the poweroff current draw of the the camera: With the battery adapter on hand, I decided to take a look at what’s inside and then use the adapter to measure the power-off/stand-by current of the Sony […]

65C02: Tear down, a look at the CMOS version of the 6502 CPU

A teardown video from Electronupdate: The CMOS version of the commercially significant 6502: a processor architecture which launched the personal computer era. This particular version was plucked off of an embedded industrial controller… a place where this processor still finds design wins.

Dallas Semiconductor DS1284 die decap: A look at a 30 year old design

Dallas Semiconductor DS1284 die decap from Electronupdate: The Dallas Semiconductor DS1284 (and related DS1286 which integrated a battery and crystal in the same package) found lots of use in industrial control and test equipment. 30 years ago processor chips contained not much other than the processor. Utility functions such as real time clocks, non volatile ram […]

Tutorial, experiments and teardown of a 77GHz automotive FMCW radar module

Tutorial, experiments and teardown of a 77GHz automotive FMCW radar module from The Signal Path: In this episode Shahriar explores the principle operation of automotive FMCW radars. Thanks to a donated automotive radar module, various components of the system can be examined and explored. The PCB reveals three die-on-PCB ASICs responsible for generating and receiving 77GHz […]

Deepace KC901V 6.8GHz handheld network analyzer review, teardown and experiments

  Teardown and analysis of Deepace KC901V 6.8GHz handheld network analyzer from the The Signal Path: In this episode Shahriar reviews the Deepace KC901V 6.8GHz handheld network analyzer. This battery-powered instrument is an RF multi-instrument integrating VNA, spectrum analyzer, field strength meter, and a low-frequency signal generator. It can also perform signal port vector measurement and 2-ports simple vector […]

HP 7044A X-Y recorder teardown, Lorenz Attractor

Kerry Wong did a teardown of a vintage HP 7044A x-y recorder and programmed an Arduino Due to draw the Lorenz Atrractor using this recorder: To test the recorder, I wrote a simple program using Arduino Due that generates a Lorenz attractor. The min/max boundaries for each axis were obtained prior and they are used […]

Cheap UV EPROM eraser teardown and spectrum analysis

  Kerry Wong did a teardown of a cheap UV EPROM eraser and measured the spectrum of the UV tube using a monochromator: Till recently, I have been using custom circuitry whenever I needed to backup some firmware. But the process was rather tedious as for each kind of EPROM or EEPROM I needed to […]

Datum/Symmetricom 8040 Rubidium frequency standard teardown

Teardown: A look at the Datum/Symmetricom 8040 Rubidium frequency standard The 8040 used an LPRO 101 (low profile Rubidium oscillator) oscillator. Interestingly, there is a note written on the top of the LPRO case: “vibration test may have magnetized cover”. As you may know, Rubidium standards’s accuracy is very sensitive to external magnetic field. But […]

Keysight MXA revision-b signal analyzer / Spectrum analyzer review, analysis & experiments

Keysight MXA revision-b signal analyzer / Spectrum analyzer review, analysis & experiments from The Signal Path: In this episode Shahriar reviews the long awaited Keysight MXA Signal Analyzer (N9020B). The new X-Series Spectrum Analyzers from Keysight offer an entirely re-designed GUI interface which supports multiple tabs as well as multi-touch interaction. Check out the video after […]

Teardown and analysis of microwave (26.5GHz) electro-mechanical step attenuators

Teardown and analysis of microwave (26.5GHz) electro-mechanical step attenuators from The Signal Path: In this short episode Shahriar takes a close look at a pair of Hewlett Packard microwave electro-mechanical step attenuators operating up to 26.5GHz. Mechanical attenuators offer excellent repeatability, low insertion loss and nearly limitless linearity. The teardown reveals that the construction of […]

A look at the Neopixel: Controller die teardown

A look at the Neopixel from Electronupdate: A WorldSemi WS2812B, a.k.a. “NeoPixel”.  This little device can be easily controlled by a Arduino and can be used in all sorts of neat things.  More details, and a truly excellent Arduino Library may be found at Adafruit. Three LEDs and a controller bonded into a single package.  Let’s take […]