Building the uTracer

[thomas]

Ta daah!

Here it is with the obligatory el84 first measurement

Now I have to figure out the instructions…..

Dragged daughter away from her chemistry revision to dutifully take two snapshots, bless.

Duct tape inside holding laptop smps still is aaahmmm a 'semi permanent' measure…..

[Mike H]

Ooo ahh.....

[jack]

Result

[cpu_bach]

Hello from Japan. My uTracer3+ has just started operation. I picked up a 7C5 as the first DUT. Thank you for offering such an interesting kit!

[Thermionic Idler]

Resurrecting an old thread. I'm investigating the possibility of building one of these things for myself.

In the course of my research I've found that some builders have built their own heater supply for greater accuracy, eschewing the 'pulse' supply that the uTracer has. As far as I can see it seems to be accurate enough, given that heater voltage can sometimes vary that much with mains supply variations anyway. I'd rather keep the build as straightforward as possible.

Did anyone here bother with an off board heater supply or did you just use the uTracer one? Oh and does it go down to 2.5V for 2A3 testing?

Thanks.

[Paul Barker]

Oh wow is me. I was all set to buy the uTracer 6 kit and the up to 100v positive grid board. But the email from Ronalds wife suggests you make sure you can download the gui before you pay. Well our laptop is horendous probably full of junk. It failed to run the gui version 3/11 you must start with. I looked at the helps and its all computerlease that I dont understand whatsoever. So on my ipad I googled for other available gui’s and those are computerlease in a different language or languages that is apple and linux, everyone clearly has problems with the gui in what appears to be three source languages, appple linux and microsoft. So I thought, time I bought a better lapton. Spent £300 on a dell used lapton on windows 11 with a solid state hard drive running in 86. Guess what? It cant figure out the gui either. All this is just to get the version 3 gui you need files from before you load the generation of gui you need.

So far Im thinking? Sack it off .

[Nick]

Any clue why it doesn't run? Most likely a missing dll I would guess. Does it install? If it does, maybe try running a dependency walker to see what is missing.

https://github.com/lucasg/Dependencies/releases

[Paul Barker]

Thanks Nick. I guess I'll find my way. now that the old laptop has updated at least it is now able to unzip. but it has a different failure mode than the newer windows 11 laptop. so I have two ways to find out a fix. in one place Ronald states the only 3 files you need. it may be easiest to get those three files, one of which is a dll I think. I have a feeling the older windows my be easier to run the program on. either waay I will have to buy a usb to rs232 leed. the man in the computer shop said those are usually plug and play. ronald is determined not to change from rs232 connection.

everything will come clear in the end. but I'll noy buy the kit until I can get the gui. even if its only the version 3.11 that holds the key for the newer guis to get important files through.

I know you have my interets at heart. im such a stress head at the moment. i know I'll be alright building the tracer. baby steps. not a lot is achieved every day. it is only yesterday Virgin broadband was made functional after probably 6 months after the install of a system that didnt work at all. finally some engineer in the south of England rebooted our cabinet after our local engineer chased it up again rasing a ticket and it was rebooted and now its fine at last.

thats not to say I would recommend virgin media to my worst enemy. it is apauling how long it took them to get it working. i think they have all had to learn new skills and took them this long to find out how to fix this no internet problem.

everything seems this way these days.

of course the old laptop is the wrong frequency. but if that ends up the only device I can get the gui on I can teather it to my apple devices, they will be on virgin.

it would be too much to ask a man who calls his website dos forever to write a gui for apple/ lol/

[Nick]

ronald is determined not to change from rs232 connection.

He would be opening a world of pain if he did. USB to RS232 adapters are cheap and ubiquitous anyway.

[Nick]

I have a memory somewhere that Jack (Nick) wrote a QT interface for the utracer, but I may be hallucinating.

[jack]

I have a memory somewhere that Jack (Nick) wrote a QT interface for the utracer, but I may be hallucinating.

Not me... However this is what you're after:

https://bmamps.com/v01/home/techie-corn ... cer-utmax/

Nick Barton (yes, yet another Nick) is really clever and the quality of his work is excellent - he's a professional EE. There's lots of utracer stuff on his site.

[Morgan Jones]

I have a uTracer3+. It's very good. I would say:

(1) Always use external supply.
(2) Go the patch lead route for electrode selection (as shown in this thread). I used an old AVO roller switch and even though I took it apart to clean it, it's still unreliable. Colour-code patch leads are a much more elegant solution.