Building the uTracer

What people are working on at the moment
JamesD
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#46

Post by JamesD »

Excellent Paul! And very well done to get it up and running!

Interesting info on the 6EM7! I've not seen island effect used like this before...

J
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Paul Barker
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#47

Post by Paul Barker »

Thanks. James.

It is the quality of the design and components which gave me success.
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jack
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#48

Post by jack »

The kit is really very good indeed - well done Paul, and welcome to the club!

Bearing in mind Ronald's first language is Dutch, the manual is excellent. I especially like his "blog" of the design process - he is, after all, a Professor at TU/e as well as at Philips Research.

I love this thing - I'll use it for a year or so until V4 comes out and then maybe trade-up.

Good fun, too. You can do so much with it, it's scary.... only two limitations for me are the poor low-voltage/high-current heather issues and anode voltage constraints - these can be overcome, however...

There are more plans for the alternative GUI too...
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pre65
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#49

Post by pre65 »

Heather ? :?

You been up on the moors sipping cider again. :lol:
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Paul Barker
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#50

Post by Paul Barker »

nickds1 wrote:The kit is really very good indeed - well done Paul, and welcome to the club!

Bearing in mind Ronald's first language is Dutch, the manual is excellent. I especially like his "blog" of the design process - he is, after all, a Professor at TU/e as well as at Philips Research.

I love this thing - I'll use it for a year or so until V4 comes out and then maybe trade-up.

Good fun, too. You can do so much with it, it's scary.... only two limitations for me are the poor low-voltage/high-current heather issues and anode voltage constraints - these can be overcome, however...

There are more plans for the alternative GUI too...
On first attempt I don't seem to have a handle on you GUI. I am in Windows 7. I downloaded the zip and unzipped it but the unzipped application, I can see your preselected tubes. I have't connected it to the uTracer I should say. But the panel of information displayed is chopped short (compared to what it looks luike in your pdf) and I can't see how to scroll navigate or anything.

It is probably me.

I am on my 10th day of a 13 day work stretch and it seems every evening I have to go out and do a job aswell. Then after that I try to achieve something of this nature. So I am a little more mentally retarded about software matters than usual. Usual being 1 on a scale of 1 to 10.
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Greg
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#51

Post by Greg »

pre65 wrote:Heather ? :?

You been up on the moors sipping cider again. :lol:
No, Heather is a dirty woman, is a dirty girl.....(apologies to Pink Floyd) :wink:
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Paul Barker
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#52

Post by Paul Barker »

1619 Triode connected

Looks like an ri of 2k so load it with 6k and with 6k load actual gain (A) = 6

Image

Remember I had a noisy 1619 rustling from it? This showswhat a fantastic tool utracer is. Bin this valve! I traced it twice to be sure!

Image
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JamesD
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#53

Post by JamesD »

Great stuff Paul! And that duff valve plot is superb!
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Paul Barker
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#54

Post by Paul Barker »

JamesD wrote:Great stuff Paul! And that duff valve plot is superb!
Inestimably valueable tool :D

You will notice I can now trace my early valves which are from a time characteristic curves weren't published.

There are a host of balloon British battery valves to start work on!
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jack
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#55

Post by jack »

Paul Barker wrote:
JamesD wrote:Great stuff Paul! And that duff valve plot is superb!
Inestimably valueable tool :D

You will notice I can now trace my early valves which are from a time characteristic curves weren't published.

There are a host of balloon British battery valves to start work on!
...and this is where this tool really comes into its own. One thing to be careful of is the heater supply - the uTracer is quite aggressive in using its 19V PWM heater supply which, frankly, I'd be nervous connecting to rare &/or valuable valve - use a battery or other DC PSU for the heater and connect the uTracer as per Ronald's instructions for en external heater PSU.

When I powered mine up for the first time, it was like magic - specifically, looking at the differences between Russian "equivalent" tubes and the Western European/USA counterparts.

I'm also using it to plot the characteristics of Thyratrons and other cold-cathode negative resistance bottles with an eye to some neon logic...
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JamesD
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#56

Post by JamesD »

Oh that would be neat! Neon logic 8) 8) 8)

The russian valves have excellent value in their own right but to get the best out of them you do need to know their real characteristics - damn good point to make!

It also a chance to plot things like PL802 in triode mode and even 833 at lower voltages and currents :-)

I can see this on my Christmas list :D

J
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pre65
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#57

Post by pre65 »

JamesD wrote: and even 833 at lower voltages and currents :-)

J
That would be interesting. :)
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Paul Barker
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#58

Post by Paul Barker »

Hi Nick I am Using a bench supply for filaments of dhts and pick off an equipotential cathode point so bias is right. James and I discovered at Owsten that the low voltage valves don't like the built in heater. You have to specify a higher voltage to light them and I was uncomfortable about using it that way on precious dht's. Similarly the dht's need a voltage devider in the heater network to pick off a vertual cathode or the grid lines would be incorrectly labelled.

The 6em7 I just used the inbuilt heater supply.
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pre65
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#59

Post by pre65 »

Can the device handle positive grid bias (A2) ?

I'd love to see some curves for the CV2799 dual tetrode that I was playing with a while ago.

I was using them as PSE tetrodes (both halves combined) and a positive grid bias. I tried up to +12v, but I have a suspicion that more would be better.
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Paul Barker
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#60

Post by Paul Barker »

pre65 wrote:Can the device handle positive grid bias (A2) ?
No.
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