EEVblog - 2018-09-06
Bart Schroder from Cleverscope talks about the challenges in designing the world's highest performance isolated oscilloscope. Measurement demo on a 500V MOSFET H-Bridge and how to accurately probe it. Then a teardown and walk through of the design of the new CS448 1kV 4CH 200MHz 14bit isolated oscilloscope and the custom probes, power supplies and optical fibre interfaces they had to design to get this performance. https://cleverscope.com/products/CS448 Bart has written are article on the development, he let me upload it here: http://www.eevblog.com/files/CleverscopeSep2018.pdf Forum: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/blog/eevblog-1119-designing-a-1kv-isolated-oscilloscope/ EEVblog Main Web Site: http://www.eevblog.com The 2nd EEVblog Channel: http://www.youtube.com/EEVblog2 Support the EEVblog through Patreon! http://www.patreon.com/eevblog Stuff I recommend: https://kit.com/EEVblog/ Donate With Bitcoin & Other Crypto Currencies! https://www.eevblog.com/crypto-currency/ T-Shirts: http://teespring.com/stores/eevblog Likecoin – Coins for Likes: https://likecoin.pro/@eevblog/dil9/hcq3 💗 Likecoin – Coins for Likes: https://likecoin.pro/@eevblog/dil9/hcq3
This small firm reminds me of the old days, when manufacturers were proud to print the full schematics of their gear right in the back of the manual. Today they scrub numbers off chips and guard the most minor design details like they were nuclear launch codes. Can you imagine a trade show booth from Tek or Agilent, or even Rigol or Siglent, where an engineer would pop the hood up for you, show you the insides, and tell you what choices he made and why? Legal would throw fits!
Well... I guess it all boils down to how much marketing bulls!it a company has to hide.
chyna
That's when you know they're selling a good item for a decent price. When the guy who represents the company opens it up and shows it off so you know what you're getting.
Nice guy!
He's confident that no one can reverse engineer it. It's like he's saying go ahead and try to copy us - I dare you! Tektronix and HP do the same. They'll even give you the schematic!
That's not an oscilloscope... THIS is an oscilloscope!
Indeed.
Yes, yes, yes. I put my order in already. Finally someone knows how to design an oscilloscope how we use it.
I wish I could have become an Engineer who could design this stuff !
Exactly
This literally is a 30 minute shot of the bleeding edge
Whatever it is you are taking, therealnightwriter, stop taking it - unless it is prescribe by a doctor, then keep taking it.
But really... in what kind of world are u living? There are these crazy technologys somehow? And they keep quiet about it? But then still talk about it? It really doesnt make sense.
guy's definitely off his meds - I agree
therealnightwriter
Lay off the glue mate.
This looks like some beautiful design and a great, enthusiastic designer. Thanks for posting!
I also love how Mr Schroder has an instant answer to every question. He clearly eats, sleeps and breathes this product.
Yeah, he knew every detail, very impressive.
Couple of nerds geeking out. Love it. ;)
You can use a isolated probes with.yours oscilloscope instead if this.
That was one of the most informative interviews I have ever seen. Many thanks.
The only mistake made was he said "pretty expensive"... seems extremely cheap to me.
I am a pretty bad salesman but one thing I have learnt is to never be apologetic about your pricing.
Two words: Ultimate design. Congratulations. I was thinking that things like that are only possible in military or space research, where the cost doesn't matter, and the performance is matter of dead or life, success or failure. Great.
Greate work. 3 enginerers, for 4 years. Good work. It show how small company can really make a difference.
just takes kiwi ingenuity ;)
Speaking from experience. The military NEVER sees things like this. The most modern multimeter I saw, if you can call it that, was a good 20 years old. Contractors see this stuff, with a big maybe. Contractors like McDonnell Douglas and Boeing, wink, high power radars.
As a person who is no stranger to variable frequency drives, all I can say is wow. This combination of people skills and enthusiasm, technological understanding, problem solving skills, resourcefulness... I'd be very surprised if Cleverscope hasn't been getting any offers on their company. This is the sort of premium IP that larger companies would want very much to stay ahead. Sure, they could replicate this tech themselves, but time is money. I very much hope that Cleverscope secures some great deals with various power electronics developers for their products to let them keep working in this direction. Also, I hope you guys could appreciate this level of openness and honesty from one of the devs. Let me tell you, you don't see that much in this world anymore. That's some strong NZ charm right there.
What a treat. Thank you very much Dave!
True ! "We Do Everything" - the designer literally meant it !
I love the gigantic common mode chokes on the oscilloscope cables :D
You should definitely do a short video regarding common mode filtering etc. why and when to do it on your probes. It's a topic that's shrouded in mystery.
I second that. I honestly don't understand any of this, but i would still love to learn
$10k on a product like this is an absolute no-brainer. If you develop modern power electronics and value greatly shortening your development time.. you will simply go and buy this now. The only reason you wouldn't is because you don't know that it exists. At that price, many companies could afford to buy several for their labs.
Or if you aren't a company, but just an individual working in power electronics.
Yeah, but you could buy 67 Vions for that money, so there's that.
Dear Santa,
I know I've been pretty naughty...
Great interview! Thanks for posting it.
Bart is terrific
That was just flippin' brilliant. Tell that chap I was absorbed (arrgghhh) fully! He was fantastic.
Indeed. And it was basically a single take 30min off-the-cuff interview with no warning I was coming or wanted a teardown and talk about the design.
That's some sweet engineering. Thumbs up guys!
I think I just did something nasty in my pants. Either that or it's the drool pouring out of my mouth. Man, might have to get one of these before I get my new R&S communications test set. I see sooooo many possibilities with this scope. Don't work on motor drive circuits but would be great for working on high voltage tube type RF amplifiers. Could do matching by connecting directly to the plates on the tubes without letting the magic smoke out of the scope.
That is a Great video! I especially like how enthusiastic and proud the guys is! (And as far as I can tell, he deserves it!)
10:21 "It's pretty good."
Wow. That's an understatement.
Then Dave is disappointed at not getting to check out her cans.
respect man, respect
Anyone knows were to find the optical tranceivers he used on the inputs?
Haha two nerds geeking out. Lovely
Now the question is, is the isolation good enough to keep the electrons from falling out when he turned it up-side-down?
And handle those pesky heavy electrons...
Very interesting interview.
I really liked this interview, Could you dave talk about the mosfet gate driving in more details ?
Dave,
why have you hidden the Mueller-Capacitance all those years from us?!
He has mentioned it often, as a gotcha thing, but no actual episode about it. Bet if he gets one of these for a "demo" he will whip up a high voltage supply ( or borrow the demo unit there with all the nasty probing stuff already made up on a board) and do a good explanation about it.
I do remember groundplane capacitance, etc. from his videos,
but Mueller-capacitance? I do not.
Are you sure?
Miller. John Milton Miller
Impressive achievement for a team of 3 in that time frame!
Found that ARB chip, seems it's the AD9970
* and I bet Joe Smith would love to swap his LeCroy for that..
Nope, it's AD9102
Awesome interview. Three guys developed that! Holy crap!
0:49 Did he say "plus or minus a kilovolt"!?!?
I'm guessing he means the isolation is good from +1kV to -1kV rather than 1kV+/-1kV
Yeah that cracked me up. Took me a bit to figure out what he must have meant.
Impressive bit of specialized gear! Great interview Dave.
That was very informative Dave, thanks. It’s also one interview where there is mentioned collaboration between a manufacturer and their suppliers, something which is not generally heard about.
Yeah, I didn't expect him to tell me details about the probe collaboration.
Wow this guy's good - give the man a pay rise! - Good to see made in New Zealand!
who is this guy? I LOVE him! u can tell he LOVES his job. REspek!
I was here 20 minutes ago...
...came back to post: "This is a piece of awesome development"
That's cool. Thanks Dave.
This was an amazing interview, to find such open companies takes my mind back to Tektronix et all schematics that included theory of operation explanations of the 80's.
The device is nothing sort of amazing, compared to for example my Fluke 225C which says it has CMRR of 100dB with a DC signal, but only 60dB with a 400Hz AC signal.
Wow, this is an "infomercial" in the best sense -- it's has great information and discussion, while showcasing a product at the same time. It's nice to see someone who takes such pride in their work, and see how it shows through in the quality of the results.
I have no need for one of these, but I totally want one anyway!
This thing is epic!
And those power supplies look like a little flux capacitors xD
First of all, it's a beautiful interview, thank you very much:) Now on the networking connectivity side - 32 Gbps is quite available using SFP+ fiber transceivers;) And if we go down the earth 10 Gbit modules are readily available (whether you want fiber or copper) and not that expensive, especially when you want just point to point connection. Networking equipment for 10 Gbps like switches is absolutely reasonable priced nowadays also - I wouldn't buy one for home use (yet) but it doesn't break a bank if one needs this kind of throughput. Now I'm a networking guy that sees this stuff mostly in ready made stuff so I'm pretty sure implementing SFP+ is a pure hell ;)
@Vince I I was going to ask why, but instead I won't.
@David for backups to a NAS alone you can't have enough bandwidth
There are never enough bandwidthz...
David: You can never have enough bandwidth. I develop software that requires messages to move around quickly. I have to have a lot of the same hardware as my employers so that I can experiment with my own ideas and prototype things especially when the inflexibility of working for a large company makes it difficult to test out hardware & ideas. I adopted gigabit Ethernet back when almost all companies I worked for still had 100Mb drops in their buildings. Just staying ahead of the curve ....
While the networking side is just expensive, I'd hate to think how much effort you need on the other side to store it.
Amazing. Thanks for posting. I can well imagine making someone buy this at some point :-)
Thanks Dave, it was great watching two engineers talk engineering without any of the marketing BS
If the insulation is 1 ± 1 kV, that means it could be anywhere from 0 - 2 kV!
That guy is a legend just like you Dave :p
Thank you for this great interview / video! Pls more like this :)
Cleverscope chose a great embassador in Schroder. He's so passionate and charismatic, I love it.
Cool, I love the passion you guys both have! Great work.
Awesome. Thanks for showing this. Great and positive way to end the day for me here in the US!
Good lord, how did I miss this last year? Great stuff and this is like engineer porn, lmao..
rotate85 - 2018-09-06
A guy who has in-depth product knowledge at a tradeshow!? Unheard of.
Martin Pope - 2018-09-07
And he is like that in real life too, And loves to teach how to get the best from His products, and he lives just down the road.
cheb hou - 2018-09-07
@Martin Pope Lucky you.
Demon Cloud - 2018-09-15
He is the Real Man ! Genuine Engineer ! This scope is a perfect combinations of Physics, Mathematics & Electronics
Richard Smith - 2019-03-29
Most engineers of the nerdiest variety see the idea of hosting a booth at a tradeshow as pure concentrated nightmare juice.
Jim Mitchell - 2019-05-01
Most bosses disagree. How else can you tell what you have? BIG ASS NERD!!!