Today, I can download a PCB design from GitHub and send it to a factory for assemble simply by a few mouse clicks, and a week later, I can get a prototype.
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But a lot of those DIY projects are not very repeatable.īut in recent years, I think the rise of the web and the popularity of free and open source software and hardware design is a game changer in this aspect. If you read the old homepage on the web, or old electronics magazines, you can see a lot of similar DIY projects. I think the critical part is not simply the possibility of building them, but making them easily available. For example, a 1 GHz active oscilloscope probe for $50. Yeah, there's a huge demand for low performance instruments of all types.Īnd a surprising amount of such equipment can be built using low-cost parts thanks to progress in semiconductors - very limited performance, often uncalibrated, sure, but valuable for experimenters. > I believe there is a large unsatisfied demand for low performance instruments I've already heard about it, looking forward to the new one. > There is a forthcoming NanoVNA version 2 > 600 MHz uses higher-order harmonics, and is less reliable, but still better than nothing. I recommend hugen79's version ("NanoVNA-H"), he is not the original designer (it was designed by edy555 ), but hugen79's version is currently the most common source with reasonable quality, see the picture for comparison.
FOSS firmware + a block diagram for hardware, only the PCB layout is not available), there are a number of low-quality clones that use low quality components and don't include proper shielding. The only thing to beware - since it's a "almost" free hardware design (i.e. I recently used it to experiment different ferrite RF transformers for my homebrew radio receiver, and to characterize frequency response of inductors. The firmware is available under GPLv3 for hacking as well. You get complex S11/S21 and 900 MHz bandwidth, good for measuring complex impedance, the insertion loss of the coax, the frequency response of filters, SWR of antennas, and even basic Time-Domain Reflectometry.
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Its performance is nowhere comparable to a real VNA, those VNAs made by Hewlett-Packard in the late 80s are still the golden standard for many labs.īut NanoVNA is great value for the money for anyone interested in radio electronics! For $50, almost nothing beats a NanoVNA, and it's much more effective than the traditional sweep generator setup.