Questions tagged [testing]
Proving the proper operation or finding faults in an electrical device. It can be done using electronic test equipment or by a software-based simulation.
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Testpoints: Vias versus pads
I was fixing an ultra cheap home router few days ago and noticed that it had vias marked TP_12V, TP_3V3, TP_GND and similar. The problem turned out to be leaky electrolytic crapacitors in the buck ...
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FCC and CE Testing / Failure Resolution
I'm seriously thinking about (practically committed to) taking one of my products through FCC and EC testing and it's my first time doing so. It's Arduino based electronics running off a 16MHz crystal ...
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What can I put a kilowatt into? (Or: help me save my hairdryers)
TL;DR: I need something to discharge roughly 160A at 14V into, or 2.24 kilowatts. Any comments, or answers, with either a) something I can dump a kilowatt into, b) some way I can modify a common item ...
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Electronics System Standards Compliance: Certification, Testing & Verification
Please note: this question has to do with the technical compliance aspects of the consumer electronics indsutry, and as such, I believe is within scope for this site. This question is about compliance,...
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How do you test condoms electronically?
Condom packages often say "electronically tested". How can you test a condom electronically?
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Any tricks to attaching a wire or pin to a testpoint?
More and more often, I find myself needing to tear apart a device to seek out and connect to serial pads. These pads typically give me access to the underlying operating system for research or ...
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Puff of smoke in air. 3 different PCBs. PCB has ghosts?
Yes, that is a haiku. (EDIT: fixed it... it is now actually a Haiku)
No I'm not smiling.
I'm doing some standard testing; seeing what happens when one of the two power rails gets shorted to GND on ...
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Continuity tests, risks?
Even though the electronic device is powered off, isn't there a risk of doing a continuity test on connections in the middle of the circuitry ?
I mean, you do apply voltage doing so - couldn't that ...
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What type of connector can I use for repetitive testing of board with standard headers?
What type of connector (besides the regular female counterpart) could be used for repetitive connection/disconnection of these pins in circuit boards?
The problem with using the regular female ...
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How to add a controlled amount of jitter to a signal
Background
I am developing a digital clock and data recovery circuit and am now getting into the evaluation phase, focusing on testing the limits of the design and finding potential strengths and ...
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Lead Acid AGM battery testing - Why am I testing it this way?
OK, so maybe it's not fair asking YOU why WE test something the way we do. ;)
Here's the thing -- Our company uses AGM Lead acid batteries in some products. The testing methods are ancient (but so ...
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What happened to all of the Dynamic Signal Analyzers?
Decades back there were at least half a dozen instrumentation companies offering Dynamic Signal Analyzers (DSA's). Not Spectrum Analyzers, but rather Dynamic Signal Analyzers. The main differences ...
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What is a correct method to measure safe maximum voltage of a PCB?
I have a small (24 x 15 mm) PCB for a custom connector. It is intended for low voltage (< 48 VDC) applications, but I am interested in measuring it in order to provide customers a reasonable ...
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What is a good way to test maximum current?
I am building a device that can power other devices (it has a voltage regulator, battery controller, etc...).
What is a good way to measure how much current it will provide, and/or test if it will ...
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How are high-speed circuits tested if test equipment doesnt exist?
How was testing done for Ghz to THz range circuits and devices before fast enough scopes and frequency counters existed?
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Is PCB testing of all nets after assembly required?
That is my first time asking an assembly house to produce 200 units of a PCB (and not the usual 3 or 5 PCBs). The assembly house came back to me saying that the testability of the board was bad and ...
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How to measure the impedance of PCB trace
I am working on some front end electronics design working at 200MHz to 1 GHz for my MS project. I have designed the circuit and PCB. Trace width were calculated by simulations. After I given this to ...
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How can I determine if a microcontroller is damaged?
I have a few microcontrollers sitting in my "junk parts" bin. I think some of them arrived there when, after programming them, they exhibited strange behavior. I've since learned a lot, for example, ...
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Are there any standard testing methods for bare metal code
I want to know if bare metal code, especially things like device/peripheral initialization code has any testing methods since there is little to nothing that can go wrong when writing to registers (...
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Is it possible to test a lithium ion battery for safety? How?
There have been stories in the news recently about fires that are believed to be caused by the lithium-ion batteries inside hoverboards.
If you had one of these devices and didn't mind taking the ...
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Best way to test a high current pcb design 70A @ 12V
I designed a circuit (MOSFET HBRIDGE) that Should Be able to handle 70A @ 14V. Now that the board is sent out I am on to thinking about how to properly test it.
Right now the most logical way I have ...
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First checks after oscilloscope unboxing
You bought your first entry level oscilloscope (e.g. Rigol DS1004Z series, 4 Channels, 50-100MHz, 1Gs/s) and while it is slowly warming up to room temperature you are wondering if the unit you have is ...
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Measurement of relay characteristics so can detect before failure
I am working with a very large safety system which was designed around 30 years ago. It has a system of relays interlocked together in a logic configuration so that it will failsafe if any relay ...
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Techniques for building 'Bed of Nails' testing board
When testing a complete circuit board a 'Bed of Nails' can significantly reduce time and errors.
What are some techniques for making a DIY Bed of Nails?
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Testing points in PCB
I am designing a prototyping platform called evive. It is a learning cum prototyping platform for students and makers. Since many times we requires debugging of our circuits, so I thought to include ...
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Embedded Applications Software Testing Life Cycle
I have no JTAG and I can not afford it for my ARM Cortex M3 Chip.
I'm wondering, how professionals debug their applications ?
Do you flash your uC every time, frequently, then you run and test, ...
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ESD/EMI Design for CE, Recommendation seems wrong from test lab
I have designed a product for a customer, that now needs to pass UL/FCC/CE Testing, It passed UL & FCC but failed CE for both 8kv ESD and EMI. The Chinese test lab my client went through sent me ...
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How can I test a bench DC power supply?
I am about to receive a new dual 30V/5A DC bench power supply.
The goal is to use it in lieu of batteries to build simple circuits.
I'd like to test it out when I get it, but don't really know how to ...
5
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3
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Why doesn't my multi-meter diode tester work on this LED?
I own a TENMA 72-7720 Multi-meter with LCD/continuity tester:
I've used this on other LEDs to test, no problem, using the diode tester setting (approximately 2:00 on the dial by the hold button)
I ...
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How can I test if an IC output is buffered?
I have some CD4069UBE and some CD4069BE. From what I understood, the UBE ones should be unbuffered and the BE ones buffered.
But I don't find any datasheet that shows some buffered 4069, so I'd like ...
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Testing paradigms for consumer electronics [closed]
I am brand new to EE/ECE (my background is software) and I am curious about how real-world electronics testing takes place.
In software, there are many different types of tests that a piece of code ...
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How to test a MOV with no visible damage
As far as i know cumulative degradation occurs in a MOV when multiple surges appears in a circuit, A way to minimize this degradation is having multiple MOVs in parallel.
This kind of damage can be ...
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How to check if my quadrature encoder is broken or not?
I have purchased some cheap quadrature incremental encoders (YUMO E6A2-CW3C) for which I have found "a" data-sheet here. Now based on my limited knowledge the quadrature incremental encoders are ...
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How to test SMD bluetooth modules without soldering them to a board [duplicate]
I have made a costum PCB with components and a WT51822-S2 bluetooth module. After testing, there seems to be a low percentage of modules that have a fault in them. Since they are SMD modules, with ...
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Checking for a short in a circuit with a large capacitor?
I'm developing a small testing application for my company that tests various hardware and software functionality.
I do however have a problem developing a simple way to check for short circuits in ...
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Requirements tools for PCB design?
I'm writing requirements for our PCB designs, determining what clients want and what's possible to build. When requirements are finalized, I write tests for the same designs.
Right now, I'm doing it ...
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Predicting health of power supplies
I have a couple of 12 V, 1200 mA wall mount power supplies.
Currently, using a digital multi-meter, I am able to measure good voltage and amps coming out of some power supplies.
Since these are ...
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How to test desert (Dubai-like) conditions when you are in a temperate climate
I would like to stress test an electronics device in desert (think it like Dubai) conditions, such as 40-45 degrees Celsius = 100+ degrees Fahrenheit with direct sunlight and zero humidity. I live in ...
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Is it reasonable to qualify a component by testing only?
Just got assigned (sole) responsibility of a major product group in my company. I have discovered that we regularly use components outside of their specifications, and justify that by testing the ...
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Learning from checking a 9-volt battery the wrong way with a multitester
I'm doing some extra-curricular learning about electronics before I know much. In the spirit of Platt's book, "Make: Electronics", I am "breaking and burning" things to help learn the fun way. I'm a ...
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Basic Embedded Firmware testing essentials and Software Test plan [closed]
I am trying to make an embedded product, but I'm new to firmware testing and want to make sure I don't miss anything. What are the things that need to be checked for its firmware performance?
Proper ...
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Voltages decreasing while using the 6 and half multimeter
I am using this this desktop Multimeter - 6 and half multimeter
Whenever I measure a voltage or current in the auto mode, the last three digits continues to decrease and keeps on decreasing till the ...
user220456
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Information leakage due to fault propagation in XOR gates
From the paper Fault Template Attacks on Block Ciphers Exploiting Fault Propagation, in the concept of Automatic Test Pattern Generation (ATPG), two events are required to perform in sequence: Fault ...
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What are the tradition ways to signify/advertise that a potentially dangerous long-running test is in progress? [closed]
I frequently need to run long-term tests which have some potential for damage or harm if e.g. someone disturbs the test apparatus without being aware that it's running a test.
Say for example ...
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What type of probes are used to connect to plated-through-holes without soldering a pin into the socket? [duplicate]
Are there probes that are designed to insert snugly into 40-mil holes (about the size of those needed by a DuPont connector)?
I am thinking of something that looks like a banana plug with springs on ...
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How to create measurement points on a PCB for MIPI lane diagnostics?
I am looking for ways to test specifically MIPI DSI lane signal strength (because I am kind of pushing the envelope on the trace length and width), and am happy to add test points to the PCB design. I ...
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Self Certifying for FCC testing
I have been tasked by my current employer to look into the costs of self certifying. With past companies I have worked for, all of the tests were at a 3rd party lab. The closest thing I have seen to ...
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local/bench earth leakage for testing mains electronics
I sometimes find myself testing switch mode power supplies and such that I have repaired, and often some undetected fault causes them to trip the earth leakage breaker on the distribution board when ...
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Design for test - What the different ways in which this is done
I know that when we are designing digital circuits we may add porition to it that helps in testing it. This may go beyond merely boundary scan test. What resource can I can use to understand this ...
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What is expected resistance of MCU power supply pins?
I've assembled several identical boards and one of them does not work. Visual inspection does not show any bridges, but it is hard to tell with LQFP pitch. The voltage on power rail was zero. I've ...
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