You can take it with you

Engineers of the “baby boom” generation can likely remember when a portable oscilloscope weighed 50 lbs. It was called “portable” because it had a handle on top. Many referred to it as a “luggable.” Still, if you needed to get a measurement more complex than voltage, current, or resistance away from the lab or factory, you put up with the strain.

Fortunately, instrumentation has progressed to the point where you can usually make even the most sophisticated measurements in the field without throwing out your back. Take, for example, the recently introduced Advisor T3 USB 3.0 protocol analyzer from LeCroy. The instrument can catch and decode the complex data protocol with a degree of accuracy that makes it suitable for a design bench, yet it’s small and light enough that you can throw it in a backpack with a laptop computer and go whistling off down the lane with barely any weight on your shoulders.

Or take the he N9912A FieldFox handheld RF tester from Agilent. The unit essentially replaces what used to require a truckload of equipment that would be driven around to check signal strength in at different antenna locals. The Firefox lets users to these measurements right at the antenna, on top of a tower.

Even handheld multimeters have become highly sophisticated. The Model S2505 from Protek Test & Measurement is not only a DMM, it’s a dual-channel DSO and a datalogger as well.

One could site a raft of instruments from Anritsu, National Instuments, Tektronix, and other companies that today are able to make measurements easily in the field that couldn’t be done several decades ago. I’m happy that portable and handheld instrumentation has gotten as small and lightweight as it has, but I’m not sure my chiropractor feels the same way.

Richard Comerford