There was a time when test equipment was big and heavy. Those days are gone, and [Kiss Analog] shows us the inside of a Uni-T UTG962E arbitrary waveform generator. The device is truly tiny. You might think this is due to the dense packing of the circuit board. However, one board is packed but the other board seems to have a high degree of integration on one IC. You can check out the video below.
The main processor is some sort of ARM — we think an STM32F-series part. The markings were hard to make out under the microscope.
Even for a piece of modern gear, relays are hard to beat for electrically switching things accurately and with low noise. The boards have some fancy traces to control impedance or propagation delay. There wasn’t much analysis of the internals, but it was still interesting to see inside. If you want to see more of the box in action, he’s got a few earlier videos that feature the device.
An arbitrary waveform generator is not hard to make, but it is difficult to build one with good performance over a wide range of circumstances. We’ve done a cheap version. We aren’t the only ones.
MCU is GD32F207ZGT6
I’ve got a JDS6600 (15MHz variant, EUR80 or so and plenty good enough for me) and it’s box is also nearly empty. There is an uC on the front panel (GD32 variant with readable type number). The FG PCB has an Altera FPGA, which does DDS, and there are a bunch of resistors that form a (mostly) R-2R network. And in the output stage there are a few opamps with surrounding circuitry. The JDS6600 has less relays in it’s outputs, and still the PCB appears to be a (little) big bigger then this one.
I also have a JDS6600 and used the free space in it to put LiIon batteries + charging circuitry there, connected in on-line UPS fashion. This way I mostly use it without that not-so-great plugpack and have fully floating ground potential without that pesky 40V offset.
That YouTube video by Kiss Analog was a total waste of time. He did NOT go into his speculation as to what the parts did to make the UNI-T arbitrary waveform generator functional. Then at around 00:20 in he claims he has a “new-better” waveform generator on-hand, but never says anything else about that throughout the remainder of the video.
About the “Tear down Uni-T UTG962E ARB generator”: Nonsense, there is zero teardown analysis in the video. That Uni-T UTG962E generator is yet another example of how US companies led by GREEDY non-technical MBAs taught our existential enemy, the Chinese Communist Party (CCP), how to build test equipment with Chinese slave labor for pennies on the dollar and destroy US-based jobs and businesses. Shame on you.
To be honest companies led by greedy MBAs coming from the corrupt CCP-led, anti-US, Marxist-focused, Universities in the US are starting to sound like hugely overpriced replacement-window or nutrition suppliment-pill hucksters and scam artists that dominate mainstream-media advertising these days in the US.
Why don’t people use audiophile DACs 24bit 192Khz 5v