Welcome to
Azur Electronics

CURRENT PROJECTS
This could be a very long list!  There are lots of areas that I am interested in and I often get distracted to read up on a new topic.  It's also sometimes frustrating to realise just how little you know about a subject.  I have however learnt a lot about how various items of test equipment work, plus the techniques and applications involved.  This is especially true of working above my previous comfort zone of dc to 100MHz.

So far I have concentrated on acquiring a range of test equipment (mainly thanks to eBay) to
fit out my electronics workshop. After 14 years I have finally completed this task.  My budget for this was £5,000 and I was always well under this, with just a few items still required [see Wanted list].

Refurbishing and selling surplus items has also helped to reduce my overall expenditure [see For Sale list]. Over time I hoped to be able to achieve this electronics hobby all for no cost.
Now achieved with a healthy surplus!

Now I have got all this test equipment working and performance checked. Considering that some of it is around 40 years old, it's not surprising that it was out of calibration and that there were a few faults to fix. This was the time consuming part and with this being a part-time hobby, progress was very much slower than I would ideally have liked. I know some people just collect test gear, but I do have some specific projects that are in progress to design new equipment.

Apart from these, my 3 main Research areas were: 

   •   Logic Analysers           COMPLETED

   •   Network Analysers       COMPLETED

   •   Spectrum Analysers      COMPLETED

These were all long-term projects that involved me in some fundamental research, then acquiring, understanding and building complete test systems. 
 

Individual Current Projects for Test Equipment are: 


 •   Quick check of all test equipment following house move.

 •   Operating Instructions for HP 8175A Arbitary Generator, see Operating HP 8175A Arbitary Waveform Generator.


A very much smaller list of test equipment projects than it used to be! Plus I now try and avoid buying more HP kit just because it looks interesting. It was a very good learning curve though.

These projects are not listed in any order of priority, as this tends to change from time to time, either when I am held up by various issues or when I complete something [see Completed Projects].  This is often caused by not having the parts or recommended test equipment, sometimes alternatives can be used or a different test method devised.  If the equipment is obviously working to the accuracy or functionality that I need then I am satisfied as there is no point in attempting full traceable calibration.

New Design Projects:

Now I can concentrate on new design projects, some of these have been in gestation for several years.  Quite a few designs have been completed and these mainly related to electronic control systems for our previous home self-build which featured lots of new technology.

My own designs are not included in this website, maybe later!