Building the uTracer

[thomas]

Ta daah!

Here it is with the obligatory el84 first measurement

Now I have to figure out the instructions…..

Dragged daughter away from her chemistry revision to dutifully take two snapshots, bless.

Duct tape inside holding laptop smps still is aaahmmm a 'semi permanent' measure…..

[Mike H]

Ooo ahh.....

[jack]

Result

[cpu_bach]

Hello from Japan. My uTracer3+ has just started operation. I picked up a 7C5 as the first DUT. Thank you for offering such an interesting kit!

[Thermionic Idler]

Resurrecting an old thread. I'm investigating the possibility of building one of these things for myself.

In the course of my research I've found that some builders have built their own heater supply for greater accuracy, eschewing the 'pulse' supply that the uTracer has. As far as I can see it seems to be accurate enough, given that heater voltage can sometimes vary that much with mains supply variations anyway. I'd rather keep the build as straightforward as possible.

Did anyone here bother with an off board heater supply or did you just use the uTracer one? Oh and does it go down to 2.5V for 2A3 testing?

Thanks.

[Paul Barker]

Oh wow is me. I was all set to buy the uTracer 6 kit and the up to 100v positive grid board. But the email from Ronalds wife suggests you make sure you can download the gui before you pay. Well our laptop is horendous probably full of junk. It failed to run the gui version 3/11 you must start with. I looked at the helps and its all computerlease that I dont understand whatsoever. So on my ipad I googled for other available gui’s and those are computerlease in a different language or languages that is apple and linux, everyone clearly has problems with the gui in what appears to be three source languages, appple linux and microsoft. So I thought, time I bought a better lapton. Spent £300 on a dell used lapton on windows 11 with a solid state hard drive running in 86. Guess what? It cant figure out the gui either. All this is just to get the version 3 gui you need files from before you load the generation of gui you need.

So far Im thinking? Sack it off .

[Nick]

Any clue why it doesn't run? Most likely a missing dll I would guess. Does it install? If it does, maybe try running a dependency walker to see what is missing.

https://github.com/lucasg/Dependencies/releases

[Paul Barker]

Thanks Nick. I guess I'll find my way. now that the old laptop has updated at least it is now able to unzip. but it has a different failure mode than the newer windows 11 laptop. so I have two ways to find out a fix. in one place Ronald states the only 3 files you need. it may be easiest to get those three files, one of which is a dll I think. I have a feeling the older windows my be easier to run the program on. either waay I will have to buy a usb to rs232 leed. the man in the computer shop said those are usually plug and play. ronald is determined not to change from rs232 connection.

everything will come clear in the end. but I'll noy buy the kit until I can get the gui. even if its only the version 3.11 that holds the key for the newer guis to get important files through.

I know you have my interets at heart. im such a stress head at the moment. i know I'll be alright building the tracer. baby steps. not a lot is achieved every day. it is only yesterday Virgin broadband was made functional after probably 6 months after the install of a system that didnt work at all. finally some engineer in the south of England rebooted our cabinet after our local engineer chased it up again rasing a ticket and it was rebooted and now its fine at last.

thats not to say I would recommend virgin media to my worst enemy. it is apauling how long it took them to get it working. i think they have all had to learn new skills and took them this long to find out how to fix this no internet problem.

everything seems this way these days.

of course the old laptop is the wrong frequency. but if that ends up the only device I can get the gui on I can teather it to my apple devices, they will be on virgin.

it would be too much to ask a man who calls his website dos forever to write a gui for apple/ lol/

[Nick]

ronald is determined not to change from rs232 connection.

He would be opening a world of pain if he did. USB to RS232 adapters are cheap and ubiquitous anyway.

[Nick]

I have a memory somewhere that Jack (Nick) wrote a QT interface for the utracer, but I may be hallucinating.

[jack]

I have a memory somewhere that Jack (Nick) wrote a QT interface for the utracer, but I may be hallucinating.

Not me... However this is what you're after:

https://bmamps.com/v01/home/techie-corn ... cer-utmax/

Nick Barton (yes, yet another Nick) is really clever and the quality of his work is excellent - he's a professional EE. There's lots of utracer stuff on his site.

[Morgan Jones]

I have a uTracer3+. It's very good. I would say:

(1) Always use external supply.
(2) Go the patch lead route for electrode selection (as shown in this thread). I used an old AVO roller switch and even though I took it apart to clean it, it's still unreliable. Colour-code patch leads are a much more elegant solution.

[Paul Barker]

Thanks all. I built one of the early ones and there was no difficulty at all in those days downloading and using the gui. The fact that it is suggested to find out if you can get the gui before you buy implies there are gui problems these days.

I all tried that alternative it also loaded problem free.

I hope that person has kept involved and supports the 1000v version and the Class A2 up to 100v. It may be safer to just buy the 3+ and sack off the extras if the 3rd party gui guy doesn’t keep pace. I can envisage me using a better behaving gui at this rate. It seems Ronald generation of computer works on his gui and if youres doesnt I dont know why it doesnt happen for me, so here are examples of people who struggled and fixed it eventually their way. See if that works for you.

A steap learning curve for someone whose only used ipads and iphones for years.

But the laptop on Windows 11 may not take to Ronalds dos but was worth its £300. Windows is now almost ecceptable, apple may be falling behind.

Was also great to be able to use Stephies excell program no longer on an apple. For sure excel works much better on Windows. I found although I could use it on Apple, it didnt work correctly in the end.

It was very hard to find a fresh install of that but I found it. Then when I looked for it again, cant find it again. Its a maize looking for it on the mirror of stephies old pages but it is there somewhere. I have the zip file though if anyone desires it.

So even though on a modern laptop the gui doesnt open I feel Ive not wasted my scarce resources. Maybe Ronald will fix the struggles .

The computer shop were saying Microsoft will not go forward supporting Windows 10 next year. So although the shop owner was given a fix and has been able to transend that issue in advanve. When Microsoft say these things they carry them out. All hell broke looke when they abanded British Gas to their XT. You can vertually time the almost collapse of bg to that occurance. Their system is now a shaddow of the xt system they were using. i spanned both eras and the new software is nothing like as good. Then following covid they offered a poorer contract or there is the door. Oops, all my generation accepted the door being held open for us. By by, you were always horrible to me anyway.

[Nick]

Their system is now a shaddow of the xt system they were using

Well, that's down to incompetence on bg's part then. I don;t often support MS for admittedly mostly historic reasons now, but the one thing they are great at is providing forward compatibility and if they do retire an api they signal so many years in advance.

I assume that the utracer GUI is written in access, so its likely a case of a missing run time dll.

Again, Paul, what doesn't work and when? Does it install and then not run, or fail to install?

[Paul Barker]

image hosting html