In this episode Shahriar explores the functionality of the popular ESP8266 SoC chip. This IC incorporates a full ISM radio as well as the physical/MAC layer for 802.11b/g/n network communication. Furthermore it includes a uC core for code execution making it a low-cost candidate for Internet of Thing applications. This video uses a Sparkfun Thing evaluation board which also includes a LiPo batter charger, voltage regular, flash memory and all the I/O pins which are accessible to the user. The block diagram of the ESP8266 is reviewed as well as the schematic of the complete Sparkfun Thing board. By using an Arduino library and the Blynk iOS application, a cell phone and the ESP8266 can simultaneously communicate with a server running the Blynk application and transfer data between the application and the module. In this demo various components such as NeoPixel (WS2812), OneWire temperature sensor and battery monitoring functionality are implemented. The code is available from The Signal Path website. The Signal Path http://www.TheSignalPath.com ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=76hsxHBn00k

In this episode Shahriar does an extensive review and teardown of the Keysight (Agilent) MSO-S Series 10-bit 20GS/s Oscilloscope. This scope supports bandwidths up to 8GHz and 400M points of memory per channel. With hardware 10-bit ADCs as well as an ultra low-noise front-end, this scope offers an impressive dynamic range on all four channels. All scope features are software upgradable. The teardown consists of a close look at the acquisition board and the system blocks diagram. Various elements such as the ADC structure, FPGAs, memory and the time-base are all examines. The scope offers a +/-12ppb time-base with a 100fs jitter noise floor. Some basic performance measurements are also presented such as noise and SFDR. The wireless experiment shows the performance of the scope in demodulating very low-power signals on an RF carrier. A -75dBm 2.5GHs QPSK signal can be demodulated by the scope. The instrument can also demodulate a 16QAM signal in presence of an interfering signal which is 44dB higher in signal power. All demodulation experiments are performed using the Keysight VSA. The backplane experiments demonstrate the scope’s capability to perform jitter and noise analysis on multi-gigabit serial links. The built-in equalization software suites are used to find the FFE coefficients and those coefficients are used to perform hardware equalization in an FPGA communication link. The Signal Path Blog http://www.TheSignalPath.com ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l-PE7bNIDY0