Hello sir @w2aew. I just bought one of these. I'm using it to discharge a battery at very low currents (source negative I and measure V). Is there any easy way to log the voltage drop data live on a PC? I coundn't a way to do it.
I expected it to be over my head, dry and boring. Having watched some of your other videos I should have known better. An enthralling insight into a device I knew nothing whatever about, presented with great clarity and without a boring moment. You are a remarkable teacher, many thanks.
Great video! Keithley really did something amazing with the 2450. I want to see many more instruments building in that level of customization and automation.
Great video! I have done some of these experiments manually in my home lab with 1960s Keithley current sources and electrometer and all I can say is, wow, no wonder you can bottom-fish these old instruments for so little. They work but they really are obsolete!
Really great and simplified explanation to almost all functionality. I would like you to please add one more video related to external triggering of this instrument. like taking measurement at diffrent wave lengths, say 200-300nm in step of 10nm, using a monochromator.
Superb video. If you're looking for criticism, it's only the recording-the-screen thing which you already mentioned in the vid... otherwise excellent in every way. Thanks for another fantastic, informative video. I want on of those source meters now. Cheers!!
Well Done Shar While watching the Source Meter plot out the I-V characteristic of the Field Effect Transistor I had to smile.. Performing the same task with a couple of Oscilloscopes in X-Y Mode would take hours of work performing the repetitious measurements followed by entering the data into a computer or plotting it by hand. The source meter performed the task within a couple of minutes.
Having 2400 myself, that's a really nice vid, covering usage scenarios of SMU, thanks! SMUs are really useful tool for versatile lab, tho usually out of price range of most engineers. Would be to cool insides of 2450 too ;)
I hope you didn't pay a cent for the Keithley equipment, you one guy on youtube that really give these companies good PR (Agilent, Rigol, Tek, Keithley ect.. ) and at the same time educates the viewers its a win win for all. Thank you.
We are planning to get one of these for our research lab, and so was searching for some review videos. Great video! Thanks a lot :) Keep up the good work!
The wireless power transfer experiment was really neat! I just bought one of these. Is it possible to do datalogging on the PC? I couldn't find an easy way to do that.
Shahriar great work as always! But please use screen capture in your next videos. Also not only screen but all setup on desk was out of focus most of the time. Thanks for so many examples in this review!
Thank you for your great explanations. I have a question. I have only one 2450 instrument. can I use it for I-V ds sweep and apply a voltage to the gate using a simple power supply?
So why can't you find the capacitance of the capacitor when charging it? You still get V and I either when charging or discharging, the only difference is the sign if the I and the dv/dt.
I guess it has something to do with the internal resistance of the current source not being constant during charging. Please, correct me if I am wrong.
Great video Shahriar! Supercaps are also a bit easier to charge tnan Li cells. I love this Anritsu optical attenuator's user's interface) Would love to see a teardown of it)
Hi, an absolutely amazing video, perfect examples (better than a thousand professional articles) of what and how SMU can be used, I didn't even think that they could be combined into one measurement. But I found one huge mistake there - the price, I would buy immediately, but I would have to sell the body for organs, because SMU costs as much as my almost annual salary, I wanted to buy 2460 but I didn't want to divorce, I love my wife, but there are times when I would rather have SMU 😂 Nice day 🙂 Tom
Does your optical equipment have GPIB or other computer control options? I am thinking that a full calibration could be done. Further, does the software you used have the capability to interface with other GPIB units?
Hello, Thanks for the wonderful video. Got a quick question: does the Kickstart software work with 2400? I am thinking of getting I-V curves of three terminal FET using two of 2400 and Kickstart. In addition, are you using KUSB-488 adapter to connect your Surface and the 2450? Thank you.
Thanks for the nice video. So I assume source meters have now taken the place of curve tracers for semiconducting IV measurement? A curve tracer is much faster at sweeping through the IV curves, and can do pulsed measurements, but the source meters seem to have much greater dynamic range.
Hi, my procedure says to set the SMU to provide a load current of 250ma to a battery set. I did this and it charged the batteries instead of draining them. I am supposed to be draining the batteries according to the procedure. Is there a way to constantly drain 250ma from the batteries?
Hello their, We recently got one SMU 2450. But could not do voltage sweep from -ve voltage to +voltage in a diode using kick start software! Any suggestion to get rid of this issue?
Thank you so much for your great content and experiments. Although nowhere near as knowledgeable as you, I'm pursuing the same mission to provide rigorous, rich content for electronics enthusiasts for free.
Really interesting review; thanks for investing your time. I suspected if I had to ask the price, I couldn't afford one (or more). Sadly I was right. Great instrumentation envy nonetheless.
At 1 V and 1 GOhm the power dissipated is 1 nW, I wouldn't have thought that it would affect the temperature enough to make a significant shift of the resistance.
Don't you have losses for each connection between two fibers ? maybe attenuation can be neglected, I guess you could find out by reading the datasheets.
Hi really good review of the instrument. I have 2450 smu module. I am using .tsp programming to control the module. I want to average lets say 10 readings and then store in some user defined buffer/file. I try to use command buffer.write.reading(mybuffer, defbuffer1.reading[x]). but it gives error. can you please help me out. the whole program is listed below reset() --set up measure function smu.measure.func = smu.FUNC_DC_CURRENT smu.measure.filter.count = 10 smu.measure.filter.type = smu.FILTER_MOVING_AVG smu.measure.filter.enable = smu.ON smu.measure.nplc = 1 --set up source function smu.source.func = smu.FUNC_DC_VOLTAGE smu.source.ilimit.level = 0.1 smu.source.level = 2 smu.source.delay = 0.1 smu.source.highc = smu.OFF --turn on output and initiate readings smu.source.output = smu.ON trigger.model.load("SimpleLoop", 10) trigger.model.initiate() waitcomplete() mybuffer = buffer.make(100, buffer.STYLE_WRITABLE) buffer.write.format(mybuffer , buffer.UNIT_WATT, buffer.DIGITS_3_5) for x = 1, defbuffer1.n do buffer.write.reading(mybuffer, defbuffer1.reading[x]) end beeper.beep(2,2400)
Excellent review! I enjoyed it right from the beginning to the end. We are going to have one within few months. I am keen to measure highly resistive metal oxide thin film. I have seen in the video that you used a two pin (banana)adapter for plugging the metal oxide resistor(1 Giga Ohm), where did you get this adapter? Is it available from Keithley? Could you please let me know the part name and number?
It's two parts, a Pomona 1296 connected to a Pomona 1269- www.newark.com/pomona/1296/adapter-bnc-plug-binding-post/dp/34F870 www.newark.com/pomona/1269/bnc-female-jack-to-double-banana/dp/10M4161?MER=sy-me-pd-mi-acce
I thought it looked like Lua, and a quick check of the Keithley reference manual indicates that it is. I'm not sure to what extent they use all of the features of Lua; it may just be the language syntax or they might implement a full VM. The manual indicates that they have extended the language with additional TSP commands, but I expect that means that they just have a few built-in C-library functions that you can call from the Lua code to interact with the hardware directly. Lua is a great choice for this application because it is really easy to learn and incredibly flexible and extensible. A lot of manufacturers would simply cook up their own language with a couple of basic control primitives; but that always ends up being disappointing when you need to do something that they never thought of.
This beauty's price is about $5000 ....wow. Who is buying these instruments? I really liked the video that shahriar did on the rigol power supply, it was more educational and much interesting, understanding now the difference between the psu and the smu.
I want a 2450 so bad, but man they are pricey. They do replace quite a few instruments, though. Could easily buy one of these instead of a multimeter and power supply. Even so, starting at like $8k, they are not cheap.
backwards compatibility of backwards compatibility ... the next one will have one also to have backwards compatibility of backwards compatibility of backwards compatibility or untill someone creates a proper standard for GPIB over USB
But it is a very clunky and slow bus and the connectors alone cost a fortune. It is parallel synchronous if I remember right? Is there such a big legacy market? What do they usually connect as a central computer? A PDP11 running some lab software running on bare metal?
I agree the menu navigation on that entire line of Keithley instruments was a bit cumbersome. However, I genuinely prefer the VFD displays over the LCD variants. It's an impractical nostalgic thing. But I'd love to get my hands on a quality example of a 2400.
Nice review indeed. Problem is this equipment is nice for some lab not for normal person. It cost few thousand euros...soo not very good price. ..two of them...not in my life..I will buy two cars much cheaper.. :)
What is wrong with the swipe? I actually quite liked it. It was a natural gesture to swipe back and forth between displays and as the video shows, it works really well.
Shahriar -- what was the stylus/notebook combo you used at the beginning? Looks like the stylus is transmitting button presses as well -- I wonder if that's done wirelessly or somehow through the actual touchscreen. I know my ex's Bamboo drawing tablet was able to detect button presses, wish I had checked to see how it worked.
I do get a lot out of your reviews. Some of them I saw several times. Comparing with eevblog, your channel is missing the opportunity to get much bigger, I think. Another channel I like this of a german electrician with strong bavarian accent (so you likely never would want to see him), he now has 326000 follower and is earning a lot. He always used clickbait titles. A lot of his followers complainted about this and he choose more adapt titles for his videos. This failed miserably and he switched back to his old style. "TSP #36 Keithley 2450 the best source measuring unit anyone could possibly master" comes to my mind for this video. Excuse my advice, I'm not a youtuber myself. I watched several videos (Lex Friedman interview with Mr. Beast is one of the best) and collected the information from several channels. If you are not after a greater channel, I'm sorry. Your videos are excellent, thank you!!! Just a fan from germany 🙂
Thanks for caring about the viewership of this channel. I made this channel as a hobby and as a way giving back to the community. I am a scientist & an engineer and I will always present my content for what it is, without clickbait. If that means fewer people would be “fooled” in clicking on it, that is a good thing. :)
Really nice review and set of practical examples. Thank you for taking the time to create such great examples.
Fabulous review with science not sales at the fore front.
+w2aew You are the man sir, your videos are the best by far.
My hat up to you as well.
Hello sir @w2aew. I just bought one of these. I'm using it to discharge a battery at very low currents (source negative I and measure V). Is there any easy way to log the voltage drop data live on a PC? I coundn't a way to do it.
I expected it to be over my head, dry and boring. Having watched some of your other videos I should have known better. An enthralling insight into a device I knew nothing whatever about, presented with great clarity and without a boring moment. You are a remarkable teacher, many thanks.
Great video! Keithley really did something amazing with the 2450. I want to see many more instruments building in that level of customization and automation.
Excellent video! That's what I like to see about new specialized equipment, instead of just teardowns you get to see on other channels.
Great video, I recently purchased a 2450 and this video will help greatly me in the future, thanks.
Great video! I have done some of these experiments manually in my home lab with 1960s Keithley current sources and electrometer and all I can say is, wow, no wonder you can bottom-fish these old instruments for so little. They work but they really are obsolete!
Really great introduction to a type of instrument I didn't know existed
Really great and simplified explanation to almost all functionality. I would like you to please add one more video related to external triggering of this instrument. like taking measurement at diffrent wave lengths, say 200-300nm in step of 10nm, using a monochromator.
Superb video. If you're looking for criticism, it's only the recording-the-screen thing which you already mentioned in the vid... otherwise excellent in every way. Thanks for another fantastic, informative video. I want on of those source meters now. Cheers!!
Another top notch video. I hope you get to keep these smu's, as it's cheap at half the price Keithely would have to pay for such a review.
Well Done Shar While watching the Source Meter plot out the I-V characteristic of the Field Effect Transistor I had to smile.. Performing the same task with a couple of Oscilloscopes in X-Y Mode would take hours of work performing the repetitious measurements followed by entering the data into a computer or plotting it by hand. The source meter performed the task within a couple of minutes.
Shahriar,
Another fantastic video! Thanks very much, looking forward to the next.
Having 2400 myself, that's a really nice vid, covering usage scenarios of SMU, thanks!
SMUs are really useful tool for versatile lab, tho usually out of price range of most engineers.
Would be to cool insides of 2450 too ;)
thank you for taking the time to do this video.
I hope you didn't pay a cent for the Keithley equipment, you one guy on youtube that really give these companies good PR (Agilent, Rigol, Tek, Keithley ect.. ) and at the same time educates the viewers its a win win for all.
Thank you.
I just let the knowledge wash over me. Shariar, you are amazing. and your brother too!!
You are really an inspiration to me.. Lots of love from India
1:03:34 why is the current value negative even after the polarity is correct? Please answer. Thank you so much
We are planning to get one of these for our research lab, and so was searching for some review videos. Great video! Thanks a lot :) Keep up the good work!
Another great video. I had no idea of the flexibility a 4 quadrant device gave you.
Another fascinating review and series of great experiments - really enjoyed it.
Hi. Just stepping into this field and your video was a great help. Thank you for taking the time and making the effort!
How do these compare with the Agilent / Keysight B2900A series as reviewed in EEVblog #607?
A teardown video of this unit might be interesting.
The wireless power transfer experiment was really neat! I just bought one of these. Is it possible to do datalogging on the PC? I couldn't find an easy way to do that.
Shahriar great work as always! But please use screen capture in your next videos. Also not only screen but all setup on desk was out of focus most of the time. Thanks for so many examples in this review!
Extremely informative. As usual. Thanks!
Thank you for your great explanations. I have a question. I have only one 2450 instrument. can I use it for I-V ds sweep and apply a voltage to the gate using a simple power supply?
Simply amazing. As usual.
So why can't you find the capacitance of the capacitor when charging it? You still get V and I either when charging or discharging, the only difference is the sign if the I and the dv/dt.
I guess it has something to do with the internal resistance of the current source not being constant during charging. Please, correct me if I am wrong.
Awesome! Bought one for our lab! Thank you!
Great video Shahriar!
Supercaps are also a bit easier to charge tnan Li cells.
I love this Anritsu optical attenuator's user's interface) Would love to see a teardown of it)
Excellent instrument introduction. Thank you.
Hi, an absolutely amazing video, perfect examples (better than a thousand professional articles) of what and how SMU can be used, I didn't even think that they could be combined into one measurement. But I found one huge mistake there - the price, I would buy immediately, but I would have to sell the body for organs, because SMU costs as much as my almost annual salary, I wanted to buy 2460 but I didn't want to divorce, I love my wife, but there are times when I would rather have SMU 😂
Nice day 🙂 Tom
Thank you very much for the great explanation😍
Hi! Are there any other types of four-wire measurement equipment, other than these and LCR meters?
Does your optical equipment have GPIB or other computer control options? I am thinking that a full calibration could be done. Further, does the software you used have the capability to interface with other GPIB units?
Hello,
Thanks for the wonderful video. Got a quick question: does the Kickstart software work with 2400? I am thinking of getting I-V curves of three terminal FET using two of 2400 and Kickstart. In addition, are you using KUSB-488 adapter to connect your Surface and the 2450?
Thank you.
Thanks for the nice video. So I assume source meters have now taken the place of curve tracers for semiconducting IV measurement? A curve tracer is much faster at sweeping through the IV curves, and can do pulsed measurements, but the source meters seem to have much greater dynamic range.
Hi, my procedure says to set the SMU to provide a load current of 250ma to a battery set. I did this and it charged the batteries instead of draining them. I am supposed to be draining the batteries according to the procedure. Is there a way to constantly drain 250ma from the batteries?
Hello their, We recently got one SMU 2450. But could not do voltage sweep from -ve voltage to +voltage in a diode using kick start software! Any suggestion to get rid of this issue?
We want a teardown!
That really was a great insight to the test equipment out there. Is there anything you can't get your hands on?
Thanks for this.
Thank you so much for your great content and experiments. Although nowhere near as knowledgeable as you, I'm pursuing the same mission to provide rigorous, rich content for electronics enthusiasts for free.
Brother, can please explain the basic concept of force hi & lo and sense hi & lo. Thank you
Awesome video, thanks. How does the optical attenuator work?
great video with great examples.
Thanks alot for your time and effort making this video.
Great, the best video I have ever seen!
thanks for all your effort
Interesting stuff, I didn't even know that type of instrument existed.
آقا دمت خيلي گرم
Damet garm. Merci
Very nice. Thank you.
Brillant video. Thank you!
hello dear i am beginner and want to know how u have used tsp software to measure capacity of capacitor
One of them costs around $4000. And you got two of them....nice
thanks for the detailed review
Fantastic, this was very usefully !
Excellent video
Another great video! Thanks!
Thanks a lot. Now I have to buy one. ;)
Really interesting review; thanks for investing your time. I suspected if I had to ask the price, I couldn't afford one (or more). Sadly I was right. Great instrumentation envy nonetheless.
What Photodetector IC ist this?
Can you have one scripted SMU read from the other one?
Yes, absolutely.
TheSignalPathBlog Amazing, im looking in to getting a SMU of my own after i get a good spectrum analyzer and an arb ... on a college budget
At 1 V and 1 GOhm the power dissipated is 1 nW, I wouldn't have thought that it would affect the temperature enough to make a significant shift of the resistance.
sir can you tell me how to connect gpib cable to system with keithley 2450
Don't you have losses for each connection between two fibers ? maybe attenuation can be neglected, I guess you could find out by reading the datasheets.
Thanks Before your video I didn't appreciate the versatility of a source meter. Now I need one (or two ;) )
And want 3.
Dang , I had just settled on another spec. analyzer , now I may have to save up & wait a little longer ;)
Hi really good review of the instrument. I have 2450 smu module. I am using .tsp programming to control the module. I want to average lets say 10 readings and then store in some user defined buffer/file. I try to use command buffer.write.reading(mybuffer, defbuffer1.reading[x]). but it gives error. can you please help me out. the whole program is listed below
reset()
--set up measure function
smu.measure.func = smu.FUNC_DC_CURRENT
smu.measure.filter.count = 10
smu.measure.filter.type = smu.FILTER_MOVING_AVG
smu.measure.filter.enable = smu.ON
smu.measure.nplc = 1
--set up source function
smu.source.func = smu.FUNC_DC_VOLTAGE
smu.source.ilimit.level = 0.1
smu.source.level = 2
smu.source.delay = 0.1
smu.source.highc = smu.OFF
--turn on output and initiate readings
smu.source.output = smu.ON
trigger.model.load("SimpleLoop", 10)
trigger.model.initiate()
waitcomplete()
mybuffer = buffer.make(100, buffer.STYLE_WRITABLE)
buffer.write.format(mybuffer , buffer.UNIT_WATT, buffer.DIGITS_3_5)
for x = 1, defbuffer1.n do
buffer.write.reading(mybuffer, defbuffer1.reading[x])
end
beeper.beep(2,2400)
Great video
Excellent review! I enjoyed it right from the beginning to the end. We are going to have one within few months. I am keen to measure highly resistive metal oxide thin film. I have seen in the video that you used a two pin (banana)adapter for plugging the metal oxide resistor(1 Giga Ohm), where did you get this adapter? Is it available from Keithley? Could you please let me know the part name and number?
It's two parts, a Pomona 1296 connected to a Pomona 1269- www.newark.com/pomona/1296/adapter-bnc-plug-binding-post/dp/34F870 www.newark.com/pomona/1269/bnc-female-jack-to-double-banana/dp/10M4161?MER=sy-me-pd-mi-acce
Great stuff, thanks
Looks like standard matlab code, is it?
It is similar, but it is not Matlab. It is a script that runs inside the unit and can be developed in a software called TSB.
I thought it looked like Lua, and a quick check of the Keithley reference manual indicates that it is. I'm not sure to what extent they use all of the features of Lua; it may just be the language syntax or they might implement a full VM.
The manual indicates that they have extended the language with additional TSP commands, but I expect that means that they just have a few built-in C-library functions that you can call from the Lua code to interact with the hardware directly.
Lua is a great choice for this application because it is really easy to learn and incredibly flexible and extensible. A lot of manufacturers would simply cook up their own language with a couple of basic control primitives; but that always ends up being disappointing when you need to do something that they never thought of.
Chris Baker i used lua to program my Ti CX calculator, why shahriar didn't say so?
Did Lua become a national security secret or something? Lol.
He may not have recognized it. Awesome to see other CX owners! I have the nSpire CX CAS, it rocks my socks.
Learned a lot. Good viceo. Thanks!
Very nice video, thanks!
Great video, thanks!
Very good video. Are you working on some hobbyproject with this amazing equipped lab?
Great video, thanks for your efforts
This beauty's price is about $5000 ....wow.
Who is buying these instruments?
I really liked the video that shahriar did on the rigol power supply, it was more educational and much interesting, understanding now the difference between the psu and the smu.
I want a 2450 so bad, but man they are pricey. They do replace quite a few instruments, though. Could easily buy one of these instead of a multimeter and power supply. Even so, starting at like $8k, they are not cheap.
Good info, thanks.
And most excellent demonstrations.
Why is GPIB still a thing?
Mostly backward compatibility for existing infrastructures.
For backwards compatibility perhaps ?
backwards compatibility of backwards compatibility ... the next one will have one also to have backwards compatibility of backwards compatibility of backwards compatibility or untill someone creates a proper standard for GPIB over USB
But it is a very clunky and slow bus and the connectors alone cost a fortune. It is parallel synchronous if I remember right? Is there such a big legacy market? What do they usually connect as a central computer? A PDP11 running some lab software running on bare metal?
A lot of new measurement gear comes with ethernet (some already have gigabit ethernet) which should be a very good replacement for GPIB.
I agree the menu navigation on that entire line of Keithley instruments was a bit cumbersome. However, I genuinely prefer the VFD displays over the LCD variants. It's an impractical nostalgic thing.
But I'd love to get my hands on a quality example of a 2400.
👍👍
Awesome unit. Sadly I looked at the price today... ~$5k Some day, some day ;p
You are bankrupting me.
Nice review indeed. Problem is this equipment is nice for some lab not for normal person. It cost few thousand euros...soo not very good price. ..two of them...not in my life..I will buy two cars much cheaper.. :)
I want one. Oh wait, they're £4000. Maybe next year.
ist Dir Langweilig?
Sorry, what?
The Big Helmet says it's boring if not made in the land uber alle
Tapani Viljanen Haha, what? Why?
TheSignalPathBlog Tapani Viljanes is bullshitting you. The original question translates "Are you bored?"
i'm not bored. i thinked wrong
5000 EUR each. Holy...
What about that wanky swipe stuff? Jeeeez. Please, No!
What is wrong with the swipe? I actually quite liked it. It was a natural gesture to swipe back and forth between displays and as the video shows, it works really well.
Shahriar -- what was the stylus/notebook combo you used at the beginning? Looks like the stylus is transmitting button presses as well -- I wonder if that's done wirelessly or somehow through the actual touchscreen. I know my ex's Bamboo drawing tablet was able to detect button presses, wish I had checked to see how it worked.
I do get a lot out of your reviews. Some of them I saw several times. Comparing with eevblog, your channel is missing the opportunity to get much bigger, I think. Another channel I like this of a german electrician with strong bavarian accent (so you likely never would want to see him), he now has 326000 follower and is earning a lot. He always used clickbait titles. A lot of his followers complainted about this and he choose more adapt titles for his videos. This failed miserably and he switched back to his old style. "TSP #36 Keithley 2450 the best source measuring unit anyone could possibly master" comes to my mind for this video. Excuse my advice, I'm not a youtuber myself. I watched several videos (Lex Friedman interview with Mr. Beast is one of the best) and collected the information from several channels. If you are not after a greater channel, I'm sorry. Your videos are excellent, thank you!!! Just a fan from germany 🙂
Thanks for caring about the viewership of this channel. I made this channel as a hobby and as a way giving back to the community. I am a scientist & an engineer and I will always present my content for what it is, without clickbait. If that means fewer people would be “fooled” in clicking on it, that is a good thing. :)