I think what it's really good for, and someone correct me if I'm wrong. Is to be able to run around your house or work place and locate / identify RFI generators. Like various cheap switch mode power supplies / USB adapters, now days all LED light bulbs plugged into 110v have some sort of a dirt cheap SMPS inside them as well. Light dimmers, TV sets, WiFi routers, really everything has a SMPS supply inside it these days and most are running even when you turn the item off... So if you have radio gear (ham radio, CB radio, shortwave radio, or other) and your picking up interference. Don't be surprised if it's from within your own home! The fact it's cheap, small and runs on a battery. Makes it a good candidate to find all those noise generators in your house and decide what to do with each one! My noisy USB adapters I typically trash. Other things I decide to only plug in when I need them and sometimes put a label on them or their plug saying "RF noise generator!" My friend had a clothes washing machine that he couldn't turn on while using his ham transeiver would get completely wiped out by the machines vari-speed motor controller (really a smps too)... I didn't have a SA when I tracked down the crap in my house. I did it the hard way by first running my ham transeiver on a 12v battery so I could pull the main breaker for the whole house while on various frequencies I heard interference on. Boy what a difference it made when I killed the power in my house. I even ran the speaker output of the radio into a Bluetooth transmitter and then my Bluetooth speaker in my garage with me when I pulled the main breaker and heard the noise disappear! Then it was narrowing it down to which individual breaker would kill the noise, then going into the rooms that that breaker was on to unplug everything in the room and then when I narrowed it down to the device. It was back to the garage to see if there were more things generating a weaker noise signal on those frequencies. Became a heck of a project! But made a huge difference... But guess what, over months your bound to bring more stuff home and unknowingly plug things in and... Regenerate noise without thinking about it... 10x worse if you have a wife and kids! 😂 Can't drag a big HP SA around the house and that's if you can afford one!!!
You are right. It is a great tool for that. One of the first things I did was to walk around looking for things. At first didn't see much since many things are way above 350MHz or even 960MHz is low these days. But I knew I had a problem with some LED lights I put in (DIY really) and I know they are bad but was shocked at the broad spectrum. The lights in my walk in closet were even worse. Both used cheap AC to DC ballasts
@@IMSAIGuy Yes I noticed the same thing. Between those LED lights, USB adapters, laptop power supplies and my Bosch power tool battery charger and PIR motion detector lights. I was really generating some wide band HF noise especially on the lower end of HF 80 meters and when I was starting to experiment with a large loop antenna on 160m... The motion detectors were interesting how they change in noise output from no motion detected to motion detected, the noise jumps way up... Then again if I transmit on 80 meters, 100 watts, it causes one of my two motion detectors to always trip and then that wipes out my receiver... It's like the motion detector is getting revenge for the transmitter tripping it!!! Then I have to get up and switch the motion detector to the manual off setting to stop the noise...
@@IMSAIGuy also don't forget that even though many things are above 350mhz and 960mhz these days they are unfortunately all powered by a internal or external SMPS supply spilling it's guts on LF or HF LoL.... You can tell I am both a ham like you and I was a former SMPS project / prototype engineer for a bunch of years. Some of that was in our own RFI shielded room with a HP SA much like yours fighting noise coming from our supplies to meet FCC specs and even worse sometimes military noise specs... Lots of frustrating times sometimes building shields, increasing ground planes, sprinkling caps and inductors here and there. Could drive a person half crazy! 🤪
Watched this as I just ordered a tinysa from banggood. I think for the price point and the fact its aimed at a hobbyist demographic, it's a worthwhile buy. I'll be mostly using it for aligning antique radios, a hobby I thoroughly enjoy.
This video is doing a lot of unjustified damage to the tinySa reputation. This is important as it is one of the first videos youtube will show if one searches for tinySA. The added text in the description is not visible if you do not open the full description so if someone watches the video the new insights about the overloading will not be communicated. I hope you can correct this
I made some comment changes. I think the video was justified though. I've owned 5 spectrum analyzers so I'm not just some newbie. Yes I'm not an RF engineer, but this was the very first spectrum analyzer I had and still have difficulties with. You need to understand your target client who will know nothing. The firmware is getting better but still far from 'it just works'. I do love the TinySA and applaud you. I am still constantly having to add attenuation to the low and high channels instead of that being default. The HP 8921 is a pretty bad spectrum analyzer with very little controls, yet it just works. I find the marker 'tracking' set to default is frustrating, at least it needs search for the next peak when I use the rocker switch. I wasted a half hour in HIGH mode yesterday until I figured out I needed to set the attenuator low. Remember I have a room full of equipment to verify things and most people will not. I encourage you to make the firmware defaults react better. Just like people don't read my description they will not read your wiki.
@@IMSAIGuy YOu can get rid of the tracking of the first marker at power on by taking these steps. 1: Reset the tinySA 2: Disable tracking of marker 1 3: PRESET/STORE/STORE AS STARTUP Now when you reset the tinySA (or LOAD STARTUP) marker 1 has no tracking.
@@ErikKaashoek I think it will be useful. many have asked about using the tinysa as a frequency monitor/display for ham radio use. I started a video on this and didn't like it so stopped. I will redo that video in the future but the waterfall is a big deal and the one you have is just too small. I used the hold max feature instead but people will like a small max hold and a large waterfall instead.
Considering the price, that little thing looks amazing. Thanks for the review! For the manufacturer, I think we'd all like to see models made for 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, perhaps done w/ an external downconverter and filters. People are currently paying much more for products in that range that do way less.
I believe in buying the best test equipment you can afford. If you need it, be sure it's good enough to confidently make the measurements you need to make. Look on the used market for bargains in yesterday's high end analyzers at very affordable prices today. I'd always rather over-buy than buy equipment that can't cut it...but it was cheap.
What do you really expect from a dirt cheap instrument? I'd bet that changing the voltage regulator for a better one would make a big difference. That usually improves the phase noise. Even so, it sure beats nothing at all.
About the only difference between the HP 8920A and 8921A are the 15 and 30 kHz IF filters. How will the IF filter difference effect the operation of the test sets for HF work...1.8-30 Mhz
I'm not quite sure I understand. I don't think there are 15 and 30 khz IF filters. those are audio frequencies. there are low pass audio filters but that is all
@@IMSAIGuy From Keysight's web site... - The 8921A has a 30 kHz IF filter vs the 15 kHz filter in the 8920A (this was changed to allow us to decode the wide band data for our 11807B Option 120 CALM software). - The 8921A includes the hardware hooks necessary to allow upgrade to NADC/TDMA and CDMA cell-site testing. - Improved performance for power measurement accuracy, 5% - Improved residual FM, < 7 Hz, 250 kHz < Fc < 1000 MHz < 4 Hz, 250 MHz < Fc < 500 MHz The 8921A is fully loaded to allow customers to do cellular base and mobile AMPS testing.
In fact that some of the numbers on the left on the display are displayed in red this indicates that your TinySA is not calibrated right now. You should run a calibration-run and do your comparison again. Maybe the phase-noise-problem then is gone.
Did you do the test with the ehem original cables, or perhaps something better? Perhaps you could do see what those cables look like on the the NanoVA?
I used cables in my lab that I trust. The new cables supplied seem fine. It's really hard to have a bad cables at frequencies below 1000MHz. especially short ones.
If you needed to analyze tones and find a particular carrier what program would you use to scan those numbers? The game has three tools:1) wardial 2)blue box “phreaking” box 3)and DTMF generator These programs seem to be located in a virtual *nix or MSDOS program. I’m somewhat puzzled because I’m seeing CD and LS commands but also DIR as an option in the /bin. Caveat: This is for a video game and you would not be helping anyone violate any FCC regulations.
not sure your question. to find audio tones for the old bell telephone stuff, a audio range spectrum analyzer would be used (or FFT in scope). #2 and #3 just generate tones. I don't know what #1 is. DIR is CP/M CD is DOS LS is Unix.
While comparing those spectrum analyzers you should point out that tinySA is smaller and also cheaper than the HPs reference oscillator. That's the reason of the difference of phase noises
@@IMSAIGuy I ended up purchasing the 2.8 inch screen version, from what I understood the only difference to the ultra version was in the screen size and frequency range.
@@emanoeldeoliveira8943 no, both the hardware and software is completely different. I've done teardowns and reverse engineering schematics for both type on my channel.
Had to laugh at the guy doing this review and the negative statements I think the 69$ spectrum analyzer does a totally amazing job when compared to a 3000$ analyzer! Let's get serious here.
I'm a sucker for stuff like this. Offhand, this looks like a good start on the product. It does some goofy stuff. But I think some software tweaks can fix some of this. Unfortunately, there are probably some improvements to the hardware that will be needed. My two cents. Thanks for an interesting video. The project is appreciated.
You know, watching this video it's easy to discount the Tiny SA, but when you factor in the price difference between $50 and $2500, you can make a judgement of whether this gadget will be useful to you. Understanding its limitations, you're just not going to get much better for even five to ten times its price.
That toy can do more than many commercial analyzers. Moreover, the reviewer needs to lean how to use the equipment before making a video. Look at his other videos, ample of problems with many of them. But then, what can one expect from a hobbyist without proper training.
![ILLSLICK X YOUNGOHM - We're The same [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/yUJNkobYR0E/mqdefault.jpg)
I think what it's really good for, and someone correct me if I'm wrong. Is to be able to run around your house or work place and locate / identify RFI generators. Like various cheap switch mode power supplies / USB adapters, now days all LED light bulbs plugged into 110v have some sort of a dirt cheap SMPS inside them as well. Light dimmers, TV sets, WiFi routers, really everything has a SMPS supply inside it these days and most are running even when you turn the item off... So if you have radio gear (ham radio, CB radio, shortwave radio, or other) and your picking up interference. Don't be surprised if it's from within your own home! The fact it's cheap, small and runs on a battery. Makes it a good candidate to find all those noise generators in your house and decide what to do with each one! My noisy USB adapters I typically trash. Other things I decide to only plug in when I need them and sometimes put a label on them or their plug saying "RF noise generator!" My friend had a clothes washing machine that he couldn't turn on while using his ham transeiver would get completely wiped out by the machines vari-speed motor controller (really a smps too)...
I didn't have a SA when I tracked down the crap in my house. I did it the hard way by first running my ham transeiver on a 12v battery so I could pull the main breaker for the whole house while on various frequencies I heard interference on. Boy what a difference it made when I killed the power in my house. I even ran the speaker output of the radio into a Bluetooth transmitter and then my Bluetooth speaker in my garage with me when I pulled the main breaker and heard the noise disappear! Then it was narrowing it down to which individual breaker would kill the noise, then going into the rooms that that breaker was on to unplug everything in the room and then when I narrowed it down to the device. It was back to the garage to see if there were more things generating a weaker noise signal on those frequencies. Became a heck of a project! But made a huge difference... But guess what, over months your bound to bring more stuff home and unknowingly plug things in and... Regenerate noise without thinking about it... 10x worse if you have a wife and kids! 😂
Can't drag a big HP SA around the house and that's if you can afford one!!!
You are right. It is a great tool for that. One of the first things I did was to walk around looking for things. At first didn't see much since many things are way above 350MHz or even 960MHz is low these days. But I knew I had a problem with some LED lights I put in (DIY really) and I know they are bad but was shocked at the broad spectrum. The lights in my walk in closet were even worse. Both used cheap AC to DC ballasts
@@IMSAIGuy Yes I noticed the same thing. Between those LED lights, USB adapters, laptop power supplies and my Bosch power tool battery charger and PIR motion detector lights. I was really generating some wide band HF noise especially on the lower end of HF 80 meters and when I was starting to experiment with a large loop antenna on 160m...
The motion detectors were interesting how they change in noise output from no motion detected to motion detected, the noise jumps way up...
Then again if I transmit on 80 meters, 100 watts, it causes one of my two motion detectors to always trip and then that wipes out my receiver... It's like the motion detector is getting revenge for the transmitter tripping it!!! Then I have to get up and switch the motion detector to the manual off setting to stop the noise...
@@IMSAIGuy also don't forget that even though many things are above 350mhz and 960mhz these days they are unfortunately all powered by a internal or external SMPS supply spilling it's guts on LF or HF LoL....
You can tell I am both a ham like you and I was a former SMPS project / prototype engineer for a bunch of years. Some of that was in our own RFI shielded room with a HP SA much like yours fighting noise coming from our supplies to meet FCC specs and even worse sometimes military noise specs... Lots of frustrating times sometimes building shields, increasing ground planes, sprinkling caps and inductors here and there. Could drive a person half crazy! 🤪
Watched this as I just ordered a tinysa from banggood. I think for the price point and the fact its aimed at a hobbyist demographic, it's a worthwhile buy. I'll be mostly using it for aligning antique radios, a hobby I thoroughly enjoy.
Did you end up getting one and how is it working out for aligning old radios? Cheers.
Very helpful video! Thank you.
Would you not increase the resolution bandwidth of the HP to 3KHz for a better comparison?
Thank you more very useful comparison 👏👏👏👏+ paw & 73!
The averaging function is the reason for the differences in the beginning. Retest using the same averaging function in each.
try with same RBW on both analysers.
I just bought one of these - $67Cdn on AliE. So glad to see yiur review.
73, VE7VIE
look at my playlist 'nanovna' I have lots and lots of videos
This video is doing a lot of unjustified damage to the tinySa reputation. This is important as it is one of the first videos youtube will show if one searches for tinySA. The added text in the description is not visible if you do not open the full description so if someone watches the video the new insights about the overloading will not be communicated. I hope you can correct this
I made some comment changes. I think the video was justified though. I've owned 5 spectrum analyzers so I'm not just some newbie. Yes I'm not an RF engineer, but this was the very first spectrum analyzer I had and still have difficulties with. You need to understand your target client who will know nothing. The firmware is getting better but still far from 'it just works'. I do love the TinySA and applaud you. I am still constantly having to add attenuation to the low and high channels instead of that being default. The HP 8921 is a pretty bad spectrum analyzer with very little controls, yet it just works. I find the marker 'tracking' set to default is frustrating, at least it needs search for the next peak when I use the rocker switch. I wasted a half hour in HIGH mode yesterday until I figured out I needed to set the attenuator low. Remember I have a room full of equipment to verify things and most people will not. I encourage you to make the firmware defaults react better. Just like people don't read my description they will not read your wiki.
@@IMSAIGuy YOu can get rid of the tracking of the first marker at power on by taking these steps.
1: Reset the tinySA
2: Disable tracking of marker 1
3: PRESET/STORE/STORE AS STARTUP
Now when you reset the tinySA (or LOAD STARTUP) marker 1 has no tracking.
@@ErikKaashoek Have you thought of a full screen waterfall?
@@IMSAIGuy you are the first to suggest this option
@@ErikKaashoek I think it will be useful. many have asked about using the tinysa as a frequency monitor/display for ham radio use. I started a video on this and didn't like it so stopped. I will redo that video in the future but the waterfall is a big deal and the one you have is just too small. I used the hold max feature instead but people will like a small max hold and a large waterfall instead.
Considering the price, that little thing looks amazing. Thanks for the review! For the manufacturer, I think we'd all like to see models made for 2.4 and 5 GHz bands, perhaps done w/ an external downconverter and filters. People are currently paying much more for products in that range that do way less.
th-cam.com/video/xQv6eDNuYhU/w-d-xo.html
@@IMSAIGuy Thank you for that link and info!
HP for laboratory /serius user....... the other for amateur
HP for laboratory /serius user....... the other for amateur
I hope that they improve the TinySA. Thanks for your video.
Improve like hp? With same price? 😊😊😊
I believe in buying the best test equipment you can afford. If you need it, be sure it's good enough to confidently make the measurements you need to make. Look on the used market for bargains in yesterday's high end analyzers at very affordable prices today. I'd always rather over-buy than buy equipment that can't cut it...but it was cheap.
What do you really expect from a dirt cheap instrument? I'd bet that changing the voltage regulator for a better one would make a big difference. That usually improves the phase noise. Even so, it sure beats nothing at all.
wrote some matlab code to implement a data acquisition in the hf bands.
I have a playlist of 60 videos on the TInySA
@@IMSAIGuy I have watched several of your videos... excellent and thank you.
I am truly interested in the weak signal capabilities.
How low can it go...
-130, -125, -120...dBm matters.
I measured it down to -104 dBm
About the only difference between the HP 8920A and 8921A are the 15 and 30 kHz IF filters. How will the IF filter difference effect the operation of the test sets for HF work...1.8-30 Mhz
I'm not quite sure I understand. I don't think there are 15 and 30 khz IF filters. those are audio frequencies. there are low pass audio filters but that is all
@@IMSAIGuy From Keysight's web site...
- The 8921A has a 30 kHz IF filter vs the 15 kHz filter in the 8920A (this was changed to allow us to decode the wide band data for our 11807B Option 120 CALM software).
- The 8921A includes the hardware hooks necessary to allow upgrade to NADC/TDMA and CDMA cell-site testing.
- Improved performance for power measurement accuracy, 5%
- Improved residual FM,
< 7 Hz, 250 kHz < Fc < 1000 MHz
< 4 Hz, 250 MHz < Fc < 500 MHz
The 8921A is fully loaded to allow customers to do cellular base and mobile AMPS testing.
@@imken2392 Mine had the cellular piggy back on it when I got it. I removed it since it did me no good.
Can I connect this device directly to a yagi antenna? Or any other antenna without attenuation? Adaptors not included..
Thank you!!
An S9 signal at the radio is -73dBm. so even a very strong signal should be OK.
@@IMSAIGuy
Can't thank you enough! Really appreciate your video content as well.
What is that attenuator you have?
I m aiming to use it as an TV antenna installation acessory Do yoiu think that it can help with fast UHF Sweeps ?
bought one... coming up to speed as well. Tina does have averaging...
my understanding is that the HP Function generator is not outputting 50 Ohm, how have you solved this,. BNC T with one end 50 ohms?
I'm using a splitter not a 'T'.
@@IMSAIGuy I mean the output of the function generator is 1M Ohm and not 50 ohm
@@HelmutTschemernjak the HP33120 is 50ohm
In fact that some of the numbers on the left on the display are displayed in red this indicates that your TinySA is not calibrated right now. You should run a calibration-run and do your comparison again. Maybe the phase-noise-problem then is gone.
nope
@@IMSAIGuy You're right - I saw it in a later video of you 🙂
Did you do the test with the ehem original cables, or perhaps something better?
Perhaps you could do see what those cables look like on the the NanoVA?
I used cables in my lab that I trust. The new cables supplied seem fine. It's really hard to have a bad cables at frequencies below 1000MHz. especially short ones.
If you needed to analyze tones and find a particular carrier what program would you use to scan those numbers? The game has three tools:1) wardial 2)blue box “phreaking” box 3)and DTMF generator
These programs seem to be located in a virtual *nix or MSDOS program. I’m somewhat puzzled because I’m seeing CD and LS commands but also DIR as an option in the /bin.
Caveat: This is for a video game and you would not be helping anyone violate any FCC regulations.
not sure your question. to find audio tones for the old bell telephone stuff, a audio range spectrum analyzer would be used (or FFT in scope). #2 and #3 just generate tones. I don't know what #1 is. DIR is CP/M CD is DOS LS is Unix.
Are you re-calibrating the tiny between sweeps to take advantage of all the measurement points?
The spectrum analyzer does not calibrate the same as a VNA. There is no need to calibrate for every setting. Just once is fine for everything.
Can I use it to analyze bluetooth signal? Thanks.
The TinySA will not measure that high of a frequency. You will need to use an external mixer:
th-cam.com/video/ZnoHxSHaebw/w-d-xo.html
While comparing those spectrum analyzers you should point out that tinySA is smaller and also cheaper than the HPs reference oscillator. That's the reason of the difference of phase noises
Do you think this would work good for setting up a DSP for car audio? Thanks for the video.
no
@@IMSAIGuy Thank you for your response!
That is a comparison to an old school SA, what would happen if one compares it to a modern RSA306B for instance, a real time SA. It is a toy!
So, as a hobbyist, would you recommend the tinysa?
Looking to get into learning how to align a radio.
Yes, but buy the ULTRA model
@@IMSAIGuy What's wrong with the 2.8 screen model?
@@emanoeldeoliveira8943 many things. just avoid it
@@IMSAIGuy I ended up purchasing the 2.8 inch screen version, from what I understood the only difference to the ultra version was in the screen size and frequency range.
@@emanoeldeoliveira8943 no, both the hardware and software is completely different. I've done teardowns and reverse engineering schematics for both type on my channel.
Doesn't that TinySA needs calibration? Those letters in red tell me so.
Had to laugh at the guy doing this review and the negative statements I think the 69$ spectrum analyzer does a totally amazing job when compared to a 3000$ analyzer! Let's get serious here.
It did get better after I found these problems and worked with the designer to get them fixed. see the update video
I noticed the rbw was set to 2.6khz on the tinysa when you were looking at am mod. try setting rbw to 30khz.
Think I would stay with The HP !!
LOL
Jeez For fifty buck give me a break. I will take a dozen.
I'm a sucker for stuff like this. Offhand, this looks like a good start on the product. It does some goofy stuff. But I think some software tweaks can fix some of this. Unfortunately, there are probably some improvements to the hardware that will be needed. My two cents. Thanks for an interesting video. The project is appreciated.
Maybe the junky dongle is generating the crap.
You need to learn how to set up the tiny...lol
You know, watching this video it's easy to discount the Tiny SA, but when you factor in the price difference between $50 and $2500, you can make a judgement of whether this gadget will be useful to you. Understanding its limitations, you're just not going to get much better for even five to ten times its price.
you are right, but you might find a good deal. I got this HP analyzer for $100 and another for $250
Thank you, you saved my money ;)
The filtering in the tiny SA just plan sucks!
see my later videos. if you operate the TinySA below -30dbm it gets much better
it's a toy
That toy can do more than many commercial analyzers. Moreover, the reviewer needs to lean how to use the equipment before making a video. Look at his other videos, ample of problems with many of them. But then, what can one expect from a hobbyist without proper training.
It is for hobby only.