Don’t Forget Your Curve Tracer

As cheap microcontrollers have given us an impressive range of test equipment trinkets to play with, it’s easy to forget some of the old standabys. A curve tracer for example, the relatively …

How Good (Or Bad) Are Fake Power Semiconductors?

We all know that there’s a significant risk of receiving fake hardware when buying parts from less reputable sources. These counterfeit parts are usually a much cheaper component relabeled as…

The Simplest Curve Tracer Ever

To a lot of us, curve tracing seems to be one of those black magic things that only the true wizards understand. But as [DiodeGoneWild] explains, curve tracing really isn’t all that complicat…

Hack Your Heathkit To Trace MOSFET Curves

[TRX Lab] has an old Heathkit model IT-1121 curve tracer, and wants to modify it so he can plot the I-V curves of MOSFETs. For the uninitiated, curve tracers are used to determine the precise chara…

Curve Tracer Design For Power Vacuum Tubes Testing

Regardless of the mythical qualities that are all too often attributed to vacuum tubes, they are still components that can be damaged and wear out over time. Much like with transistors and kin, the…

Homebrew Curve Tracer Competes With The Big Guns

When we first saw the VBA curve tracer, we thought it might have something to do with Visual Basic for Applications. But it turns out it is a mash up of the names of the creators: [Paul Versteeg], …

Rodriguez — IV Curve Tracer On The Cheap

In response to an online discussion on the Electrical Engineering Stack Exchange, [Joseph Eoff] decided to prove his point by slapping together a bare-bones IV curve tracer using an Arduino Nano an…