Now more than ever, the world needs innovators—engineers with big ideas looking to make significant advances to change the world. Nevertheless, bringing those ideas to life requires access to the right tools anytime, anywhere.
Keysight Smart Bench Essentials (SBE) Series is a revolutionary design solution for modern test workbenches in teaching labs and aspiring new product development electronic engineers. The Smart Bench Essentials Series enables users to test, analyse, and share results collaboratively, across the room or the world. Whether teaching, learning or working on a design from a classroom or home, users have full access to configure and test using connected instruments.
Keysight’s Smart Bench Essentials Series is a connected solution of test instruments consisting of a power supply, function generator, digital multimeter, and oscilloscope. This new complete portfolio of instruments, students, and general electronic test engineers will have a truly connected, modern design solution for their lab or test workbenches.
In this article, we are going to take a deeper look into the four essential tools that every young engineer requires to start learning and developing:
- Digital multimeter
- Waveform generator
- Bench PSU
- Oscilloscope
Dual-display digital multimeter
Any electrical engineer will tell you the importance of using a digital multimeter. It is one of the essential tools that any engineer can have and learn. Using a multimeter gives an understanding of how circuits work through a range of features such as DC current and voltage readings, ESD diode testing, temperature testing, capacitance reading and continuity.
An important aspect of designing circuits also is the ability to debug them when things do not go the way they should, or some anomalies occur within a circuit that cannot be explained on paper. Keysight’s Bench multimeter is not just an ordinary multimeter; it has a whole host of additional features such as a broad range of input signals, 100mV to 1kV DC voltage with 10mA to 3A current rating both AC and DC. The best feature is its ability to take readings at 100 per second and store up to 5000 readings in its non-volatile memory, which is essential when working with speed-critical tests.
The Keysight EDU34450A is a 5½-digit dual-display digital multimeter (DMM) with a 7” screen. The measurement engine leverages Keysight’s industry-grade bench-top DMM. It features 5½ digits of resolution, 0.015% essential DCV accuracy, and comes with a USB port on the front to allow saving data to a flash drive. There is also USB and LAN ports of connectivity between other devices in the range on the reverse side.
Having this particular DMM in a bench-top format allows the user to easily access its most essential features using soft keys, where users would expect. These keys also light up in white to indicate the active function.
Much research has gone into selecting the correct type of interface for each function, and it is concluded that having the interface of knobs and buttons is still preferred over the more modern touch interfaces.
Make no mistake. This DMM is of high quality, including many of the same features and same chipsets used in high-end devices but at an affordable price point. Straight out of the box, it can be used as a standalone instrument, including the software that goes with it.
EDU33210 Series Waveform generator
Another part of capturing signals also can generate them to test simulations within a device or circuit. Keysight offers a waveform generator that offers the standard signals you would expect from any signal generator up to 20MHz.
The bench-top multimer features two channels that can create signals such as six built-in modulation types (AM, FM, PM, FSK, BPSK, PWM), sweep and burst. It also comes with a 7-inch colour display, making it much easier to create built-in arbitrary waveforms.
There is also ergonomic soft colour-coded buttonsfor parameter setup, signal viewing, and editing. It is straightforward to switch between a two-channel view and one channel view (full-screen width). This is great for focusing on using one channel; you will ultimately only see the options and data for the single channel (Yellow).
Key benefits
- 7-inch colour display for simultaneous parameter setup, signal viewing, and editing
- six built-in modulation types and 17 popular waveforms to simulate typical applications for testing
- 16-bit arbitrary waveform capability with memory up to 8 M samples per channel
- USB and LAN input/output interface for remote connectivity
EDU36311A Bench Power Supply
One thing electrical circuits need is a clean, reliable power supply. The Keysight EDU36311A DC bench power supply comes with a very robust design with a three-channel power output, a key feature over other standard PSU’s, which more commonly have two-channel output.
The PSU is rated at 90W and is electrically isolated per channel to deliver clean, reliable power without interference or performance drop. The PSU itself, as mentioned, comes in a bench-top form factor, it is much more streamlined, which is a design factor when considering the whole series together, so it can be easily stacked and interconnected with the others. Each unit also has a lip at the front and back to stop it from falling backwards or forwards and can also be screwed down further if necessary.
Key Benefits
- Clean, reliable power
- low output ripple and noise
- excellent programming/readback accuracy
- exceptional line / load regulation
- superior overvoltage, overcurrent, and overtemperature protection
Infiniivision 1000 X-Series Oscilloscope
The Oscilloscope from Keysight is their main product line of educational scopes and has been on the market for several years, but as you can see, this new scope, which is part of the Smart Bench Essentials collection, has the same look and feel as the previous three instruments.
It has the same large 7-inch display with colours depending on which channel you are looking at. The colours throughout the range are all uniformed, i.e. channel one is always yellow, and channel two is green.
The scope features the same technology as Keysight’s higher-end oscilloscopes, enabling students to learn the same hardware and software used in leading research and development labs.
Key benefits
- DVM/Counter – Integrated 3-digit voltmeter 5-digit frequency counter
- Fast Waveform Update Rate – Fast 200,000 waveforms/sec update rate helps you quickly see random and infrequent signal glitches and errors
- USB – Screenshots and data can be quickly and easily saved with a built-in USB port and your USB storage device
- Training Signals – Built-in education training kit signals with downloadable training guide
- Function Generator – Built-in generator enables you to generate the signals you need to quickly simulate your design and perform gain & phase Bode plots
- Analyse Features – Mask Limit Testing DVM Frequency Response Analysis Serial Bus Decode
- Measurements – Press the measure key to access 32 built-in automatic measurements.
- Cursors – Cursors easily accomplish custom measurements. Measure any value or the difference using four powerful cursors
- Waveform Math Tools – Quick access to waveform math (+−× ÷), FFT (gain and phase) and low-pass filter.
- Built-in Localised Help – All buttons provide instant access to language localised help by simply holding down the button you want to be explained.
- Industry Leading User Interface – Fast and easy operation with the standard oscilloscope controls right at your fingertips Interconnect ability
Interconnect through PathWave Software
As mentioned, these devices can be used straight out the box as individual units. They come into their prime through the ability to connect and be controlled through a single computer using Keysight’s PathWave Lab Management software.
The obvious benefit to this setup is in a lab/classroom environment where traditionally, you will need to unplug and reset the equipment between classes, which can eat into valuable time into the lesson. This Keysight lab setup allows the following user to reset all devices using the software by loading a configuration.
The PathWave software is included with every purchase of a Smart Bench Essentials device. It allows you to control devices, track their data whilst keeping every device up to date with Firmware/Software updates.
Remote Learning
Keysight’s industry-ready remote access lab solution offers you a convenient way to make the switch to online learning. This solution’s design gives you the ability to set up your introductory instrument lab remotely. It covers all your needs, from web-based lab management and scheduling administration to instrument control and remote access for measurement and analysis.
Now, with Keysight PathWave lab management and control solution, educators can spend less time on manual setup and tracking and focus on what matters — providing high-quality teaching. The PathWave lab management and control software solution give educators centralised control to seamlessly connect and monitor all the lab instruments.
Key Benefits
- Streamline and simplify lab management, saving you time to focus on teaching
- Interact with students and facilitate group collaboration in real-time to accomplish innovative teaching and learning
- Access secure lab management and control tools with your existing university infrastructure through on-premises support
- Integrate with your Learning Management Systems (LMS) such as Moodle, Blackboard, Canvas, and others
- Get remote desktop control for configuration and measurement
- Connect to industry-grade test instruments with the latest software and technology used in the industry
Summary
Keysight offers a complete portfolio of instruments with a standard user interface and software that enables access to new Smart Bench Essentials Series instruments remotely from anywhere.
The Smart Bench Essentials Series provides reliable connectivity and usability in a compact form factor. Together, the hardware and software are connected to your next innovation.
