[HH] Huntron Tracker

[Tom Metro]

Federico Lucifredi wrote:
> Anyone here had experience with a Huntron Tracker?

I don't think I've ever heard of it.

http://davesplanet.net/davesplanet/tracker/

  A Huntron Tracker is a neat piece of test equipment manufactured by a
  company called Huntron. It sweeps a voltage signal across a component
  under test and measures the resulting current flow, it then displays a
  graph of the voltage vs. current on an oscilloscope-like display. If,
  for instance, you were testing a diode by applying a sine wave voltage
  to it, the current would be zero for all negative values up to
  approximatly positive 0.7v, where the current would switch from zero
  to maximum (a short circuit). Transistors, capacitors, inductors,
  FETs, diodes, and just about any other passive components can be
  tested in this manner.

Is this just another name for a curve tracer? If not, how is it different?


> Seems rahter expensive to purchase new, and not found a good used unit...

This strikes me as something that was hard to do in the analog realm,
and thus led to expensive devices, but could be accomplished relatively
cheaply with modern digital techniques. Instead of attempting to do nice
linear sweeps of voltages and doing it rapidly enough to produce
multiple simultaneous curves on an analog oscilloscope display, you
could digitally produce a discrete voltage point, measure the current,
and step to the next point, while aggregating all the data for later
display  on a single graph.

 -Tom