xDevs.com project is result of small team work, with no profit goals and very limited by the time resource available.
We would love to expand electronics design topics covered on our pages to many interesting areas, but only so much can be done in available time, and it’s a persistent challenge.

We often acquire old and not too old equipment in hope of interesting repair and design study projects, but it usually takes few months (sometimes years, when complex repair involved that need rare parts) before the article and repair/testing worklog is available to public.

Major projects are also constantly updated and maintained, so we are not finishing off once article is made available for everyone. This is important for us to improve and add information into already existing publications, so knowledge can be shared and better preserved.

However, some smaller low-priority projects get way less exposure, and may have lot of untested items/to-do jobs. Up to date such unfinished content not made public, with some exceptions.

It takes multiple hours to study project design and theory of operation in each new test equipment or own design, even if one to take brief spec check and take photos of the hardware. We have multiple “articles”, more like a lab notes, that have some photos, few paragraphs of text and links to the manuals/firmware. Such lab notes, by our understanding, much less valuable for most of electronics engineers, so as result they are not public.

This brings the question, if you, dear reader, actually interested to see even unfinished notes that may (and very likely will) have mistakes and errors or would rather prefer to see worklogs and articles, refined with proven results, to show project in deep dive details.

As practical example, in repair section there are two articles that reflect the very difference:

HP/Agilent/Keysight 3458A metrology multimeter repair and Advantest R6581T repair notes. Our final goal for both of these articles was to have very detailed and complete 8½-digit DMM repairs, with repair flow, found issues, troubleshooting steps, post-repair tests, calibration and control software libraries.

First article about 3458A achieved that goal to most extent, which took total more than 400 hours during multiple months period. Article about Advantest meter however just took few days, which is clearly visible by only very limited content in the article, most of which are hi-res photos of two R6581T units inside components and boards. By our standards the latter work is unfinished note, but not a worthy worklog to be presented to public.

xDevs.com team looking for your advice and ultimate vote, if you would like us to focus limited time available on less often, but more in-depth publications that can explain tricks about electronic devices better, or do more of the brief teardowns, perhaps some easy fast repairs when the chance arrives, while keeping lengthy projects in background. Please provide the response in the comment section or thru our email at team@xdevs.com.

Thank you!