This week I was stopped in the hallway at work by a fellow looking for a RF digitizer. This is a device which tkaes a signal from an antenna and turns it into a computer data file. You can then do all kinds of interesting analysis on the data. Prior to computers, we used to record these signals on analog tapes, but each time the tape was played back, part of the signal would be lost.
I'm digressing into a history lesson. Sorry.
The things are expensive and have a long lead time if you want to buy them. They are not off-the-shelf pieces of gear. I felt pretty certain we had one somewhere, but I couldn't think of how to find it. I wish we had bought Scheduling Software from NetSimplicity.
When you go to the NetSimplicity website, you see how they help you use Outlook to schedule meeting rooms and do all kinds of cool things like that, but it's their Visual Asset Manager that hooked me. When you work with expensive test gear, it helps to know where all of it is in real time. With some difficulty we could track down people who owned RF digitizers, but we buy them so rarely and they get loaned out here and there that the chances of finding it are pretty slim. It would take a lot of detective work.
If we'd had NetSimplicity's Visual Asset Manager, there would have been a lot more of working with this
and a lot less of running around like this.
*squints at the picture* Are you sure that's not an o-scope? (true, RF digitizer would just be a recording oscilloscope, but hey)
ReplyDeleteWhoops! I tried to get one past our Precentor of Measurements. I should have known better.
ReplyDeleteYes, I think it's an o-scope, too. This is advertising, though and all I want is a picture that has the right feel.
We marketing types are kind of squishy that way. Oddly enough, I'm a theoretical mathematician by training and abstract math is anything but squishy.
:-)