#timedomainreflectometer — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #timedomainreflectometer, aggregated by home.social.
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TDR For Auto Diagnostics Done On The Cheap
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/05/04/tdr-for-auto-diagnostics-done-on-the-cheap/
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TDR For Auto Diagnostics Done On The Cheap
https://fed.brid.gy/r/https://hackaday.com/2026/05/04/tdr-for-auto-diagnostics-done-on-the-cheap/
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Relatively recently, I got interested in time-domain reflectometry, which is essentially just sending a pulse down a cable and measuring the amount of time for its reflection to return.
It's useful for testing long cables and finding where there's a break.
I bought a little device that plugs into my oscilloscope and provides a USB-powered low-frequency oscillator for doing this. (Total kit cost is <$400.)
It also provided a good "object lesson" by showing me that the signal traveled through some coaxial cable only at about 66% of c, reminding me about that last part of its definition as the speed of light *in a vacuum*.
That's only about 1.9 × 10^8 m/s.
According to a quote from "Computer Networks - A Systems Approach (5th Ed)", a signal through copper wire could propagate at 2.3 × 10^8 m/s and through optical fiber it's just 2.0 × 10^8 m/s.
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Relatively recently, I got interested in time-domain reflectometry, which is essentially just sending a pulse down a cable and measuring the amount of time for its reflection to return.
It's useful for testing long cables and finding where there's a break.
I bought a little device that plugs into my oscilloscope and provides a USB-powered low-frequency oscillator for doing this. (Total kit cost is <$400.)
It also provided a good "object lesson" by showing me that the signal traveled through some coaxial cable only at about 66% of c, reminding me about that last part of its definition as the speed of light *in a vacuum*.
That's only about 1.9 × 10^8 m/s.
According to a quote from "Computer Networks - A Systems Approach (5th Ed)", a signal through copper wire could propagate at 2.3 × 10^8 m/s and through optical fiber it's just 2.0 × 10^8 m/s.
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Relatively recently, I got interested in time-domain reflectometry, which is essentially just sending a pulse down a cable and measuring the amount of time for its reflection to return.
It's useful for testing long cables and finding where there's a break.
I bought a little device that plugs into my oscilloscope and provides a USB-powered low-frequency oscillator for doing this. (Total kit cost is <$400.)
It also provided a good "object lesson" by showing me that the signal traveled through some coaxial cable only at about 66% of c, reminding me about that last part of its definition as the speed of light *in a vacuum*.
That's only about 1.9 × 10^8 m/s.
According to a quote from "Computer Networks - A Systems Approach (5th Ed)", a signal through copper wire could propagate at 2.3 × 10^8 m/s and through optical fiber it's just 2.0 × 10^8 m/s.
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Ask Hackaday: Is Our Power Grid Smart Enough to Know When There’s No Power? - Just to intensify the feeling of impending zombie apocalypse of the COVID-19 lockdown in the British... more: https://hackaday.com/2020/06/23/ask-hackaday-is-our-power-grid-smart-enough-to-know-when-theres-no-power/ #timedomainreflectometer #askhackaday #engineering #poweroutage #smartmeter #powergrid