Gigahertz Solutions NFA 1000, Operating Manual

Page 1: ...Made in Germany NFA 1000 NFA 400 3D Low Frequency Analyzer with Data Logger NFAsoft Analysis and Configuration Software Operating Manual Version 7 4 ...

Page 2: ...addition to this manual you can watch the tutorial videos on our channel on youtube com concerning the use of this meter Please note The only significant difference between the NFA 1000 and the NFA 400 in this manual is the fact that the NFA 1000 al lows a three dimensional potentialfree measurement of the E field while the NFA 400 can only be used for one dimensional potentialfree measurements of...

Page 3: ...ure and Data Log 16 6 Power Supply 19 7 NFAsoft 21 8 Firmware Update 29 9 What if FAQ 31 Do not leave in the hot car protect from humidity do not wipe or touch display foil details on page 35 This manual is based on the firmware version 75 and NFAsoft version 172 The firmware and software of the NFA will be continuously improved and made available via e mail or download from our homepage ...

Page 4: ...h as the primary measurement The coloured frequency LEDs above the LCD display show the active frequencies the red LED indicating the dominant one The dominant axis x y or z is indicated by a red LED on the right of the LCD display That s it no further switches or steps needed NFA 1000 To measure the E field with ground reference 1D simply connect the grounding cable The NFA detects the attached c...

Page 5: ...e mode button to switch from this to the 3D mag netic field on the display Should the meter not do what you expect please turn to the chapter on FAQs frequently asked questions at the end of this manual Chapter 9 Note For potential free E field measurements the highest accuracy will be reached when used without the yellow silicone holster To allow a simplified freehand measurement the meter is pre...

Page 6: ...0 and NFA 400 Analogous front cover for NFA 1000 and NFA 400 NFA 400 Ey 12 15 V Y X Z Power Signal Made in Germany R GIGAHERTZ Mode NFA 1000 3D NF Analyser 5 Hz 1000 kHz Freq AC DC Peak Rec Mode mV nT mG V m Band E3D M3D tRMS Auto XYZ On Off Log I O X Y Z Hold TCO Band I II ...

Page 7: ...ltage a change from mV to V for higher values is indicated Special LCD Display Messages Low Batt The rechargeable battery is low please charge the battery Err Short for Error Indicates an erroneous configura tion This can occur when a grounding cable or mains adapter is connected and potential free E field measure ment is selected Select a different setting Instrument is in the process of determin...

Page 8: ... Red means instrument is being charged Yellow means measurement in progress NO recording Green means measurement in progress WITH recording Note with the switch set to Log the Status LED is switched off after a short while in order to extend battery life LEDs to indicate the applicable frequency bands The frequency LEDs change their colour in pro portion to their contribution to the total field st...

Page 9: ...requency and the yellow LED the second strongest The green LEDs indicate the total frequency range in the current setting Full Information Volatile This makes the LEDs rather un steady volatile To be configured with NFAsoft The proportion of the respective frequency band in relation to the total signal is being displayed These proportions are shown as follows3 RED DOMINANT 50 YELLOW MEDIUM 50 GREE...

Page 10: ...reasing signal intensity will in turn cause an accelerated rattling sound If the Mode switch is set to press the Mode button to turn the volume up and the Rec button to turn the volume down and finally off as long as no grounding cable is connected to the instrument Please note For extra precise measurement requirements turn the acoustic signal volume down or even switch it off completely ...

Page 11: ...4 2 Field Selection for 3D Measurement M3D Magnetic field measurement 3D The isotropic point or magnetic field sensors are below the coordinate system printed on the meter faceplate The dominating axis is indicated by a red LED next to the display XYZ Axis indication Here the NFA 1000 will show either the magnetic or the electric field in its three individual components depending on the field type...

Page 12: ...0 switch to Ey on the NFA 400 4 3 Sockets for Inputs and Grounding AC DC Combined AC DC Input The moment you connect an external sensor its signal will automatically be displayed in mV and logged if required When Recording make sure the Mode switch is set to Auto This input is protected from overvoltage conditions for both AC and DC sources AC A displayed value of 2000 corresponds to an AC signal ...

Page 13: ...he connection of a grounding cable for an E field measurement with reference to ground in compliance with TCO This will be detected automatically by the instrument and the display will change to E field with reference to ground correspondingly Socket for the TCO conformed probe at the front end of the meter This is for the TCO conformed probe available as an option al accessory from Gigahertz Solu...

Page 14: ...rect standard setting of the NFA even for logging the peak values of a connected HF Analyser peak Peak value Real peak value measurement With this setting the meter measures the highest culminating point of the wave8 A new still experimental measurement feature for building biologists 6 An exact frequency indication is only possible up to 30 kHz 7 If the 50 Hz high pass filter has been set with th...

Page 15: ...again to undo the snap mechanism The high speed SD memory card 4 GB SDHC supplied with the instrument contains the current version of the NFA soft software and enough memory for several 36h record ings Important Please make sure to only use SANDISK cards We have had a lot of bad experiences with other manufacturers Your PC will recognize the SD card as an external device when connected by USB cabl...

Page 16: ...upply unit is sufficient to keep the instrument operational for long term data logging but will not recharge the battery Charging 15 to 18 V DC battery or AC adaptor is required to charge the instrument Measurements or recordings parallel to the charging procedure are technically possible but not specified therefore not to be recommended 4 9 Mode and Rec But tons for Navigation and Voice Recording...

Page 17: ...e individual axis one after the other in an infi nite loop until the Mode button is pressed again Rec Record an audio note Keep this button pressed and so activate the internal micro phone to accept your live comments The microphone is positioned above the Rec button marked by the hole in the casing lid It is sufficiently sensitive to pick up audio comments from a few metres distance Please note t...

Page 18: ...te When logging with the power switch set to LOG and changing the field of measurement and recording for in stance from M3D to E3D this will cause the recording ses sion to be closed and a new log file to be created These recordings can be annotated by real time audio re cordings which will be assigned automatically to the respec tive measurement for replay The following chapters 5 2 and 5 3 are o...

Page 19: ...s as follows after the activation see above the NFA waits patiently to be moved that is being moved to the first measurement position top left and it will not beep to confirm the next measurement be fore the instrument has been left still in that position for a couple of seconds11 in order to pick up a valid meas urement After the beep and in your speed you can proceed to the next measurement posi...

Page 20: ...letely sense less for obvious reasons The interval for recording data is set to 10 data sets sec Initiating Long Term Logging of the Meter For a long term recording of several hours or days set the Power switch to Log The status LED will turn green and long term recording will start off after a few seconds In this mode the LEDs and the sound are turned off to extend the battery life after a while ...

Page 21: ...ischarge The NFA setting will prevent a deep discharge in operation however in view of the inevitable self discharge the meter should not be kept with almost empty batteries for longer than a few weeks only 6 2 Charging To charge the batteries use the 15 V AC adaptor If the de vice is switched off while charging the display will show CHAr and the potential runtime of the instrument with the curren...

Page 22: ...pter connected results in meaningless data Longterm recordings of the 3D magnetic field and the AC entry can also be done using external power from an AC adapter In this case the adapter should be placed as far as possible from the instrument and turned in such a way that the resulting magnetic field is as low as possible as it can influence the readings 15 6 4 Battery Change For safety reasons pl...

Page 23: ...es it might be necessary to temporarily dis able your anti virus software Anti virus software may in terpret NFAsoft as a threat and hence might disable or even erase it It may be necessary to repeat this upon loading an upgraded version of NFAsoft NFAsoft can be loaded and executed directly form the SD memory card through a card reader or through the USB interface cable The NFA is sup plied with ...

Page 24: ...ifferent plots are colour coded This allows for differ ent channels to be shown simultaneously The x axis indicates the time span The figures at the left and the right end of the grey status line show the times of start and end of the logging period If the status line is mouse clicked the window on the right will appear Here one can enter a preferred time span to view The time span can also be sel...

Page 25: ...h the View menu under Y Scale You can also adapt the scaling of the y axis manually via the menu under View Scale Listening to the Audio Notes Audio notes dic tated during measurement or longterm record ings are shown in the diagram di rectly at the cor responding point of dictation Simply click on them in order to listen to the information recorded The audio notes will be played back by the audio...

Page 26: ...ecorded in the correspondent channel In this case the sum of the frequency specific channels may well be higher than that of All3D The light blue field underneath the statistical channel data represents the frequency distribution of the measured inten sities of the specific channel Histogram It is self scaling and can be interpreted as follows On the left side of the x axis a formula calculates an...

Page 27: ... scaled automatically to give the best display of the area selected for analysis Manual The y axis scaling can be manually controlled in this mode Allows for and will assist in analyzing small values e g those over 2 kHz overshadowed by other very strong field intensities All zooms out the x axis and displays the complete data set on the data plot The keyboard A keys can alternative ly be used Use...

Page 28: ...yond this abso lute threshold value will be marked The selected edge criteria will be graphically displayed on the top of the plotted data section and will appear numeri cally in the field channel statistical data section under edges per hour for that particular time span All edge markings dis played appear in real time and allow for a quick visual analy sis When clicking the ok button the selecte...

Page 29: ...items in the dropdown menu have been ex plained already Create KML File Required for the connection of NFA logs with GPS data and Google Earth If interested we will be glad to forward Eng lish documentation to this subject However we cannot supply any further support 7 3 Data Analysis 9 Point Measurement 6 Point Measurement For a graphical illustration of a recorded 9 point measure ment please use...

Page 30: ...Please note that it is not possible to subsequently read the file in order to verify the selected set tings of the NFA Several customized pre settings for NFAsoft can be defined allowing a quick access Simply select the settings as re quired and activate the button save as pre setting for NFA soft All pre settings are stored in the file NFAsoft ini and are available for NFAsoft provided that this ...

Page 31: ...esult of simply adding the individual signals will also differ from the sum of All3D For more information on this matter see chapter 9 8 Firmware Update The file firmware nfa is the meter s operating system stored in its internal memory17 As known from computer programmes this software is subject to continuous im provements and upgrade and can be updated as described below As also known from compu...

Page 32: ...our SD memory card without changing it If need be overwrite any old versions on the card as only one FIRMWARE NFA file should be on the card It should NOT be renamed It can be deleted from the card after the update Lock your SD memory card with the small switch on the left side of the card Insert SD card into your powered off NFA Switch on your NFA The display will show CodE the fre quency LEDs wi...

Page 33: ...emaining battery capacity reading If applicable disconnect external power supply from the meter Leave the meter is switched on for a couple of minutes so that it can recalibrate itself then switch off and on again Now the updated remaining battery life in the log mode will be displayed For a recalibration leave the meter running without the AC adapter until it automatically switches off Leave to r...

Page 34: ...is manual for further information The meter has four measurement channels which always work simultane ously Three of them are needed for the 3D measurement the fourth channel can be used for any other required measurement task The meter turns off after quarter of an hour NFAsoft allows you to change the interval for the auto power off feature Auto power off is deactivated while recording The sum o...

Page 35: ...and the other channels is higher than the value of All3D If the 50 Hz high pass filter has been set with the help of the configuration part of NFAsoft maybe even as pre setting this only applies to the channels All3D AllX AllY and AllZ Nevertheless possible fre quency components at 16 7 Hz will also be recorded in the correspondent channel In this case the sum of the frequency specific channels ma...

Page 36: ...ocess onto the SD card causes periodic peaks of 10 20 V m When using a telescopic rod a reading may well be caused by either movement induced fields or alter nating electrostatic fields from your contact with the rod Solution The configuration part of NFAsoft allows to set the high pass filter at 16 Hz or 50 Hz This will suppress most of these pseudo fields the 50 Hz filter of course more so than ...

Page 37: ...s of the display cannot be avoided In order to assure a high resolution potential free meas urement of the E field a highly sensitive metal printed foil has had to be mounted on top of the display itself This foil cannot be fixed on the display This is why it does not lie absolutely flat and small inclusions or iri descent spots cannot be avoided being provoked by humidity touch and or heat For th...

Page 38: ...r on your SD card In this case save the good files and re format your SD card using the original SD formatter of the SD Consorti um https www sdcard org downloads index html An existing audio note it is not shown in the diagram window of NFAsoft The audio files wav will only be displayed in the dia gram if they are stored in the same folder as the LOG file and if they are not renamed ...

Page 39: ...Made in Germany ...

Page 40: ...steller Manufacturer Gigahertz Solutions GmbH Am Galgenberg 12 90579 Langenzenn Germany Tel 49 9101 9093 0 Fax 49 9101 9093 23 www gigahertz solutions de www gigahertz solutions com Ihr Partner vor Ort Your local partner ...