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woelen
Super Administrator
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Registered: 20-8-2005
Location: Netherlands
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Mood: interested
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For audio purposes and also for a little bit more (e.g. serial communications up to a few 100 kbit/s) this will be fine. A resolution of 8 bits is not
spectacular, but it will be enough to get good visible wave forms. Do not expect it to be useful for measurements of distortion and that kind of more
advanced things.
The main issue with such PC-based oscilloscopes for me is that it must be connected directly to a PC. I have my experimenting workbench on another
place than my PC. Using this in conjunction with a cheap and light laptop may be a nice option. From the PC's point of view, the software is not
demanding at all, so a small and light laptop may be an ideal companion for this device, especially if you can get one second hand for a nice price.
If you are into Arduino/Raspberry PI/Odroid electronics projects, then this oscilloscope will be a great addition to your lab. Such projects never
will be in the MHz range, at most in the 100's of kHz range, frequently much lower. For really high speed I/O such as can be achieved with the
Beaglebone Black (if you use the PRUs on that device), this oscilloscope may be too slow.
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WGTR
National Hazard
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For generic testing, perhaps find a good, used, 'scope locally.
If there is a Ham radio club in your area, they may have weekly swap meets. There is a big one in January that occurs once a year in my area. A club
may also have classified listings for old equipment. If one of the members is impressed with your hobby, he may just give you a 'scope, or sell it at
a reduced price. Many Hams have helped me out over the years, and I have returned the favor to many others. Maybe you can make a few gallons of
ferric chloride for them, who knows (it's used for circuit board etching)?
It's tempting to get a fully featured digital model, but I spent a good ten years using a Tektronix 547. I bought that one in a thrift store for $75,
complete with a rolling cart. It uses vacuum tubes, and warms the room up in wintertime very well. It's been relegated to the corner of my lab right
now; supplanted by the snazzy new digital models, but it served me well for a decade. There is a fancy Polaroid camera option that mounts over the
display, but the advent of digital cameras has made that obsolete.
http://www.tek.com/blog/comparing-apollo-era-workhorse-today...
[Edited on 11-16-2014 by WGTR]
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aga
Forum Drunkard
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In active electronics an oscilloscope is an essential item IMHO.
Currently i have a quad channel hand-held digital scope, and that's good enough for what i normally need.
This little digital thing is nice and colourful, but i simply don't trust it.
I do miss a Good bench scope with 'proper' trace.
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WGTR
National Hazard
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Quote: Originally posted by aga  | This little digital thing is nice and colourful, but i simply don't trust it.
I do miss a Good bench scope with 'proper' trace. |
A digital display's aliasing will eat the lunch of anyone not expecting it! Analog displays don't have that problem. That's something that a younger
generation of technicians don't appreciate fully.
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IrC
International Hazard
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I have the SainSmart DDS120 and a laptop on the left side of my bench, it is very similar to the Hantek Magpie mentioned. I bought it just to have a
scope that would allow me to do things in software with various measurements. But the A/D resolution is low and it is only useful for audio
experiments and looking at digital waveforms (but not very fast). Plus as WGTR mentioned aliasing is a real problem. I do not find it very useful,
more of a toy to play with out of curiosity. Plus unless you have a true line isolation setup you must be careful what you connect it to if you value
the computer. I mostly use the laptop to view schematics or a PDF service manual of things I am working on. It is very useful for that.
You really need a decent quality scope if you plan on doing very much or require even moderate precision. For years I used a phosphor storage
Tektronix with the Polaroid camera and used many rolls of film over the years. Clearly the digital camera is better but at least for the first decade
we had such tools I encountered real troubles using scopes that had a blue trace. The damn cameras either barely saw the brightest traces or refused
to capture any trace at all. Keep that in mind when buying older surplus gear such as digital camera attachments for an oscilloscope. Even my Sony
DSC-F717 has real trouble seeing a blue trace and it is overall a good camera. I found if I selected night vision it would capture a blue trace with
fine detail (minus color obviously).
I ran into a similar problem when I bought a transistor tester and wanted to photograph the display which was blue. Again night vision in macro mode
worked but later I bought the same tester in green which the camera sees fine in color mode.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Small-12864-LCD-Transistor-Tester-Ca...
"Science is the belief in the ignorance of the experts" Richard Feynman
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macckone
Dispenser of practical lab wisdom
Posts: 2168
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Location: Over a mile high
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I have a velleman PCSGU250 as well as an old analog 10MHz
scope that needs work. The velleman is a nice piece of equipment
as long as you trust yourself not to fry your computer by
overloading the scope. The velleman is much better at transient
detection that the old analog.
http://www.vellemanusa.com/products/view/?id=524708
If you are doing higher frequency stuff above the 80M range then
you probably want a scope with better frequency handling.
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