Any opinions on Bitscope?

[John B]

Does anyone have one of these or know of them?

www.bitscope.com

Was thinking about building one from the barebones kit they offer and
wondered if anyone else had any opinions or experiences with them. I would
use it to develope PIC's/Atmels and for other general purpose stuff.

Thanks,
John

 

[The Real Andy]

"John B .att.net>" <robotwizard@<removethis> wrote in message
news:U1oPb.77996$6y6.1579636@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...

Does anyone have one of these or know of them?

www.bitscope.com

Was thinking about building one from the barebones kit they offer and
wondered if anyone else had any opinions or experiences with them. I would
use it to develope PIC's/Atmels and for other general purpose stuff.

Well you get what you pay for, and you wont be getting a professional cro.
However, I have read some real good wraps on the bitscope on another NG and
I am sure that it will more than suffice for what you wish to do with it.
IIRC, circuit cellar did an article on it, you may want to do a search of
their archives.

 

[David L. Jones]

On Wed, 21 Jan 2004 05:24:04 GMT, "John B"
<robotwizard@<removethis>.att.net> wrote:

Does anyone have one of these or know of them?

www.bitscope.com

Was thinking about building one from the barebones kit they offer and
wondered if anyone else had any opinions or experiences with them. I would
use it to develope PIC's/Atmels and for other general purpose stuff.

Thanks,
John

Hi John,
Haven't used one myself, but it's a typical PC based digital scope. In
fact, probably over-priced and overly complex because it tries to be
all things to all people.
You'll have to decide if a PC based scope is what you are after.
For digital PIC/ATMEL work, the Logic Analyser add-on may be more
useful than the scope part.
For most general purpose uses, a real analog scope is the best. It's
portable, it's fast, it's real-time, it turns on instantly, and it's
cheap. A PC based scope has to be hooked up to a PC to work, and that
can be really annoying if your PC is not always right next to your
bench, and always turned on etc

If you don't have a proper analog scope then I'd highly recommend you
get one of those first. You can get a nice multi-channel 2nd hand
100MHz scope for the cost of a BitScope. Only then, if you find a need
for a digital storage, consider the BitScope or similar. If you find
you need a Logic Analyer, there are better solutions around than the
BitScope, like this: http://www.usb-instruments.com

Regards
Dave

---------------------------
(remove the "_" from my email address to reply)

 

[LBNote]

"John B .att.net>" <robotwizard@<removethis> wrote in message
news:U1oPb.77996$6y6.1579636@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...

Does anyone have one of these or know of them?

www.bitscope.com

Was thinking about building one from the barebones kit they offer and
wondered if anyone else had any opinions or experiences with them. I would
use it to develope PIC's/Atmels and for other general purpose stuff.

Thanks,
John

I was going to ask this exact same question yesterday,

So I downloaded the DSO1.1 software and connected it over the Internet to
there "SYDNEY" BitScope to do some mucking around.

I must say my first thoughts were gees this looks complicated, after a
couple of e-mail's to BitScope I was back on track and making sense of the
trigger setups and time base zooming etc, etc

I've been told BitScope are actively enhancing the software and I was asked
by BitScope to suggest any enhancements. Here what it could not do right
now and hence I've suggested

Define a logic trigger event that has to exist for a certain amount of time
before it's true. limited to 50us
Be able to look at the data before the trigger event occurred.
Measure Duty Cycle, Peak Voltage etc.
No Time / Dev grid on the logic display

Some picky things.

When you zoom the time base it zoom from the left rather then the centre of
the display.
No real how to manual, manual describes the buttons etc, but does not
explain how to set it up to do things.
e.g when the trigger event occurs, I had to ask where to look for the
condition on the main display.

Try the DSO1.1 software connected to the "SYDNEY" BitScope, that will give
you a real good idea of what to expect.

I'm still deciding.

Lorne...

 

[LBNote]

"LBNote" <lbonnell@ozemail.com.ua> wrote in message
news:4010af41$0$823$61c65585@uq-127creek-reader-01.brisbane.pipenetworks.com.au...

"John B .att.net>" <robotwizard@<removethis> wrote in message
news:U1oPb.77996$6y6.1579636@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
Does anyone have one of these or know of them?

www.bitscope.com

Was thinking about building one from the barebones kit they offer and
wondered if anyone else had any opinions or experiences with them. I
would
use it to develope PIC's/Atmels and for other general purpose stuff.

Thanks,
John



I was going to ask this exact same question yesterday,

So I downloaded the DSO1.1 software and connected it over the Internet to
there "SYDNEY" BitScope to do some mucking around.

I must say my first thoughts were gees this looks complicated, after a
couple of e-mail's to BitScope I was back on track and making sense of the
trigger setups and time base zooming etc, etc

I've been told BitScope are actively enhancing the software and I was
asked
by BitScope to suggest any enhancements. Here what it could not do right
now and hence I've suggested

Define a logic trigger event that has to exist for a certain amount of
time
before it's true. limited to 50us
Be able to look at the data before the trigger event occurred.
Measure Duty Cycle, Peak Voltage etc.
No Time / Dev grid on the logic display

Some picky things.

When you zoom the time base it zoom from the left rather then the centre
of
the display.
No real how to manual, manual describes the buttons etc, but does not
explain how to set it up to do things.
e.g when the trigger event occurs, I had to ask where to look for the
condition on the main display.

Try the DSO1.1 software connected to the "SYDNEY" BitScope, that will give
you a real good idea of what to expect.

I'm still deciding.

Lorne...

Just after I posted this I got a reply from BitScope on the suggestions I
made if anyone intrested email me off list


Lorne...

 

[David L. Jones]

On Fri, 23 Jan 2004 15:21:04 +1000, "LBNote" <lbonnell@ozemail.com.ua>
wrote:

I was going to ask this exact same question yesterday,

So I downloaded the DSO1.1 software and connected it over the Internet to
there "SYDNEY" BitScope to do some mucking around.

I must say my first thoughts were gees this looks complicated, after a
couple of e-mail's to BitScope I was back on track and making sense of the
trigger setups and time base zooming etc, etc

I've been told BitScope are actively enhancing the software and I was asked
by BitScope to suggest any enhancements. Here what it could not do right
now and hence I've suggested

Define a logic trigger event that has to exist for a certain amount of time
before it's true. limited to 50us
Be able to look at the data before the trigger event occurred.
Measure Duty Cycle, Peak Voltage etc.
No Time / Dev grid on the logic display

Some picky things.

When you zoom the time base it zoom from the left rather then the centre of
the display.
No real how to manual, manual describes the buttons etc, but does not
explain how to set it up to do things.
e.g when the trigger event occurs, I had to ask where to look for the
condition on the main display.

Try the DSO1.1 software connected to the "SYDNEY" BitScope, that will give
you a real good idea of what to expect.

I'm still deciding.

Lorne...

I've heard many negative things about the software myself.
In fact, I've been asked a few times to port my DSOA Scope software
and PCLA Logic Analyser software to work with BitScope, because the
one that comes with it is not very easy to use. Told'em I would if
they gave me a BitScope for nix :->

Dave
---------------------------
(remove the "_" from my email address to reply)

 

I bought one of the early models when they first came out and I have found
it handly at various times. Certainly even a base model Tek storage scope with
built-in LCD and "analog feel" knobs is a lot more handy and more powerful
than the bitscope but then even a basic Tek costs about 5 times as much.

The main limitation of the bitscope is that it only handles up to
50 megasamples per second, and you don't have as many other sample
options as you might like (e.g. 10 megasamples). On the other hand,
I was using it mostly for motor and large inductor measurements where
everything happens reasonably slowly and the bitscope is really good
for slower signals.

Comparing a pure analog scope with a bitscope is a bit like comparing an
apple with an orange because the analog is easy to set up and to get some
visibility into the signal but hard to take real measurements off and the
analog obviously can't see single shot pulses. In addition, the bitscope
gives you more complex triggering options along with a simple expansion
mechanism to build your own triggering circuits.

So I downloaded the DSO1.1 software and connected it over the Internet to
there "SYDNEY" BitScope to do some mucking around.

I must say my first thoughts were gees this looks complicated, after a
couple of e-mail's to BitScope I was back on track and making sense of the
trigger setups and time base zooming etc, etc

The bitscope setup IS kind of complicated, especially the various
delays and time base adjustments. The triggering is unusual but not too
difficult since it is basically a digital detector working on the ADC
output. Expect a bit of a learning curve if you have only worked with
analog scopes in the past.

I've been told BitScope are actively enhancing the software and I was asked
by BitScope to suggest any enhancements. Here what it could not do right
now and hence I've suggested

Define a logic trigger event that has to exist for a certain amount of time
before it's true. limited to 50us
Be able to look at the data before the trigger event occurred.

The bitscope changes time-base at the moment of the trigger so it always
runs balls to the wall (i.e. 50 megasamples) until trigger time and then it
switches to whatever time base you are working in. The buffer is a simple
circular SRAM block and it DOES store data while it is waiting for a trigger
so if your after-trigger delay is short then you will still have pre-trigger
data in your buffer. However, the pre-trigger data will always be sampled
at full sample rate (and single channel).

This behaviour may have changed, mine is an early model that had a later
transplant to upgrade it.

Try the DSO1.1 software connected to the "SYDNEY" BitScope, that will give
you a real good idea of what to expect.

I think that the real charm of the bitscope is that you can program it
yourself. I never once used their standard front-end and found it easier
to knock together my own perl scripts. Admittedly those scripts are a bit
buggy and need work but as I needed a feature I worked on that part of
the script until it was good enough. For setting up repeatable experiments
this is amazingly useful because you can use the PC parallel port to
fire off whatever starts your experiment, then fetch your results back
and process the data all in the same perl script. That is something that
you can't get your analog scope to do and even the expensive Tek will
require a lot more expensive hardware and software before you can run any
sort of automated test environment.

- Tel