Recommendations for Oscilloscope.

[Fred Abse]

On Tue, 14 Aug 2012 11:39:32 -0700, Daniel Pitts wrote:

If I don't care about the amplitude of the signal, only the shape, is a
10MHz scope good enough for viewing higher frequencies?

If the shape is not a pure sine wave, inadequate bandwidth will distort
it. Not just the amplitude.

A 10MHz square wave, displayed on a 10MHz oscilloscope will look far from
square.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
(Richard Feynman)

 

[Winston]

On Mon, 13 Aug 2012 20:48:34 -0400, Michael Black wrote:


(...)

I paid five dollars for my first oscilliscope, ac coupled, no triggered
sweep, but it got me a scope. If one can get one that cheap (or my 535?
that someone found in the hospital garbage for me), one then proceeds to
play with it, seeing what the knobs do and trying to learn as much as
possible from it.

Then when they spend "real money" they have a handle on what might be
useful for their own purposes. They learn from the experience of the
free or really cheap oscilliscope, which enables them to make a better
decision when spending the money. Asking here doesn't really change
things, they are depending on someone else to tell them "a good price"
and 'what they need".

They may find they can live without things. A really cheap scope is
likely going to be limited (or old), but they may find that the
limitations are within what they are doing right now, so it doesn't
matter.

Or they may discover they don't need a scope, so having spent that five
dollars they have learned quite a bit.

Michael

That's why I really like Freecycle.
http://www.freecycle.org/

I know that I can pass valuable gear on to less experienced folks
for them to enjoy (and get very cool gear for *me* to enjoy!)

--Winston

 

[John Larkin]

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 14:45:11 -0700, Daniel Pitts
<newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> wrote:

As I get more advanced at creating circuits, I can see the benefit to
owning an Oscilloscope. I'm on a fairly tight budget, and was hoping to
get a recommendation on a cheap oscilloscope that is "good enough" for
hobby work. I've used one at school years ago, which probably had more
bells and whistles than I would ever need.

What features are essential for a hobbiest? What can I do without? Any
particular brands that are cheap but reliable?

Thanks for suggestions,
Daniel.

Get a Rigol color digital scope. DS1052E is good. Under $400.






--

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

 

[Jon Kirwan]

On Thu, 16 Aug 2012 21:19:15 -0700, John Larkin
<jjlarkin@highNOTlandTHIStechnologyPART.com> wrote:

On Fri, 10 Aug 2012 14:45:11 -0700, Daniel Pitts
newsgroup.nospam@virtualinfinity.net> wrote:

As I get more advanced at creating circuits, I can see the benefit to
owning an Oscilloscope. I'm on a fairly tight budget, and was hoping to
get a recommendation on a cheap oscilloscope that is "good enough" for
hobby work. I've used one at school years ago, which probably had more
bells and whistles than I would ever need.

What features are essential for a hobbiest? What can I do without? Any
particular brands that are cheap but reliable?

Thanks for suggestions,
Daniel.

Get a Rigol color digital scope. DS1052E is good. Under $400.

Rigol dropped the price on their DS1102E to under $400, ...
more than 1/2 year ago, I think.

Jon

 

[notbob]

On 2012-08-17, Jon Kirwan <jonk@infinitefactors.org> wrote:

Rigol dropped the price on their DS1102E to under $400, ...
more than 1/2 year ago, I think.

Yeah. $399.

--
Definition of objectivism:
"Eff you! I got mine."
http://www.nongmoproject.org/

 

[Jon Kirwan]

On 17 Aug 2012 20:34:43 GMT, notbob <notbob@nothome.com>
wrote:

On 2012-08-17, Jon Kirwan <jonk@infinitefactors.org> wrote:

Rigol dropped the price on their DS1102E to under $400, ...
more than 1/2 year ago, I think.

Yeah. $399.

Of course, I knew. When it dropped, I immediately bought one
from a business that had dropped it even lower still, to
$349. I'm cheap but I actually needed it for a project
evaluating these low cost units. Good timing!

Jon

 

[notbob]

On 2012-08-17, Jon Kirwan <jonk@infinitefactors.org> wrote:

Of course, I knew. When it dropped, I immediately bought one
from a business that had dropped it even lower still, to
$349.

Are you going to reveal this magical place?

I found half doz prices online and none were below $395USD.

nb

--
Definition of objectivism:
"Eff you! I got mine."
http://www.nongmoproject.org/

 

[Jamie]

notbob wrote:

On 2012-08-17, Jon Kirwan <jonk@infinitefactors.org> wrote:


Of course, I knew. When it dropped, I immediately bought one
from a business that had dropped it even lower still, to
$349.


Are you going to reveal this magical place?

I found half doz prices online and none were below $395USD.

nb

This isn't a bad starter..

http://www.saelig.com/PSBEB100/PSBEB100009.htm

Jamie

 

[notbob]

On 2012-08-18, Jamie <jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net> wrote:

This isn't a bad starter..

http://www.saelig.com/PSBEB100/PSBEB100009.htm

The real trick is finding a 1052 50MHz model. I've seen 'em fer
$329USD at Rigolna.com (north america). Then, you jes do the software
upgrade to 100MHz! If I'm not mistaken, it's the exact same hardware,
right down to the same chip numbers. There's an entry on D Jone's
EEVblog website that talks about it. I may have misinterpreted what
he was saying. Ima geezer.

nb


--
Definition of objectivism:
"Eff you! I got mine."
http://www.nongmoproject.org/

 

[Jon Kirwan]

On 17 Aug 2012 21:16:30 GMT, notbob <notbob@nothome.com>
wrote:

On 2012-08-17, Jon Kirwan <jonk@infinitefactors.org> wrote:

Of course, I knew. When it dropped, I immediately bought one
from a business that had dropped it even lower still, to
$349.

Are you going to reveal this magical place?

I found half doz prices online and none were below $395USD.

I believe you.

I'll check my invoice (dated in December, so I have go look
for it) from Saelig to be certain of the price. Do that
tomorrow, I think.

There was a short sale I picked up on at the end of November
or very early December, announced a few days after Rigol
dropped the list price. Prices soon changed, though.

Jon

 

[Jon Kirwan]

On 18 Aug 2012 01:03:07 GMT, notbob <notbob@nothome.com>
wrote:

On 2012-08-18, Jamie <jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net> wrote:

This isn't a bad starter..

http://www.saelig.com/PSBEB100/PSBEB100009.htm

The real trick is finding a 1052 50MHz model. I've seen 'em fer
$329USD at Rigolna.com (north america). Then, you jes do the software
upgrade to 100MHz! If I'm not mistaken, it's the exact same hardware,
right down to the same chip numbers. There's an entry on D Jone's
EEVblog website that talks about it. I may have misinterpreted what
he was saying. Ima geezer.

It's not quite so easy anymore. I think they have made it
"tougher" to do.

I'd like to figure out a cheap way to add the MSO functions
to the DSO!

Jon

 

[Jamie]

notbob wrote:

On 2012-08-18, Jamie <jamie_ka1lpa_not_valid_after_ka1lpa_@charter.net> wrote:


This isn't a bad starter..

http://www.saelig.com/PSBEB100/PSBEB100009.htm


The real trick is finding a 1052 50MHz model. I've seen 'em fer
$329USD at Rigolna.com (north america). Then, you jes do the software
upgrade to 100MHz! If I'm not mistaken, it's the exact same hardware,
right down to the same chip numbers. There's an entry on D Jone's
EEVblog website that talks about it. I may have misinterpreted what
he was saying. Ima geezer.

nb


True however, 2 of the guys I work with did that and I decided to get a

100Mhz labeled one. I can tell you that both do look the same as far as
the software functions however, after several comparison test, it
appears the converted ones seem to have problems with wave forms not
exactly matching the 100 Mhz when pushing the scope to the upper limits..

This leads me to believe that some 100 MHz intended boards didn't
quite pass QC at the high end or, there are some software OEM parameters
that need to be tweaked per unit to account for differences which didn't get
done.

Jamie

 

[newshound]

On 10/08/2012 22:45, Daniel Pitts wrote:

As I get more advanced at creating circuits, I can see the benefit to
owning an Oscilloscope. I'm on a fairly tight budget, and was hoping to
get a recommendation on a cheap oscilloscope that is "good enough" for
hobby work. I've used one at school years ago, which probably had more
bells and whistles than I would ever need.

What features are essential for a hobbiest? What can I do without? Any
particular brands that are cheap but reliable?

Thanks for suggestions,
Daniel.

Unanswerable without knowing more about what you are making. Audio?
Computers? Radio? GHz comms?

FWIW Ive started dabbling with simple stuff again (used to have access
to serious research kit) and thought about getting one of the little
digitals recently, but in the end got an old Phillips 30 MHz storage
scope from eBay for not much over Ł100. Partly because although it has
lots of knobs, I understand what they do; I suspect that doing
everything via menus would be a PITA.

 

[John Larkin]

On Sat, 18 Aug 2012 22:53:53 +0100, newshound
<newshound@fairadsl.co.uk> wrote:

On 10/08/2012 22:45, Daniel Pitts wrote:
As I get more advanced at creating circuits, I can see the benefit to
owning an Oscilloscope. I'm on a fairly tight budget, and was hoping to
get a recommendation on a cheap oscilloscope that is "good enough" for
hobby work. I've used one at school years ago, which probably had more
bells and whistles than I would ever need.

What features are essential for a hobbiest? What can I do without? Any
particular brands that are cheap but reliable?

Thanks for suggestions,
Daniel.

Unanswerable without knowing more about what you are making. Audio?
Computers? Radio? GHz comms?

FWIW Ive started dabbling with simple stuff again (used to have access
to serious research kit) and thought about getting one of the little
digitals recently, but in the end got an old Phillips 30 MHz storage
scope from eBay for not much over Ł100. Partly because although it has
lots of knobs, I understand what they do; I suspect that doing
everything via menus would be a PITA.

Nowadays the benchtop digital scopes have the usual knobs, volts/div,
time/div, positions, trigger level. They do have menus for stuff like
ac/dc, trigger slopes, that sort of thing. The Rigols are pretty easy
to drive.

In the early days of digital scopes, some had, like, 4 buttons and all
menus. We domo'd one HP scope that nobody could get to do anything.

The most valuable button on my Tek scope is "default setup" which,
basically, means "get me the hell out of here!"

I'd never go back to using analog scopes.


--

John Larkin Highland Technology Inc
www.highlandtechnology.com jlarkin at highlandtechnology dot com

Precision electronic instrumentation
Picosecond-resolution Digital Delay and Pulse generators
Custom timing and laser controllers
Photonics and fiberoptic TTL data links
VME analog, thermocouple, LVDT, synchro, tachometer
Multichannel arbitrary waveform generators

 

[Phil Hobbs]

John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 18 Aug 2012 22:53:53 +0100, newshound
newshound@fairadsl.co.uk> wrote:

On 10/08/2012 22:45, Daniel Pitts wrote:
As I get more advanced at creating circuits, I can see the benefit to
owning an Oscilloscope. I'm on a fairly tight budget, and was hoping to
get a recommendation on a cheap oscilloscope that is "good enough" for
hobby work. I've used one at school years ago, which probably had more
bells and whistles than I would ever need.

What features are essential for a hobbiest? What can I do without? Any
particular brands that are cheap but reliable?

Thanks for suggestions,
Daniel.

Unanswerable without knowing more about what you are making. Audio?
Computers? Radio? GHz comms?

FWIW Ive started dabbling with simple stuff again (used to have access
to serious research kit) and thought about getting one of the little
digitals recently, but in the end got an old Phillips 30 MHz storage
scope from eBay for not much over Ł100. Partly because although it has
lots of knobs, I understand what they do; I suspect that doing
everything via menus would be a PITA.

Nowadays the benchtop digital scopes have the usual knobs, volts/div,
time/div, positions, trigger level. They do have menus for stuff like
ac/dc, trigger slopes, that sort of thing. The Rigols are pretty easy
to drive.

In the early days of digital scopes, some had, like, 4 buttons and all
menus. We domo'd one HP scope that nobody could get to do anything.

I bet I remember that one. Two stacked boat anchors, one a 10-Ms/s
digitizer, the other a display. You had to drill down two menu levels
to set the vertical gain.

I got it off the IBM corporate surplus list, and within an hour it was
out in the hallway to be taken away and thrown out.

The most valuable button on my Tek scope is "default setup" which,
basically, means "get me the hell out of here!"

I'd never go back to using analog scopes.

I'm pretty fond of my 475 and 2467. You can see stuff that's invisible
on most digital scopes. They also don't alias, which Simon found
helpful this summer. (I'll be integrating some of his LPC1769 code into
my noise canceller design this week.)

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

 

[Michael Black]

On Sat, 18 Aug 2012, John Larkin wrote:

Nowadays the benchtop digital scopes have the usual knobs, volts/div,
time/div, positions, trigger level. They do have menus for stuff like
ac/dc, trigger slopes, that sort of thing. The Rigols are pretty easy
to drive.

In the early days of digital scopes, some had, like, 4 buttons and all
menus. We domo'd one HP scope that nobody could get to do anything.

But is that all that different from the old Tek scopes with endless knobs?

We've had questions here over the years, people can't get their scopes to
work, and the answers are usually things like make sure the knobs are set
right. I remember losing traces decades ago, a switch thrown the wrong
way and easy to miss since there were so many combinations.

The most valuable button on my Tek scope is "default setup" which,
basically, means "get me the hell out of here!"

My calculator was acting up last night, into some mode that I accidentally
put it. Couldn't remember how to get it back, the manual not handy. Then
I remembered the reset button, and wham, all was right.


Michael

 

[Fred Abse]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2012 12:38:44 -0400, Michael Black wrote:

We've had questions here over the years, people can't get their scopes to
work, and the answers are usually things like make sure the knobs are set
right.

AKA RTFM.

Tek analog scopes were made for *engineers*, who used to know at least
something about how they worked.

--
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence
over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled."
(Richard Feynman)

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2012 11:36:53 -0400, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 18 Aug 2012 22:53:53 +0100, newshound
newshound@fairadsl.co.uk> wrote:

On 10/08/2012 22:45, Daniel Pitts wrote:
As I get more advanced at creating circuits, I can see the benefit to
owning an Oscilloscope. I'm on a fairly tight budget, and was hoping to
get a recommendation on a cheap oscilloscope that is "good enough" for
hobby work. I've used one at school years ago, which probably had more
bells and whistles than I would ever need.

What features are essential for a hobbiest? What can I do without? Any
particular brands that are cheap but reliable?

Thanks for suggestions,
Daniel.

Unanswerable without knowing more about what you are making. Audio?
Computers? Radio? GHz comms?

FWIW Ive started dabbling with simple stuff again (used to have access
to serious research kit) and thought about getting one of the little
digitals recently, but in the end got an old Phillips 30 MHz storage
scope from eBay for not much over Ł100. Partly because although it has
lots of knobs, I understand what they do; I suspect that doing
everything via menus would be a PITA.

Nowadays the benchtop digital scopes have the usual knobs, volts/div,
time/div, positions, trigger level. They do have menus for stuff like
ac/dc, trigger slopes, that sort of thing. The Rigols are pretty easy
to drive.

In the early days of digital scopes, some had, like, 4 buttons and all
menus. We domo'd one HP scope that nobody could get to do anything.


I bet I remember that one. Two stacked boat anchors, one a 10-Ms/s
digitizer, the other a display. You had to drill down two menu levels
to set the vertical gain.

The Tektronix digital oscilloscope was pretty cool, OTOH. It was basically a
7704A with a digitizer inserted between the display half and the plugin bays.
It took any combination of 7000 series plugins. An external computer was
required, though. ;-)

I got it off the IBM corporate surplus list, and within an hour it was
out in the hallway to be taken away and thrown out.

I'm sure at least a couple of the Tektronix DPOs were in there, too. I put
them there. ;-)

The most valuable button on my Tek scope is "default setup" which,
basically, means "get me the hell out of here!"

I'd never go back to using analog scopes.

I'm pretty fond of my 475 and 2467. You can see stuff that's invisible
on most digital scopes. They also don't alias, which Simon found
helpful this summer. (I'll be integrating some of his LPC1769 code into
my noise canceller design this week.)

I like the 475s and would probably buy one for myself, If I knew it would work
(don't trust the ones on eBay). OTOH, I doubt I'd ever find a reason to
replace my Agilent MSO-X-3104 at work, with one.

 

[krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz]

On Sun, 19 Aug 2012 11:07:18 -0700, Fred Abse <excretatauris@invalid.invalid>
wrote:

On Sun, 19 Aug 2012 12:38:44 -0400, Michael Black wrote:

We've had questions here over the years, people can't get their scopes to
work, and the answers are usually things like make sure the knobs are set
right.

AKA RTFM.

No, it's a matter of going through all the knobs to see which one is set
wrong. The manual won't help one bit.

Tek analog scopes were made for *engineers*, who used to know at least
something about how they worked.

Don't be an ass. You still need to go through all of the settings to see
which one is messed up. With no trace, it's not obvious which one it is.

 

[Phil Hobbs]

"krw@att.bizzzzzzzzzzzz" wrote:

On Sun, 19 Aug 2012 11:36:53 -0400, Phil Hobbs
pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

John Larkin wrote:

On Sat, 18 Aug 2012 22:53:53 +0100, newshound
newshound@fairadsl.co.uk> wrote:

On 10/08/2012 22:45, Daniel Pitts wrote:
As I get more advanced at creating circuits, I can see the benefit to
owning an Oscilloscope. I'm on a fairly tight budget, and was hoping to
get a recommendation on a cheap oscilloscope that is "good enough" for
hobby work. I've used one at school years ago, which probably had more
bells and whistles than I would ever need.

What features are essential for a hobbiest? What can I do without? Any
particular brands that are cheap but reliable?

Thanks for suggestions,
Daniel.

Unanswerable without knowing more about what you are making. Audio?
Computers? Radio? GHz comms?

FWIW Ive started dabbling with simple stuff again (used to have access
to serious research kit) and thought about getting one of the little
digitals recently, but in the end got an old Phillips 30 MHz storage
scope from eBay for not much over Ł100. Partly because although it has
lots of knobs, I understand what they do; I suspect that doing
everything via menus would be a PITA.

Nowadays the benchtop digital scopes have the usual knobs, volts/div,
time/div, positions, trigger level. They do have menus for stuff like
ac/dc, trigger slopes, that sort of thing. The Rigols are pretty easy
to drive.

In the early days of digital scopes, some had, like, 4 buttons and all
menus. We domo'd one HP scope that nobody could get to do anything.


I bet I remember that one. Two stacked boat anchors, one a 10-Ms/s
digitizer, the other a display. You had to drill down two menu levels
to set the vertical gain.

The Tektronix digital oscilloscope was pretty cool, OTOH. It was basically a
7704A with a digitizer inserted between the display half and the plugin bays.
It took any combination of 7000 series plugins. An external computer was
required, though. ;-)

I got it off the IBM corporate surplus list, and within an hour it was
out in the hallway to be taken away and thrown out.

I'm sure at least a couple of the Tektronix DPOs were in there, too. I put
them there. ;-)

The most valuable button on my Tek scope is "default setup" which,
basically, means "get me the hell out of here!"

I'd never go back to using analog scopes.

I'm pretty fond of my 475 and 2467. You can see stuff that's invisible
on most digital scopes. They also don't alias, which Simon found
helpful this summer. (I'll be integrating some of his LPC1769 code into
my noise canceller design this week.)

I like the 475s and would probably buy one for myself, If I knew it would work
(don't trust the ones on eBay). OTOH, I doubt I'd ever find a reason to
replace my Agilent MSO-X-3104 at work, with one.

My eBay success rate is probably 92%, averaged over several dozen
instruments. The exceptions have been mostly due to poor packing.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs
--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510
845-480-2058

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net