Suggestions for PC Oscilloscope

[Chris Cooper]

It would be helpful for some of my electronic projects to have a simple
oscilloscope, and I'm thinking the easiest thing there would be to have some
sort of ADC that could be picked up and displayed by some Windows software.
I've seen various commercial products to do this, but they tend to be much
faster than I need (100 MHz) and much more than I want to spend ($200+).

I don't even need sophisticated software, I'm perfectly happy (for now at
least) with a system that dropped its results into a text file that I could
import into Excel when I wanted to see pretty graphs.

Has anybody seen such a beast?

Thanks!
Chris

 

[CWatters]

There are some that use your sound capture card

"Chris Cooper" <chrisnews@sc3.net> wrote in message
news:3f711e08$0$62077$75868355@news.frii.net...

It would be helpful for some of my electronic projects to have a simple
oscilloscope, and I'm thinking the easiest thing there would be to have
some
sort of ADC that could be picked up and displayed by some Windows
software.
I've seen various commercial products to do this, but they tend to be much
faster than I need (100 MHz) and much more than I want to spend ($200+).

I don't even need sophisticated software, I'm perfectly happy (for now at
least) with a system that dropped its results into a text file that I
could
import into Excel when I wanted to see pretty graphs.

Has anybody seen such a beast?

Thanks!
Chris

 

[Geoff Hackett]

Hi,

Some older non PC computers have A/D built into joystick ports or sound
capture ports. The Acorn BBC and Amiga computers I think. You could look at
getting an old one cheap. They can be programmed in basic for the graphics
etc.

Or just buy a used audio scope. 10Mhz 1 Channel.

Geoff

"CWatters" <colin.watters@pandora.be> wrote in message
newsWbcb.37384$T42.1789024@phobos.telenet-ops.be...

There are some that use your sound capture card

"Chris Cooper" <chrisnews@sc3.net> wrote in message
news:3f711e08$0$62077$75868355@news.frii.net...
It would be helpful for some of my electronic projects to have a simple
oscilloscope, and I'm thinking the easiest thing there would be to have
some
sort of ADC that could be picked up and displayed by some Windows
software.
I've seen various commercial products to do this, but they tend to be
much
faster than I need (100 MHz) and much more than I want to spend ($200+).

I don't even need sophisticated software, I'm perfectly happy (for now
at
least) with a system that dropped its results into a text file that I
could
import into Excel when I wanted to see pretty graphs.

Has anybody seen such a beast?

Thanks!
Chris

 

[kony]

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 09:47:58 +0100, "Geoff Hackett"
<gihackett@1michaels.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

Hi,

Some older non PC computers have A/D built into joystick ports or sound
capture ports. The Acorn BBC and Amiga computers I think. You could look at
getting an old one cheap. They can be programmed in basic for the graphics
etc.

Or just buy a used audio scope. 10Mhz 1 Channel.

Geoff

It's not just older, non PC computers, the typical "standard" joystick
port found on most if not all PCs is analog, then A/D converted.
However the range might be poor enough to make the resulting readings
too inaccurate? Here's an application to do it with the sound "card"
analog audio input instead:

http://polly.phys.msu.su/~zeld/oscill.html


Dave

 

[Surfer]

It would be helpful for some of my electronic projects to
have a simple oscilloscope,

An old, old issue of Probe magazine (perhaps 1990 or so) had
plans for an o-scope circuit that fed the parallel port,
including the matching software. It could be easily modified to
do what you need. Perhaps a library would have these magazines
on microfilm.

 

[Gary Tait]

Whereas On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 09:47:58 +0100, "Geoff Hackett"
<gihackett@1michaels.freeserve.co.uk> scribbled:
, I thus relpy:

Hi,

Some older non PC computers have A/D built into joystick ports or sound
capture ports. The Acorn BBC and Amiga computers I think. You could look at
getting an old one cheap. They can be programmed in basic for the graphics
etc.

Or just buy a used audio scope. 10Mhz 1 Channel.

For most A/D joystick type ports, the are mostly an R/C pulse
generator, with the R component supplied by the pot in the joystick.
Hardware or software would time the width of the pulse, and report
that to the user program.

Geoff

"CWatters" <colin.watters@pandora.be> wrote in message
newsWbcb.37384$T42.1789024@phobos.telenet-ops.be...
There are some that use your sound capture card

"Chris Cooper" <chrisnews@sc3.net> wrote in message
news:3f711e08$0$62077$75868355@news.frii.net...
It would be helpful for some of my electronic projects to have a simple
oscilloscope, and I'm thinking the easiest thing there would be to have
some
sort of ADC that could be picked up and displayed by some Windows
software.
I've seen various commercial products to do this, but they tend to be
much
faster than I need (100 MHz) and much more than I want to spend ($200+).

I don't even need sophisticated software, I'm perfectly happy (for now
at
least) with a system that dropped its results into a text file that I
could
import into Excel when I wanted to see pretty graphs.

Has anybody seen such a beast?

Thanks!
Chris

--
Gary J. Tait . Email is at yahoo.com ; ID:classicsat

 

[Animesh Maurya]

"Chris Cooper" <chrisnews@sc3.net> wrote in message news:<3f711e08$0$62077$75868355@news.frii.net>...

It would be helpful for some of my electronic projects to have a simple
oscilloscope, and I'm thinking the easiest thing there would be to have some
sort of ADC that could be picked up and displayed by some Windows software.
I've seen various commercial products to do this, but they tend to be much
faster than I need (100 MHz) and much more than I want to spend ($200+).

I don't even need sophisticated software, I'm perfectly happy (for now at
least) with a system that dropped its results into a text file that I could
import into Excel when I wanted to see pretty graphs.

Has anybody seen such a beast?

Thanks!
Chris

I was also looking for PC-based oscilloscope, one such is available at
http://www.picotech.com/oscilloscope.html.

Also have a look at www.electronicsforu.com/efylinux/circuit/dec2002/circuit1_oscilloscope.pdf

Animesh Maurya

 

[Tomi Holger Engdahl]

kony <spam@spam.com> writes:

On Wed, 24 Sep 2003 09:47:58 +0100, "Geoff Hackett"
gihackett@1michaels.freeserve.co.uk> wrote:

Hi,

Some older non PC computers have A/D built into joystick ports or sound
capture ports. The Acorn BBC and Amiga computers I think. You could look at
getting an old one cheap. They can be programmed in basic for the graphics
etc.

Or just buy a used audio scope. 10Mhz 1 Channel.

Geoff


It's not just older, non PC computers, the typical "standard" joystick
port found on most if not all PCs is analog, then A/D converted.
However the range might be poor enough to make the resulting readings
too inaccurate?

The resulted treading from the PC joystick port is quite inaccurate.
The A/D converter system used in PC joystick hardware is very
simple. It is basically a one-shot multivibrator that is
triggered by software, and then software loop counts the pulse
length. This system is not particularly accurate (variation
between different ports, between differenc changes, PC temperture
has it's effects), the software measurin has it's limits
(in practice less than 8 bits of resolution) and the measuring
is slow for most oscilloscope applications (conversion time
can be up to 2 milliseconds, typically around 1 ms, so
sample rate can't be higher than 1 kHz, usually less than this).

You can find circuit to convert voltage to signal that can be connected
to PC joystick port input with the plans presented at
http://www.epanorama.net/documents/joystick/pc_circuits.html#generalinput

Here's an application to do it with the sound "card"
analog audio input instead:

http://polly.phys.msu.su/~zeld/oscill.html

This is a worth to check option if the soundcard performance
is enough (limited only to AC measurements at audio frequencies).


--
Tomi Engdahl (http://www.iki.fi/then/)
Take a look at my electronics web links and documents at
http://www.epanorama.net/

 

[Tomi Holger Engdahl]

Surfer <exp123103@nonags.com> writes:

It would be helpful for some of my electronic projects to
have a simple oscilloscope,

An old, old issue of Probe magazine (perhaps 1990 or so) had
plans for an o-scope circuit that fed the parallel port,
including the matching software. It could be easily modified to
do what you need. Perhaps a library would have these magazines
on microfilm.

Some links to PC scope projects can be found at
http://www.epanorama.net/links/measuring.html#pcmeasuring
and http://www.epanorama.net/links/measuring.html#oscilloscope

--
Tomi Engdahl (http://www.iki.fi/then/)
Take a look at my electronics web links and documents at
http://www.epanorama.net/

 

[Yukio YANO]

"Chris Cooper" <chrisnews@sc3.net> wrote in message
news:3f711e08$0$62077$75868355@news.frii.net...

It would be helpful for some of my electronic projects to have a simple
oscilloscope,

I seems to me that there is software available to use Sound Cards as an A/D
interface for a PC scope. Why re-invent the wheel ! when all you really
want is a place sit and think !

Yukio YANO

 

[Nick Hull]

In article <zmpdb.36168$TM4.8018@pd7tw2no>, "Yukio YANO" <yano@shaw.ca>
wrote:

"Chris Cooper" <chrisnews@sc3.net> wrote in message
news:3f711e08$0$62077$75868355@news.frii.net...
It would be helpful for some of my electronic projects to have a simple
oscilloscope,

I seems to me that there is software available to use Sound Cards as an A/D
interface for a PC scope. Why re-invent the wheel ! when all you really
want is a place sit and think !

Yukio YANO


Anybody have a scope program/attachment for a Mac?