Inexpensive source for an oscilloscope?

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rocwandrer

100 W
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Oct 28, 2011
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I'm working with a much more electronics literate friend on a project (It's pretty cool. I'll share details later), and he says we need an oscilloscope. I'm expecting it will become a general purpose tool in his shop at the end of the project.

This place has never let me down before, so I figured I'd ask. On the super cheap, where would you get one?

The first result in google for a USB connection type scope is $250-ish, so I'm assuming we can do a lot better than that...?
 
I used searchtempest.com to search the whole contry for oscilloscopes, turned up nothing relevant. It also searches ebay but I didn't look at that yet. I figured there has to be a better place to find this than ebay? With most things I buy on ebay, I eventually discover a better place to buy that thing.
 
Believe it or not. Deal extreme has them for cheap. They also sell cheap logic analyzers.
http://dx.com/p/rigol-ds1052e-5-6-tft-lcd-50mhz-2-channel-digital-color-storage-oscilloscope-30573
http://dx.com/p/ds-203-3-0-lcd-pocket-mini-oscilloscope-65990 > Even comes with a probe

^^ Free shipping is NICE. Even if it takes forever to ship

Depends what you are precision/speed/price you are looking for, some people have even used their sound card.
http://www.zeitnitz.de/Christian/scope_en

If you order one, let us know how it works out.
 
Yup rigol is very good lots of us have them. I bought a 50mhz and hacked it to 100 MHz :)
 
I use a hantek dso-2090usb which I got off ebay a year or so back for £108.
It's not the greatest thing in the world but it does what I need & I'm very happy with it.
If you're running linux there are some FOC GUIs for it.
To be honest I'm surprised they've not made the GUI better, a hot PC & that thing grabbing data, it should be possible to make something really nice.
I think it does about 100Msample/sec 40M analog b/w, 2 channel & comes with FFT
Bob
 
bobc said:
I use a hantek dso-2090usb which I got off ebay a year or so back for £108.
It's not the greatest thing in the world but it does what I need & I'm very happy with it.
If you're running linux there are some FOC GUIs for it.
To be honest I'm surprised they've not made the GUI better, a hot PC & that thing grabbing data, it should be possible to make something really nice.
I think it does about 100Msample/sec 40M analog b/w, 2 channel & comes with FFT
Bob
Click to expand...
Sampling rates suffer with pc based scopes.
 
Arlo1 said:
bobc said:
I use a hantek dso-2090usb which I got off ebay a year or so back for £108.
It's not the greatest thing in the world but it does what I need & I'm very happy with it.
If you're running linux there are some FOC GUIs for it.
To be honest I'm surprised they've not made the GUI better, a hot PC & that thing grabbing data, it should be possible to make something really nice.
I think it does about 100Msample/sec 40M analog b/w, 2 channel & comes with FFT
Bob
Click to expand...
Sampling rates suffer with pc based scopes.
Click to expand...
Nah, the sampling is all done in the "scope" box, all the PC does is show the pictures.
Many top spec scopes available today are actually a PC in a big box, running windows witha "scope display" GUI
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/NEW-Hantek-DSO2090-PC-USB-Digital-Oscilloscope-100MS-s-2CH-40MHz-/300739878180?pt=BI_Oscilloscopes&hash=item46057e5d24
there you go $140....
 
You will miss a lot of data with 100ms/s and 40 MHz. Mine is 1gs/s and 100mhz. Big difference
 
the thread bump reminded me to update this... We are evidently going to use arduino as an oscilloscope.
 
25Msps, a toy. I personally find it very annoying a scope to connect to the PC. You need a PC. And you need space for the PC in the bench. And it's much less ergonomic to set things up; a "full" scope has most dials at the quick and confy reach of a hand.
 
Ideally, I want a portable oscilloscope with its own screen, no less than 100 mhz, more than 1 channel, capable to generate PWM signal, and has the ability to connect to a computer via USB so I can view things in higher resolution. Does anything like this exist?

Also, is my understanding correct that the propscope will NOT measure 12 volts? :shock:
 
http://hackaday.com/2013/07/24/a-keygen-for-the-rigol-2000-series-scopes/

A few weeks ago it came to our attention that Rigol’s DS2000-series oscilloscopes were easily unlocked with a few USB commands. We had expected a small microcontroller device would be developed to send these bits to a scope automatically, and we never imagined the final version of this tool hack would be so elegant. Now it’s possible to unlock a DS2072 o’scope using just a serial number and a great encryption hack.

The engineers over a Rigol (bless their hearts) used the same hardware for the $800, 70MHz DS2072 and the $1600, 200MHz DS2202. The only difference between the two are a few bits in the scope’s memory that are easily unlocked if you have the right key. A few folks over on the EEV Blog forum figured out the private key for the scope’s encryption and the user [cybernet] wrote a keygen.

The upgrade process is extremely simple: get the serial number of your DS2072, put it in the keygen, and enter the resulting key into the scope. Reboot, and you have a $1600 scope you bought for half price.
 
If you need something portable that does not cost way to much you have the DSO quad over at seeedstudio. 2 analog and 2 digital channels. Pretty cool for the price but it all depends on what you are going to look at.

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/dso-quad-4-channel-digital-storage-oscilloscope-p-736.html?cPath=63_65

They also got a cheaper model called the DSO nano but then you'll only get one channel and much lower quality connectors.
 
bose said:
If you need something portable that does not cost way to much you have the DSO quad over at seeedstudio. 2 analog and 2 digital channels. Pretty cool for the price but it all depends on what you are going to look at.

http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/dso-quad-4-channel-digital-storage-oscilloscope-p-736.html?cPath=63_65

They also got a cheaper model called the DSO nano but then you'll only get one channel and much lower quality connectors.
Click to expand...
These things are joke I have one. All it is good for is trying to see hall sensor positions VS coil positions. Its useless for most other stuff. I try to use it to diagnose auto and motorcycle ignition systems but its hard to use for that. The 1ms or bigger range is useless because you will not capture the data.

If anyone had of told me to get the rigol in the first place I would have been ~$200 richer!
[youtube]AUwbtG6z6pI[/youtube]


[youtube]Xh9FNRpta9s[/youtube]
 
It all depends on what he is going to use it for and how (I.e on the field?). The DSO quad is a good handheld scope for the price paid if it fits the intended use. But if he needs something faster and are going to use it on the bench only then the rigol is the way to go. Much easier to work with a bench oscilloscope with knobs :)
 
bose said:
It all depends on what he is going to use it for and how (I.e on the field?). The DSO quad is a good handheld scope for the price paid if it fits the intended use. But if he needs something faster and are going to use it on the bench only then the rigol is the way to go. Much easier to work with a bench oscilloscope with knobs :)
Click to expand...
Like I said I have both of them and the DSO is useless 99% of the time and the 1% I find a use for it its not accurate or easy to use. This is my first scope and its 1 channel but otherwise its easy to use and pretty accurate and cheep. http://www.vellemanusa.com/products/view/?country=us&lang=enu&id=522380
 
Ok. But why is it not accurate enought? It's still 8 bits resolution (as the rigol scope) but of course not as fast sampling. Nyquist theorem says that you have to sample twice as fast as the fastest signal you want too get data from. Overshoots and noise will most often have a very high frequency and can often not be seen with a slow sampling oscilloscope. For power electronics etc. it's better to buy a faster oscilloscope but for micro controller projects (digital signals) the DSO quad/nano is very good.

As they are going to build a scope from an arduino I think the DSO quad/nano etc would do.
 
bose said:
Ok. But why is it not accurate enought? It's still 8 bits resolution (as the rigol scope) but of course not as fast sampling. Nyquist theorem says that you have to sample twice as fast as the fastest signal you want too get data from. Overshoots and noise will most often have a very high frequency and can often not be seen with a slow sampling oscilloscope. For power electronics etc. it's better to buy a faster oscilloscope but for micro controller projects (digital signals) the DSO quad/nano is very good.

As they are going to build a scope from an arduino I think the DSO quad/nano etc would do.
Click to expand...
So you don't want to run any power though the power stage on the micro controller? If you are talking anything ebike related I would assume you want to look at mosfets switching currents from 5 amps and up! So if you are not using it for anything ebike related then maybe you can get by. But I still don't see the reason not to get something that will do other things for you in the future. AND BTW MY DSO is a shitty signal and the capture when scoping Digital is garbage!

So I am sorry if you are not relating this purchase to something for working on what our forum is based upon.
 
I'm just saying that different scopes can be of different use to different persons. My DSO nano has been very useful for the things I have used it for which is mostly micro controller stuff. I have some friends that also own one and try are happy with it. But as said, for power electronics go for a rigol, tektronix or whatever but it might be overkill for some uses and also they do take up space for the ones that doesn't have a dedicated workshop.

The DSO quad/nano is not crap for what it is intended for (and for the price paid for a handheld it's very good - compare the price and specs with the fluke handheld scopes).
 
bose said:
Nyquist theorem says that you have to sample twice as fast as the fastest signal you want too get data from.
Click to expand...
Which in practice is a fallacy. It applies if you're measuring pure sine waves. For a more "arbitrary form" signal you need at least 5 to 10x.

bose said:
(...) but for micro controller projects (digital signals) the DSO quad/nano is very good.
Click to expand...
If you only care for digital signals, get (or build) a signal analyzer. They can be built with nice specs as they are far less "demanding" than analog acquisition.
 
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