Are low/lower cost USB Oscilloscope's any good?
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From: MRW on 13 Dec 2006 21:57 I saw this product on RFCafe.com. http://www.virtins.com/indexENUS.html It looks like an oscilloscope based on a PC soundcard, but its limitation is based on the soundcard's sampling rate.
From: John Perry on 14 Dec 2006 02:35 Joerg wrote: > ... >> The company I work for doesn't have much of a budget for test >> equipment, but we have a budget for boards (yeah I know) so I was >> considering making a pretty fast scope / analyser using a quad set of >> 500MS/s A-Ds and a couple of fast FPGAs and some memory. >> >> It won't be perfect, but it might do the job and save 'that budget'. >> > > That's a strange way of looking at the financial bottomline. Look at the > (realistic) number of paid hours you'll be working on that one-off > project and then compare that to a nice used Tek scope. Now copy your > boss on that. > Hah! You obviously don't get bureaucracy. In my last job, in the early days of optical storage, we had at the lab an optical disk drive that wrote only to one kind of disk, 300MB or so, for $100/disk. I suggested we get one of the rather new, but well proven, cdrom drives that would write to 655MB cdroms at less than $1 each. But the drive would cost ~$300. Damn near couldn't do it! They ordered $1000 of the old disks (easily accessible "consumable" funds), and dithered for months over whether to cut into "acquisition" funds for the cd writer. John Perry
From: cbarn24050 on 14 Dec 2006 11:50 news.valornet.com wrote: > Hi, > > I am just trying to mess around with electronics stuff, and I don't know too > much, but I've put a circuit or two together with help from this forum and > others. I've got a fluke DMM and clampmeter, but I'd really like to be able > to scope some stuff sometimes. I just don't know if I could part with the > money for a portable scope like a fluke 123 however just for playing around. > I have some questions and appreciate any suggestions for what might be good: > > 1. Do most scopes have decent voltage input on them? For example, can you > hook most of them up to line power (120vac or 240vac)? I am assuming the > fluke can do this no sweat, but I don't know. > > 2. I also see a bunch of references to X10 probes. Are these used to > reduce the voltage to something a scope can use, for example 240VAC --> > 24VAC ? > > 3. Do you have any recommendations for a scope that works on a notebook > that is relatively low cost that has decent features (keep in mind I have no > idea what features you would want in a scope). > > I would even consider some of these scopes that are free based ones that > work with a sound card, but my question is, what type of voltage input can > you get with a microphone jack??? > > Thanks! > > Alan Well I guess these things have their uses but you cant beat a real scope on so many levels. An old Tek can be had on ebay for peanuts and they work forever.
From: Joel Kolstad on 14 Dec 2006 11:57 "Chris Carlen" <crcarleRemoveThis(a)BOGUSsandia.gov> wrote in message news:elq2ve027c(a)news4.newsguy.com... > I have poor impressions about these folks, but possibly unjustified: > http://www.linkinstruments.com/ They've been around forever -- over a decade, I believe. I once had one of their "logic analyzer" boxes, and while it was nowhere near as feature-laden as a "real" logic analyzer, it was still useful and met its specs. The only downside I recall was that they were quite slow to get drivers for new OSes (Windows 2000, at the time) out the door. The box I used was simple enough that I never had to call them up for support, so I can't comment on how they might fare there. Hmm... I see on their main page they're advertising their DSO-8500 devices as spectrum analyzers. Probably not going to meet Joerg's wishlish with only 100MHz bandwidth and an 8 bit ADC (at 500Msps, so perhaps they effectively get 9 bits with oversampling), unfortunately. > Note that there are benchtop (not PC based) digital scopes coming from > various Chinese makers these days for ridiculously low prices. ....and Korea. Some of them do look compelling. ---Joel
From: qrk on 14 Dec 2006 14:10
On Wed, 13 Dec 2006 13:27:01 -0600, "news.valornet.com" <nospam38925(a)forme.com> wrote: >Hi, > >I am just trying to mess around with electronics stuff, and I don't know too >much, but I've put a circuit or two together with help from this forum and >others. I've got a fluke DMM and clampmeter, but I'd really like to be able >to scope some stuff sometimes. I just don't know if I could part with the >money for a portable scope like a fluke 123 however just for playing around. >I have some questions and appreciate any suggestions for what might be good: > >1. Do most scopes have decent voltage input on them? For example, can you >hook most of them up to line power (120vac or 240vac)? I am assuming the >fluke can do this no sweat, but I don't know. > >2. I also see a bunch of references to X10 probes. Are these used to >reduce the voltage to something a scope can use, for example 240VAC --> >24VAC ? > >3. Do you have any recommendations for a scope that works on a notebook >that is relatively low cost that has decent features (keep in mind I have no >idea what features you would want in a scope). > >I would even consider some of these scopes that are free based ones that >work with a sound card, but my question is, what type of voltage input can >you get with a microphone jack??? > >Thanks! > >Alan > Get a real analog scope. Hunt on Ebay for a Tektronix scope. You can pick up a 465B for pretty cheap (buy it now prices of $200). They were the work-horse scope of industry. I still use my 465 to this day, preferable to my new Tek digi scope for certain applications or trying to set up the digi scope on unknown signals. My 465 is getting close to 30 years old. Also, an old 465 can provide a great learning experience if you read the manual or/and need to fix the scope. --- Mark |