Thursday, April 26, 2012

Oscilloscopes and Arduino's

ARM Oscilloscope DSO-201 Nano (Mini 2.8in) Digital Oscilloscope
I was looking at digital oscilloscopes and kept seeing these really inexpensive (around $70) DSO-201 units showing up all over ebay.  I've only run into one problem so far in the last year where an oscilloscope would have helped me and it was a simple beginner mistake of not taking a tact switch's debounce into account while setting up the sampling rate.  A quick google search of my problem brought up tons of pages of people running into the same problem and their solutions so it was easy enough to fix.  Still, as I get deeper into building electronics it might be another helpful skill to have.  I tried doing a google search for oscilloscope arduino and found Accrochages webpage about using an Arduino to create a very limited, low end oscilloscope with similar capabilities as the DSO-201.  So I guess I have another project to build one of these evenings.  Good thing I just bought a bunch of super cheap Chinese Arduino UNO's.

I figure building a really simple oscilloscope with an Arduino will let me learn the basics of how to use one.  Plus if it does turn out to be useful I'll probably have a better idea of what kind of specs I'll need as there seems to be a big price difference depending on the sampling rate and number of inputs it has.  Although in the $400 price range they start to come with a few more bells and whistles.  Seems like that might be around the price range if I wanted one that would give me a little room to grow into it as I keep building bigger and ever more complicated circuits.

OWON SDS7102 100Mhz Oscilloscope 1GS/s 8" Color LCD USB FFT 2 + 1 Channel

5 comments:

  1. Yes, I am agreeing with your post Info, Now Oscilloscopesis starting to become superior and more portable...plus the design are now becoming more sleek and modern. www.scientechworld.com

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  2. The deeper I get into electronics the more I realize I need to understand the basics of operating an oscilloscope and how to use it to trouble shoot and analyze circuits.

    BTW, scientechworld looks like a pretty cool Indian company that manufactures all kinds of industrial tech goods. I was drooling over the PCB Fabrication systems you guys offer, I've now got another thing to add to my wish list of things I can probably never afford, but would love to have.

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  3. Oscilloscope these days are becoming portable and in terms of technology it is advanced.A very nice piece of information.

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