USB Oscilloscopes

Jaguar

Well-Known Member
Aug 2, 2010
221
17
925
Bellevue, WA
I've been interested in delving into learning how to use an oscilloscope, now that I see these affordable models for PC. For my likely uses it never made sense for me to buy expensive or old pro equipment, but these PC models range from $50-200 and don't take up much space.

I'm not an engineer or a technically proficient electronics guy, so I don't know much about an old fashioned oscilloscope, let alone the PC models, so I was wondering if anyone out there can comment on these tools and whether they're equally capable and can operate within the same tolerances.
 

microstrip

VIP/Donor
May 30, 2010
20,806
4,698
2,790
Portugal
I've been interested in delving into learning how to use an oscilloscope, now that I see these affordable models for PC. For my likely uses it never made sense for me to buy expensive or old pro equipment, but these PC models range from $50-200 and don't take up much space.

I'm not an engineer or a technically proficient electronics guy, so I don't know much about an old fashioned oscilloscope, let alone the PC models, so I was wondering if anyone out there can comment on these tools and whether they're equally capable and can operate within the same tolerances.

You have a decent soundcard you just have to install the PScope : https://www.zeitnitz.eu/scope_en.

I have been using it since long with an EMU tracker http://www.creative.com/emu/products/product.aspx?pid=17511, any equivalent soundcard will do it job. I recommend using a separate USB sound card, if by chance you apply a signal that can damage the input you will not destroy the computer, at maximum you loose just the external the USB audio interface.

These PC scopes use the high quality ADC of the soundcard - great precision, but are limited to the audio bandwidth - maximum sampling rate is 192 kHz, bandwidth is around 90 KHz, more than enough for our audio alignment purposes.
 

amirm

Banned
Apr 2, 2010
15,813
37
0
Seattle, WA
I've been interested in delving into learning how to use an oscilloscope, now that I see these affordable models for PC. For my likely uses it never made sense for me to buy expensive or old pro equipment, but these PC models range from $50-200 and don't take up much space.

I'm not an engineer or a technically proficient electronics guy, so I don't know much about an old fashioned oscilloscope, let alone the PC models, so I was wondering if anyone out there can comment on these tools and whether they're equally capable and can operate within the same tolerances.
Definitely avoid USB scopes. With scopes you constantly want to adjust things and using the physical dials is the best way to go by far. Trying to do it with mouse and such is a lot more frustrating. In addition a lot of these chinese USB scopes have lousy front-ends with low sampling rate with the end result being stuff you see that is not really in the source.

The good news is that stand-alone scopes are remarkably cheap these days. The "standard" in hobby world is the Rigol 1054Z: https://www.rigolna.com/products/digital-oscilloscopes/ds1000Z/ds1054z/. As you see the list price is just $400.

All digital scopes these days have a single button for auto measurement. They will set all the parameters so that you can instantly looking at a usable image. While as a new person you would want to learn how to use the scope, the button is always there to get you out of a jam.

Note that these scopes are not very useful for audio as their analog to digital converter is typically 8 to 12 bits. Best to use what micro mentioned if you want to do audio analysis.
 

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