anyone know anything about digital oscilloscope design?

[sanjeevan_a]

instead of buying an expensive oscilloscope, i was wondering whether it is possible to uilding an oscilloscope using a high speed ADC, and a computer.

i want to know if anyone out there has done anything like this, or has some articles on the design of this type of oscilloscope.

 

[kinjalgp]

Check out www.bitscope.com . It is simply a great design.

 

[subzero349]

has anyone ever used this one before? it looks pretty cool...
how does it compare cost and functionality to a store bought one?

 

[kinjalgp]

The scope is much better and very cheap as compared to other branded ones which fall in the same bandwidth (40Mhz). On top of this, it has many other features and a bunch of softwares to choose from.

Few months back I was thinking that the scope is costly, but when I compared the price with other scope, I found it to be the cheapest.

 

[subzero349]

coool...

what do you think would be cheaper?

buying the essential kit and case and serial upgrade kit ($149) - and purchasing all of the other parts from a local electronics store

OR

buying the serial bitscope complete kit and the serial upgrade ($300)??

Any idea how much all of those parts would cost??

 

[kinjalgp]

Well, I would consider buying the essentials kit without network adapter but along with VM220 PIC. Then I shall locally buy one Serial to USB converter or a Serial to Ethernet converter and use the scope either with my network card or USB port.

This is because I calculated the price of components from the local market and it came out to be much lower than the complete kit. Also the postage charges for essentials kit will be low.

I don't know how much the components will cost in your country.

 

[subzero349]

excellent... thank you very much for your suggestions

where can I find the VM220 PIC? Does that not come with the essentials kit? that would be cool to use USB, would the speed still be 112kb/s?

 

[kinjalgp]

VM220 is the updated version of VM120 PIC uC that they used to sell long back. But even now you get VM120 with the Essentials kit. And if required you can buy VM220 by paying additional $25.

I requested them to include VM220 in the Essentials kit (sales@bistcope.com) but there was no reply from them.
Why don't you try and see if they can offer you VM220 instead of VM120?

With USB you can get upto 625 kbps while using a network adapater you can catch upto 1250 kbps. Thats more than enough speed to get you 40Hz of screen refresh rate. Check this page:
https://www.bitscope.com/pic/?p=vm220

 

[linuxking]

take al look at
**broken link removed**

linux

 

[kinjalgp]

The analog bandwidth of that scope is ony 2Mhz. That is too low as comapred to 40Mhz with bitscope. Also the price for a 2Mhz bandwidth is quite high.

 

[sanjeevan_a]

i found a web page with a DSO design, http://www.dsoworld.co.uk/

 

[kinjalgp]

I had seen that page long back. After studying the design and software, I found that it can accept signals of 0-5V amplitude only. Plus there is no amplitude range selection facility. So it can be conluded that this design is in primitive stage.