I noticed you have a OWON scope, I've been looking for reviews/opinions on them. How do you like it?
Hi Bill,
I bought a Owon PDS6042 a month or two back.
I was in two minds whether to try and pick up a Tek TDS210 off E-Bay as these seemed to be going for a similar price to the Owon scope. In the end I went with the Owon because it has warranty, includes scope probes, and interfaces to the PC using USB.
It is styled like a Tek TDS200 series scope and the manual is almost a copy of the same. This is reflected in the fact that where the TDS210 has a 'Hardcopy' button, the Owon has a button labled 'Not used'. You can of cause use the PC software to get a hardcopy but you get the idea
Some things Owon hasn't got that the Tek has are:
No trigger hold off
No trigger view
No bandwidth limiter
No fine adjustment on the vertical Volts/Div
Vertical sensitivity is 5mV to 5V (2mv to 5v on Tek)
There are probably some others I've missed but they're the main ones I've noticed although non are show stoppers.
The display use a STN colour LCD not TFT so anyone who can recall the early laptop STN displays will know what I mean when I say 'limited viewing angle' Display contrast is adjusted with a thumbwheel pot below the display. It's not a great display if you compare with a good TFT but it's adequate for the intended purpose.
The control legends printed on the plastic case look a bit cheap but the controls themselves are okay.
It can interface to a PC through a USB port (no RS-232, it has blanks where 9/25 way D connectors would go) The software is fairly basic but it does let you capture data and has a real-time mode where the PC functions as the display.
I like its compact size and light weight. The cursors, measurements, and not having to multiply by ten when using a 10x probe makes life so much easier. Being able to capture one-off events like IR remote signals and pre-trigger capture are great facilities to have too.
Given that I've managed with my old Hameg 20Mhz dual trace scope that I bought with one of my first pay packets 25 years ago
I'm quite pleased with the Owon. It's more than adequate for my hobby use and comes at a price I can justify.
I've put a few photo's of the scope in use here
**broken link removed**
Pete