Cheap USB oscilloscopes.

[Buk]

Are (cheap) USB oscilloscopes any good?

Has anyone used a Hantek 6022BE; are they any good?

Is there anything the same price or cheaper that is better?

 

[rjenkinsgb]

I have a Hantek 6104BD, which is very good - as long as you use a good quality USB cable from a USB port that can supply adequate power.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I have a Hantek 6104BD, which is very good - as long as you use a good quality USB cable from a USB port that can supply adequate power.

What sort of issues do you get with poor USB leads?.

 

[rjenkinsgb]

Anything from the main program not connecting, through driver errors / failure to finish installing when the device was plugged in, to total Windows lockup!

Very short cables are generally OK, but I need two metres top get comfortably to where I want the scope box. I bought some new cables when I rearranged things for a new PC, advertised as "heavy duty" suitable for high current loads, but when I installed the Hantek software it did not work and I got all sorts of problems.

After spending a couple of hours messing about with different drivers & software, thinking I'd messed up the new install somewhere or something different was required for Win 10 - and trying other new cables - I eventually dug out an ancient 3m cable I used to use with an inkjet printer.

That worked first try.

I cut the end off one of the new ones and found it was basically all plastic with a very fine four core overall shield type setup in the centre, with all four wires the same size, rather than like good USB cables with much larger power and ground cores.

I should have realised earlier as I've had problems in the past with such as USB hard drives and audio interfaces, other things that take quite a bit of current.

It all worked fine on Win 7 on the other PC, but I only ever used a short cable with that one.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Anything from the main program not connecting, through driver errors / failure to finish installing when the device was plugged in, to total Windows lockup!

Very short cables are generally OK, but I need two metres top get comfortably to where I want the scope box. I bought some new cables when I rearranged things for a new PC, advertised as "heavy duty" suitable for high current loads, but when I installed the Hantek software it did not work and I got all sorts of problems.

After spending a couple of hours messing about with different drivers & software, thinking I'd messed up the new install somewhere or something different was required for Win 10 - and trying other new cables - I eventually dug out an ancient 3m cable I used to use with an inkjet printer.

That worked first try.

I cut the end off one of the new ones and found it was basically all plastic with a very fine four core overall shield type setup in the centre, with all four wires the same size, rather than like good USB cables with much larger power and ground cores.

I should have realised earlier as I've had problems in the past with such as USB hard drives and audio interfaces, other things that take quite a bit of current.

It all worked fine on Win 7 on the other PC, but I only ever used a short cable with that one.

Thanks for that, something worth remembering.

 

[ronsimpson]

Are (cheap) USB oscilloscopes any good?

Using a PC as the guts of a oscilloscope is a good cheap way to get into test equipment. but...
I have a Vector Network Analyzer from years ago that used a PC. Before USB. Who would have guessed that PCs would no longer have serial ports. The last version of software fore the machine is for DOS. It will not run under windows. Have not tried it under Win10 but most likely not. The point is that PCs move along and operating systems evolve leaving a trail of not working software and hardware. I also have three different EEPROM programmers that use a parallel port to connect to the PC. (what is a parallel port?)
I have 20 year old O-scopes that work just fine with out a PC.
What you are doing is just fine. Some time in the future it will stop working when Windows upgrades. OR You get a new PC and the old programs stop working.

 

[Buk]

What you are doing is just fine. Some time in the future it will stop working when Windows upgrades. OR You get a new PC and the old programs stop working.

Understood. I've been using (and programming) pcs since cp/m days; I have a collection of old hardware I keep just for prosterity. From a top-of-the-range 56kb modem that cost £750 30+y/ago; a PS/2 M80 complete with its original 20Mhz processor and 5 1/4" 40mb hd, that was £5000 34 y/ago; an early optical WORM drive. a thinkpad 770 from 1998 cost £7000! Too much more to mention.

However, as far RS232/422 serial ports and 36-pin centronics & DB25 parallel ports are concerned; you can buy adapters to USB, and Windows 7/8/10 will support (most of) them out of the box. (Ie. no extra drivers required.)

 

[ronsimpson]

Oops posted in the wrong spot.

 

[gophert]

You can get a parallel port adapter for your desktop with PCI or PCI-express cards. Or usb to DB25 cables.

 

[Buk]

Nice. Discrete components that you don't need to use 7x magnification, to read the annotations and do internet searches to work out the values.

 

[ronsimpson]

You can get a parallel port adapter for your desktop with PCI or PCI-express cards. Or usb to DB25 cables.

In the DOS days we wrote directly to the ports and not through the operating system. (if you want speed) At some point windows stopped us from doing that. Now all IO must go through the OS. There is no UART at the old address.

 

[gophert]

In the DOS days we wrote directly to the ports and not through the operating system. (if you want speed) At some point windows stopped us from doing that. Now all IO must go through the OS. There is no UART at the old address.

Yeah, I never heard the security gap story that was supposed to fix. But there are enough people running Windows XP or 7 if you really want to do it. The direct port read/write access was only pulled in -2015 on the microsoft C library.

 

[Buk]

In the DOS days we wrote directly to the ports and not through the operating system. (if you want speed) At some point windows stopped us from doing that. Now all IO must go through the OS. There is no UART at the old address.

Indeed. Its kind of hard to allow direct hardware access in a multi-tasking environment.

USB allows the creation of virtual serial ports, and if you stick to the rules, the Windows API lets multiple concurrent tasks each access a different serial port concurrently. If its something you want or need to do, there are lots of guides around.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

Using a PC as the guts of a oscilloscope is a good cheap way to get into test equipment. but...
I have a Vector Network Analyzer from years ago that used a PC. Before USB. Who would have guessed that PCs would no longer have serial ports. The last version of software fore the machine is for DOS. It will not run under windows. Have not tried it under Win10 but most likely not. The point is that PCs move along and operating systems evolve leaving a trail of not working software and hardware. I also have three different EEPROM programmers that use a parallel port to connect to the PC. (what is a parallel port?)
I have 20 year old O-scopes that work just fine with out a PC.

It's rather an unfair comparison

In this case the PC is part of the USB scope - if the power supply (or other part of the 20 year old scope) fails, then that will stop working as well. You don't expect to have the availability of more modern replacement boards for your old oscilloscope, so why would you expect the same of a PC when it's an integral part of an oscilloscope?.

In the DOS days we wrote directly to the ports and not through the operating system. (if you want speed) At some point windows stopped us from doing that. Now all IO must go through the OS. There is no UART at the old address.

That's the point - the hardware doesn't exist - adding a parallel port board (either PCI or USB) doesn't generally work, as it's usually only designed to feed a parallel port printer, and uses totally different hardware.

Having written the worlds first Windows PIC programmer software I'm well aware of the issues - the original PICProg was DOS, written using Turbo Pascal - then as a learning exercise I ported it (and re-wrote it) to Windows 3.1 using Delphi 1.0 and renamed it WinPicProg. Under Windows 3.1 you could directly access the hardware, so it essentially worked like the DOS version - but even at that you generally couldn't access external parallel ports, not even on PCI boards - so WinPicProg only allowed selection of standard PC port addresses. The later versions of Windows though all required accessing via a driver (I used port95nt as I recall?), which made life more difficult, and of course required a move to a later version of Delphi as well.

I did release the source code for the Win 3.1 version of WinPicProg after moving to Win95, and a number of other pic programmers were derived from it - including some which still had my copyright notice in them

 

[gary350]

I bought a $30 oscilloscopes from Ebay I am surprised how well this thing works. It works great for everything I do.

9V Power Adapter For DSO138 2.4" TFT Digital Oscilloscope Kit DIY parts (1Msps) | eBay

Featured Item is the power Adapter for DSO138. - Very high quality Power Adapter for DSO138 Oscilloscope. - Specially designed to work with DSO138 Oscilloscope. 1 reset button & 1 general use button.

www.ebay.com

 

[picbits]

I bought a $7 oscilloscopes from Ebay I am surprised how well this thing works. It works great for everything I do.

9V Power Adapter For DSO138 2.4" TFT Digital Oscilloscope Kit DIY parts (1Msps) | eBay

Featured Item is the power Adapter for DSO138. - Very high quality Power Adapter for DSO138 Oscilloscope. - Specially designed to work with DSO138 Oscilloscope. 1 reset button & 1 general use button.

www.ebay.com

Where did you manage to get that for $7 (that link leads to a power supply) ?

 

[gary350]

Where did you manage to get that for $7 (that link leads to a power supply) ?

I made a mistake I actually paid $30 free postage for that scope with leads & power supply on EBAY. The link shows the scope but link is leads only. Do ebay search you will find the scope.

There are several people selling small scopes now look at this link.

Assembled DSO150 Digital Oscilloscope Kit 2.4" LCD Display With Case Test Clip | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Assembled DSO150 Digital Oscilloscope Kit 2.4" LCD Display With Case Test Clip at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

 

[KeepItSimpleStupid]

However, as far RS232/422 serial ports and 36-pin centronics & DB25 parallel ports are concerned; you can buy adapters to USB, and Windows 7/8/10 will support (most of) them out of the box. (Ie. no extra drivers required.)

There was a lot of CNC machines too. You had direct access to the hardware and the parallel port gave you bits to twiddle quickly.
You had good timing access as well.

i was controlling, open loop, a synchronous motor. It did not have to be accurate, but it could not be all over the place either.
I just needed to advance the motor a certain # of resolutions every 2.5 minutes.

The number of revolutions was computed. The idea was to advance say 6" of PTFE film every 2.5 minutes. The film was thrown out at the end of a run. The film kept a quartz window clean. There was a turns-counting dial on the motor.

I have the DSO 150. There is no battery door. I have a battery holder taped to the back of the scope.

 

[Nigel Goodwin]

I made a mistake I actually paid $30 free postage for that scope with leads & power supply on EBAY. The link shows the scope but link is leads only. Do ebay search you will find the scope.

There are several people selling small scopes now look at this link.

Assembled DSO150 Digital Oscilloscope Kit 2.4" LCD Display With Case Test Clip | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for Assembled DSO150 Digital Oscilloscope Kit 2.4" LCD Display With Case Test Clip at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

I've got both the DSO138 and the DSO150, the DSO150 seems far more useful, and very convenient as a portable scope.

 

[Ian Rogers]

I have a DS0201.. I got it for £40... And is great for field work... The battery lasts forever and it handles every frequency I care about..