Low cost oscilloscope

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By Phillip Torrone
Posted 2006/07/11 @ 1:58 pm
Category Electronics

Colin writes – “This project attempts to achieve the same functionality as a traditional oscilloscope, using a PIC microcontroller for data acquisition (including appropriate analogue circuitry) which transfers the data to the PC (possibly via RS232, USB or Parallel). A Microsoft Windows based software application will then display the waveform as it would appear on a traditional CRT oscilloscope. This software application will have additional features not present on a traditional oscilloscope (e.g. printing / saving waveforms) with greater flexibly as additional features can be added as their developed without the need for new hardware.” – Link.

In the Maker Shed

6 Responses to Low cost oscilloscope

uofubry on July 11th, 2006 at 12:05 pm said:

May want to look at BitScope (bitscope.net)

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Frodus on July 11th, 2006 at 12:20 pm said:

395 for the cheapest bitscope is a bit steep… this solution seems much cheaper, like under $100, not bad either.

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rodbotic on July 11th, 2006 at 1:52 pm said:

5.75Khtz, scope. I speak higher pitch than that!

good effort. but a faster processor is needed then 20Mhtz.

and serial is a sad way to transfer large amounts of data.

Phillips makes some nice chips that grab data at a nice high speed. then you just need to interface them to a processor that would push the data onto USB. and you have a decent speed scope.

why not use WinScope. it’s an old windows program that uses your soundcard as a 2 channel input.

unforutantly it is only AC, but at least it will do 45KHtz.

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special4k4 on July 11th, 2006 at 2:55 pm said:

Here are some very simple PIC oscilloscopes that I have made in the past:

PIC12F675 Oscilloscope
PIC18F2550 USB HID Oscilloscope

I’m developing a high speed USB oscilloscope utilizing the MAX114.

Let me know what you think!

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Hong on February 21st, 2008 at 12:48 am said:

So how was ur development of the USB scope ??? Can i have a look on it…I want to built one also…My email is LDHONG38@msn.com..Hope to hear from u..Thanks

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Kevin on March 15th, 2008 at 2:02 pm said:

Did any of you implement continuous-time sampling? i.e. sampling/logging on the computer for an extended period of time to grab an entire serial transaction? I would think that (at least for the MAX chip) with a max clock of 20MHz and max ADC freq of 1Msps, there wouldn’t be enough CPU cycles to read the data and process it (especially when transmitting buffered packets to a PC).

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