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USB DSO: Final Form & Data Captures

Posted Fri, 20th Apr '12 at 9:25pm by Blackthorne TA

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Here are a few pics of the finished and buttoned up enclosure and a few screen caps of the Oscilloscope software I wrote with the Oscilloscope hooked up to a waveform generator at various waveforms and frequencies.

Here's the enclosed project without the oscilloscope probe from the top:


Here's the enclosed project without the oscilloscope probe from the bottom:


Here's the project with the probe attached and the left side of my workbench:


Here's a screencap of the oscilloscope capturing a 1MHz sine wave:


Here's a screencap of the oscilloscope capturing a 100KHz sine wave:


Here's a screencap of the oscilloscope capturing a 20KHz triangle wave:


And finally a 1KHz square wave:


So that's it!

I could go into technical details of the firmware and software, but there doesn't seem to be much interest...

Posted in Oscilloscope Project

Views 12499 Comments 10

Comments

1. 	I'm still in awe that you can make something like that. Very nice screencaps of the oscilloscope capturing different wave forms. I especially liked the 1MHz sine wave.
   	Posted Sat, 21st Apr '12 at 4:36am by Dice

2. 	Thanks! It was a lot of fun and I learned quite a bit.
   	Posted Sat, 21st Apr '12 at 5:30am by Blackthorne TA

3. 	BTA, forgive me if you've already stated this in a prior blog, but just what does this thing do, in layman's terms?
   	Posted Sat, 21st Apr '12 at 8:34pm by Gaear

4. Oh, it's an electrical/electronic diagnostic tool. At a very basic level, it measures voltage levels. But since voltages in any device can change very quickly, something like a voltmeter is not adequate for diagnosing high-speed issues or visualizing high-speed electrical signals. That's where an oscilloscope comes in. As you can see from the above, it can easily capture a signal that changes a million times per second, and it can capture a wide range of voltage frequencies as you can also see. Does that clear it up? If not, just say so and I'll try a different tack.

   Posted Sun, 22nd Apr '12 at 1:59am by Blackthorne TA

5. 	Yeah, that covers the basics, thanks. Next question - what would you use such a thing for and why?
   	Posted Sun, 22nd Apr '12 at 2:30am by Gaear

6. 	Hehe, well like I said it's a diagnostic tool, so one would use it to troubleshoot electronics. Obviously someone with no electronics training or skills would have no use for one. For me specifically, I thought it would be a useful project to do and I could use it for future projects while at the same time learning something like I laid out in the opening blog post.
   	Posted Sun, 22nd Apr '12 at 4:42am by Blackthorne TA

7. 	Yeah, I understand about the personal motivation. So you could somehow hook it up to your DVD player or something and run diagnostic tests? Neat.
   	Posted Sun, 22nd Apr '12 at 7:17am by Gaear

8. I could do that if I knew how the DVD player (or whatever) was supposed to work (i.e. what the voltage waveforms were supposed to look like at various points). I remember when I was young my Dad built a vacuum-tube color TV from a kit (Heathkit?), and he had to borrow an oscilloscope from work to figure out that one of the parts was bad. Of course the kit laid everything out for you with schematics etc. Not sure how easy that would be with some consumer electronics gadget where user instructions are barely supplied any more

   Posted Mon, 23rd Apr '12 at 10:13pm by Blackthorne TA

9. 	Neat, interesting screenshots.
   	Posted Fri, 25th May '12 at 2:10pm by Taluntain

10. 	Thanks! I tried to capture a wide range of frequencies and waveforms to give everyone an idea of the capabilities and what it looks like.
    	Posted Fri, 25th May '12 at 10:18pm by Blackthorne TA

Blackthorne TA

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