Oscilloscopes

Anyone know a good make of portable scopes?

I've wanted to get one for quite some time, but they always seem to be very expensive.

Casually searching Google led me to one that was $19k+ just now 

  On 12/5/2018 at 8:40 PM, Braintree said:

I've wanted to get one for quite some time, but they always seem to be very expensive.

Casually searching Google led me to one that was $19k+ just now 

 

Well, you don't need something that goes up to the multi-gigahertz range if you're only going to be looking at audio signals. There are bunch of oscilloscopes that are well below 100USD. 

 

Check this for example for 25.50USD. Goes up to 200kHz which is well enough for any audio purpose.

 

I have no idea how good it is but for 25.50 it seems quite reasonable.

I would prefer to have an analogue one with a larger screen so I can get a decent video of it.

not sure if youre looking for a precise oscilloscope or just cool looking imagery- if the latter you can hack any crt or tube tv to show waveforms.  There are lots of guides online, but it takes some electronics skill (and potentially dangerous, ie know what youre doing)

Yeah, I've looked into that. The tube inside may explode (implode) so I'd rather not go that route. I like having most of my fingers intact.

  On 12/6/2018 at 8:36 PM, Braintree said:

I would prefer to have an analogue one with a larger screen so I can get a decent video of it.

Modern professional oscilloscopes aren't analogue. They are basically Windows PCs in oscilloscope cases with some additional HW and SW. You might as well get a USB oscilloscope and screen cap the video..

 

If you really want an analogue oscilloscope you need to get a very old model.

what about the warmth!?

  On 12/6/2018 at 9:29 PM, juiceciuj said:

what about the warmth!?

Unfortunately analogue warmth isn't the top priority when engineers design measurement instruments.

  On 12/7/2018 at 7:04 PM, mokz said:

 

  On 12/6/2018 at 9:29 PM, juiceciuj said:

what about the warmth!?

Unfortunately analogue warmth isn't the top priority when engineers design measurement instruments.

They use thermometers for that.

You could just bounce the digital oscilloscope stream to VHS and then record the video back to the computer.

I've done one TV scope hack thing for x/y scoping. was fun but, problem: the coils in a TV set have pretty bad frequency response, also the x and y coil are not the same. the vertical coil is designed to do a 60Hz sawtooth movement basically, and the horizontal coil is designed to scan like 320 or whatever lines per 1/60th second, so the design rate would be 19200Hz or whatever... In the TV I hacked, it was not possible to draw basic lissajous shapes like a circle due to that, the one coil had massive lag / phase shift over the other and expected different amplitude as well.

 

but, it was RGB and was fun for a day.

 

/// 

 

yeh for good visuals, forget digital scopes. the cool thing with analog scopes is, there's no frame rate. the output looks very "direct", you send voltage into the tube and it reacts instantly.. digital scopes are basically weak computers with extremely ugly UI rendering ie pixel based and usually low-res, and a low refresh rate..

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Oscilloscope-Multimeter-Professional-Scopemeter-Resistance/dp/B071L8YD7G/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1544977115&sr=8-4&keywords=oscilloscope

 

does this appear to be OK?

I'd think some scanning lasers would have a scope function?

I remember seeing a video where they had a laser pointer shoot at a beer can (or aluminum foil or a similar reflective surface), which was somehow acoustically coupled (read: taped to a speaker) and so the laser reflected off the can and made a shape on the wall dependent on what frequencies were going through the speaker.

 

Something like this seems to be what I am talking about, although I have never seen this particular video before.

 

a fock machine..

 

 

 

https://i.imgur.com/yfugFVy.mp4

lol

I just waited until I found an old analog scope in the trash and it has done the job as well as I need it to for years, but that's not really helpful.

 

But if you can forego portability and live someplace with enough people around that it has an antique radio club or similar, you might be able to find one very cheap that way.  The Internet has changed the dynamic of things like that a lot but it's still possible to find secrets (like the hardware store I used to go to whose owner was an old school antique radio guy and had a word-of-mouth-only shop in the basement where he had THOUSANDS of fully tested and organized vintage tubes at low prices if you knew to ask and he liked you.

Edited January 17, 2019 by RSP