Integration of Camera in Cathode ray oscilloscope (CRO)

[Prashantakerkar]

Do you feel it is useful to add a Camera in Cathode ray oscilloscope device?

I Feel it may be useful to capture real time images of waveforms plotted by CRO device. The embedded camera circuit is saving the images which can downloaded to the Pen drive or Computer later and finally taking the hard printed copies on the printer.

Thanks & Regards,
Prashant S Akerkar

 

[(*steve*)]

Back in the days before digital oscilloscopes these were common.

There's no reason you can't do it today. In essence all you need is a camera with a short enough close focus for the display to fill the field of view.

Many phones will do this today with supplementary close-up lenses. The problem is that you typically end up with pronounced distortion and you are unlikely to be able to use manual focus.

For any route you choose to go down, you also want to shield the camera and screen from ambient light. This is normally done by mounting the camera on an opaque shroud which attached to the oscilloscope. This serves the four purposes of: shielding from ambient light, holding the camera at the correct distance, keeping the camera in the correct alignment, and helping to prevent camera shake.

In the past, Polaroid camera were very commonly used, but there's nothing stopping you using a digital camera.

 

[hevans1944]

One of the nice features of a dedicated oscilloscope camera mount, which is generally "light tight" to the outside world, is the ability to open the camera shutter prior to triggering the 'scope in a non-reoccurring (one-shot) sweep mode. This allows the recording of transient events, although that could be problematical at faster sweep speeds, depending on the "speed" or ASA rating of the film used. IIRC, Polaroid made a 10,000 ASA film for this purpose. Digital cameras may approach this sensitivity, so they are worth investigating if you don't want to buy a digital storage oscilloscope (DSO) with bandwidth comparable to a cathode ray oscilloscope (CRO).

 

[davenn]

Do you feel it is useful to add a Camera in Cathode ray oscilloscope device?

I Feel it may be useful to capture real time images of waveforms plotted by CRO device. The embedded camera circuit is saving the images which can downloaded to the Pen drive or Computer later and finally taking the hard printed copies on the printer.

As steve said, it was a common thing in days gone by on the old analog scopes

these days it's pointless as most modern digital scopes can save screen dumps and output the images via USB