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Cheap Chinese 'scope?

D

Dimitrij Klingbeil

Jan 1, 1970
0
Father Haskell said:
Price is tempting, looks adequate. Anyone used one? Good buy for
$25, or garbage?

http://compare.ebay.com/<snip>

"Max voltage: 0---5V"

Looks like utter and complete garbage, even worse than a cheap sound card
with a resistor divider (or maybe that's what it really is, plus a total
bandwidth screw-up). The cheapest sound chip plus an LM139 for the trigger
could have done better. Definitely not worth buying unless you'd like to
throw money down the drain.
 
R

rickman

Jan 1, 1970
0
"Max voltage: 0---5V"

Looks like utter and complete garbage, even worse than a cheap sound card
with a resistor divider (or maybe that's what it really is, plus a total
bandwidth screw-up). The cheapest sound chip plus an LM139 for the trigger
could have done better. Definitely not worth buying unless you'd like to
throw money down the drain.

Anyone have a recommendation for something useful up to 100 MHz at 1 MHz
prices? lol

I don't really want a full sized unit on my desk. I want a device that
uses the PC for display and control. But they aren't so cheap either if
you find one that seems worthwhile. I see some Hantek units, but as the
bandwidth goes up the price goes up just as fast! I also can't find
anyone who has used one of these.

Is it really that expensive to make a fast front end or are they just
setting the price according to the functionality? If so, that means
there isn't enough competition.
 
F

Father Haskell

Jan 1, 1970
0
"Measurable frequency: 0Hz -----3kHz"

0- 3 kHz covers all but the two highest octaves,
actually. You do lose the higher freq harmonics
and other nuances that make a sound interesting,
though. Or the transients that screw it up.
Doesn't even adequately cover audio.

I wouldn't call it even remotely "adequate".

For Morse code with a log and two rocks, maybe.

What's the cheapest similar design worth buying?
 
R

rickman

Jan 1, 1970
0
The analog front end probably isn't that hard. On the digital side,
you really want a single-shot sample rate of at least 10x your analog
bandwidth (20x is nicer). For a "typical" 100 MHz scope that means 1 G
Sa/sec, with (hopefully) sub-nsec jitter.

Picoscope seems to have the best numbers. Their prices look like
they're close to comparable desktop DSOs from Instek or Rigol.

Yeah, but Pico units are really pricey. I forget the details, but I
think they want $2K for a 300 MHz unit although that may be a 500 MHz BW
unit and it may include some digital inputs. I just remember I didn't
go any further than their price page.

I did a little searching over the last half hour and found a hand held
unit with the Hantek name on it. I don't see it at the Hantek site, but
that doesn't surprise me. The DSO1202B claims 200 MHz BW and 1 GHz
sample rate. The main difference with the DSO1200 seems to be the
DSO1200 has a 500 MHz sample rate and 32 KSample buffer while the 1202B
has a 1 MSample buffer.

I found a couple of reviews on the 1200 where folks seem to recommend a
Rigol desktop unit over this, but not because they have used it. I
think a handheld might be a great combination of small size on the desk
along with full functionality for stand alone operation. It even runs 6
hours on batteries, well, the 1200 does, I haven't found this spec for
the 1202B yet.

I would like digital inputs too, but just haven't found anything decent
at a "reasonable" price. Obviously if everyone is charging more than I
want to pay that makes their price UNreasonable... lol
 
H

hamilton

Jan 1, 1970
0
Anyone have a recommendation for something useful up to 100 MHz at 1 MHz
prices? lol
100Mhz / 3Khz = 33,333.3333

So if you buy 33K of these you will have 100Mhz.

;-)
 
M

miso

Jan 1, 1970
0
Garbage. Only good to 3KHz. Even the worst 44KHz sampling internal
sound card will show something up to 20KHz. Use sound card based PC
scope software instead (which also includes a function generator):
<http://www.sillanumsoft.org/prod01.htm>
For audio, also see:
<http://audacity.sourceforge.net>
<http://www.qsl.net/dl4yhf/spectra1.html>
This unit might possibly go down to DC, which most soundcards don't do.
Still, it is kind of laughable.

I'm not a fan of blackbox devices in general. You are a slave to the
drivers and software. I like having a real display, and then the ability
to feed it to a PC. Based on those cheap Rigols, all they use in China
is XP. Worse yet, activex.

There is a hack for the rtlsdr to do direct sampling to around 30MHz.

I wouldn't mind setting one up to sample 10.7MHz directly. The rtlsdr
isn't really a good radio, but if you feed it the 10.7MHz out on some of
the icoms with wideband 10.7MHz output, you could have a nice panadapter.
 
S

Sjouke Burry

Jan 1, 1970
0
rickman said:
Anyone have a recommendation for something useful up to 100 MHz at 1
MHz prices? lol

I don't really want a full sized unit on my desk. I want a device
that uses the PC for display and control. But they aren't so cheap
either if you find one that seems worthwhile. I see some Hantek
units, but as the bandwidth goes up the price goes up just as fast! I
also can't find anyone who has used one of these.

Is it really that expensive to make a fast front end or are they just
setting the price according to the functionality? If so, that means
there isn't enough competition.

Just download a free Oscilloscope program from the internet.
 
R

rickman

Jan 1, 1970
0
Just download a free Oscilloscope program from the internet.

That isn't a very good oscilloscope for other than audio. No DC and an
upper frequency of 20 kHz. That doesn't do for most of my work.
 
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