$60 PC Oscilloscope Review | Hacker News Reader

$60 PC Oscilloscope Review

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88 pointstodsacerdoti31 comments

If you're mostly doing digital stuff then definitely pick up a logic analyzer first. The $10 units from China like this one[1] works great with Sigrok[2].

By oversampling, ie using say 10MSps on a 1MHz signal, you can also get a hint if you have signal integrity issues if the pulses are not stable. Of course won't catch everything but can help for blatant issues.

[1]: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000174086947.html (random seller)

[2]: https://sigrok.org/

I never used them, but read positive comments about those even cheaper 16ch CY7C68013A based boards, also compatible with Sigrok.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/143023856971 (also, random seller)

Based on recommendation from HN, a while ago I picked up an EspoTek Labrador: https://espotek.com/labrador/

Again, not exactly the best oscilloscope in the world, but amazing considering the price ($29).

This thing looks so cool for an absolute starter

I also bought one based on a HN post! I fully concur that it is amazing for such a cheap product. Alas, I haven’t yet had an opportunity to use it in practice — but I fully intend to use it if I ever pick up electronics again!

(It’s also pretty reliable: I managed to snap some pins off by unwisely bending them too far, but the board still works just as well, something which I consider fairly impressive in and of itself.)

I owned a 6022BE, and though it wasn't good enough for basic professional duties, I did fall in love with PC scopes. Easy screenshots, a deep buffer, big display, easy data-acquisition. Fits right into the workflow. So many scopes fall down on their fussy interfaces focusing on features rarely used, and fall flat when you need the data.

Note I didn't use the Hantek software, there are open source alternatives. The Hantek was a good choice 5 years ago. There must be better choices now.

You mentioned alternatives for Desktop Software, can you name a few even if they are Hantek specific?

Installing random random software and drivers has always been something that made me a bit unconfortable about PC scopes.

These days I would (blindly) try [Sigrok](https://sigrok.org/wiki/Hantek_6022BE).

https://github.com/OpenHantek/OpenHantek6022 doesn't look like what I was using..

I didn't find (or remember) the software I was using.

Seeing

“Is it a toy? Or a useful tool? He answers the question in the video below.”

in the intro paragraph, I almost instinctively closed the tab.

Turns out there is a textual verdict before the video: “The verdict? [Adrian] thought it was probably worth the money, but did wish for some things to be better.” It goes on.

Hackaday tends to be pretty good about understanding people not wanting to watch videos. Just keep reading. :)

Their site is one of my favorites to browse in a text-mode browser like links, since generally their articles contain all the important information in the text without relying on the visual aids to carry the content.

For modern and versatile oscilloscope I think nothing beat this new Digilent Analog Discovery Pro but pricier, however the extra functionalities and flexibility are really worth it [1],[2].

These extra functionalities typical of electronics workbench include multimeter, oscilloscope, power supply, logic analyzer, protocol analyzer, logger, wave generator and spectrum analyzer. It can even operates standalone with the Linux Mode if you need it.

[1]Analog Discovery Pro 3000 Series: Portable High Resolution Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes:

https://digilent.com/shop/analog-discovery-pro-3000-series-p...

[2] The Analog Discovery Pro: Why Did We Make It?

https://digilent.com/blog/the-creation-of-the-analog-discove...

How does it compare with Redpitaya ? - https://redpitaya.com/

Not very familiar with Red Pitaya scopes but for a start ADP 3000 series have more analog ports, with 2 or 4 scope ports (depending on version), 2 signal generator ports and 2 sync ports. These extra ports do become handy when you are working on a circuit to test because for all-on-one device you need to use these ports concurrently to mimic the proper electronics workbench set up.

If you are looking for logic analyzer and not afraid of a little DIY - $45 CYUSB3KIT-003 board is supported by Sigrok PulseView. 8Ch @200MHz and 16Ch @100MHz, storage only limited by computer's memory.

https://community.infineon.com/t5/Knowledge-Base-Articles/EZ...

If someone is interested in this PC scope due to space rather than sub-$100 price tag, I've had a great experience with the Digilent Analog Discovery. Disclaimer - I'm not an Electrical Engineer, so YMMV; I got mine at a significant discount ages ago, not sure if it's price competitive these days.

The lack of a shielded, controlled impedance signal path makes such things more of a toy.

You could use them for fault finding audio, or debugging industrial controllers, maybe even some low frequency (1 or 2 Mhz) digital design.

Are you referring to the flywire signal cable which is standard in the box? If so, there is a separate BNC Adapter board available (I use my AD2 with this only).

The BNC adapter doesn't do anything to protect SI. You would need shielded cans and special connectors for it to have a prayer at doing anything to protect from noise and distortion.

The comments talk about a $80 bitscope, then reply they can't find it on the site.

Can confirm that reply: http://my.bitscope.com/store/?p=view&i=item+0 , maybe he bought 10?

I bought the BL rather than the BE in 2019 for $75 shipped. It's now over $90. the ADC works fine, have never tested the logic analyzer part.

Had the bitscope BS05U for a few years. Less than £100 when I bought it. I'm just a hobbyist but it is really good for audio and pwm type work and logic analyser has proved valuable.

The comments there mention lack of hardware trigger, but I don't quite understand why software triggering would not be good enough at these relatively low sample rates? Surely modern cpus can crunch through 48MSPS in real-time no problem?

It's USB2 so if it's doing triggering on the host it must be at a lower frequency. 48 MB/s is a bit too much for USB2.

Raw oscilloscope data over USB sounds like a simple but bad idea. This is almost exactly the situation I'd expect to benefit most from realtime lossless data compression e.g. Huffman coding.

It's the nature of scope measurements that you're measuring something mostly predictable and continuous. Virtually all adjacent samples will be within +/-10% (especially as sample rate increases) so only very special cases would need beyond 12 MB/s to reconstruct the original 48 MB/s data while staying no more than one 64 byte packet behind.

Sure but you lose quite a lot by going from "this always works" to "this works some times depending on your data".

Clearly a hardware trigger is easier than adding compression. Another option would be sending single-bit "above/below trigger" values. Then it's only 6 MB/s which is fine.

There is no software touching the data between ADC and USB. Cypress EZ-USB FX2LP bridge chip is running in GPIF mode

https://www.cypress.com/documentation/application-notes/an66...

https://www.cypress.com/documentation/application-notes/an63...

Its a state machine pumping raw data. Problem is with clocking, you can only use one clock source and few dividers. 48MHz is too fast and you will miss samples. I dont know why Hantek firmware is missing the 30 MHz option, maybe it required different main crystal?

Well this gets messy. It doesn't have bandwidth to stream the full ADC data to PC, but it also doesn't have any capability on the device itself to do triggering. I tried googling around and the best guess how it is supposed to work is that PC periodically polls the device for data and looks for trigger points from what it receives. If the trigger point happens to fall within the buffer that was there at the time of polling then great, otherwise apparently it just loses that trigger(!). No wonder people are commenting that it is crappy, that sounds pretty dubious approach.

It doesnt in advertised 48 MHz sampling mode, all lower speeds should be glitch free.

I was mistaken, both original and openhantek software https://github.com/OpenHantek/OpenHantek6022 support 30 MHz mode. Seems Hantek put 48 MHz option in the product just to be able to claim it on the box https://sigrok.org/wiki/Hantek_6022BE#Protocol Its fully unusable. Cypress chip maxes out in USB2 mode at around 40-42MB/s in optimal conditions - USB HDD connected to modern Intel chipset alone on the bus.

I bought dso-138 for $30 or so, and while it is better than nothing, the UI is terrible. Adding 5 encoders (offset, scale x, scale y, gain, trigger) would cost maybe $2 extra but it would made it significantly better.

https://expeyes.in/

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