As I mentioned to @ChrisGammell in the Water Cooler thread, I recently bought a $100 handheld Oscilloscope. At work, we have some great Rigol and Sigilent scopes, but I wanted to have something for my home office also. Took me a long time to find something portable at this price point, so I was quite happy to see that it easily can do 30Mhz (and likely the 50Mhz it claims too). I couldn’t find a review of it, so I made my own https://youtu.be/lMSX40AEqi8
Very curious to get feedback on this one! Took a long time to make, so would love to know if I missed out on things I should have tested. Like I mention at the end, I earn a living from making electronics hardware and software, but using an Oscilloscope isn’t one of my primary skills. I hope this purchase can help me learn more and faster.
I enjoyed the review! I will say, I usually am not watching reviews very often like some of the EEVblog forum gearheads, so I’m not sure I’m the best at comparing them overall.
The scope seems…well it seems like a budget scope for sure. I was surprised at your comments about the AD2, as I have found the software to be very capable, but the fact that it’s tethered to a computer means it lives in a certain corner of the lab.
I nearly welded a board recently…and not on purpose. I had not realize the ground of the board I was probing was floating. This had no was issue with my DMM, but when I attempted to connect the ground lead of my scope (which is chassis grounded)…well there were sparks. One the main benefits I can see for this scope is the fact that it’s floating. This would make the $100 worth it, to have when needed. All of the scopes I own (including the AD2) are chassis referenced. Getting into the handheld market is normally pretty pricey, as you showed in your video, so it might be worth it just from that standpoint.
I hope the EEVBlog ppl don’t see it, but I’d probably learn a lot from it if they did?
I understand your comment regarding the AD2, but to clarify a bit: I looked at this video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HXu2RxfJkKc that shows that it has very visible aliasing even at 17Mhz. It can go to 30Mhz, but then it doesn’t look like a Sine wave? Some of the advanced features are apparently also a little off https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sgvk1uRMbZM. I guess I misspoke in the video as it’s not the software I was sceptical to. I also found other videos that showed similar things for the AD2, so for the price of $270 I got a bit sceptical, given that it’s close to a Sigilent 100Mhz benchtop scope in price.
Just a quick update - today I finally got hold of a Waveform Generator that could do 60Mhz. The testing showed that the waveform display is not reliable once you get above 30Mhz using Sine waves. It can detect frequencies up to 40Mhz reasonably well, but after that it’s kind of bingo. For complex waveforms, it looses resolution at 10-15Mhz. It really makes sense given that it only can do up to 200MSPS.
It still serves my purpose of being able to look at Crystals at 25Mhz + not so fast signals, so I’m happy with it.
