An electronic oscilloscope is an indispensable thing in production, in a home or training laboratory. This measuring device allows you to look into the operation of electronic circuits, showing on the screen the dynamics of changes in the input potential. It is indispensable for setting up powerful thyristor converters in production. It helps in troubleshooting electrical circuits for monitoring, protection or process control, significantly reducing downtime.
To assemble an oscilloscope with your own hands is a difficult task for a radio amateur, but only if you go the traditional way, trying to imitate the work of modern measuring instruments. We are talking about analog and digital devices that are manufactured on an industrial scale.
The picture is radically changing if we use a household personal computer as a computing node and visual control over the measured voltage. High-speed modern processors can solve any problems, and a large monitor to monitor the measured signal will be only a plus. It remains only to assemble a small circuit, and you will make an oscilloscope with your own hands. The device does not require pre-adjustment.
Let's look at the main parts of the product. You can easily find the circuit and the program for flashing the controller in the specialized literature. Typically, a device has one or more analog inputs. By setting an adjustable divider on one of them, you can change the amplitude of the input signal. This is done to expand the measuring range of the device. As protection against exceeding the permissible voltage, we install a parametric stabilizer or any other device that limits the input voltage level. Everything, you can connect the analog inputs to the microprocessor input, the outputs of which are connected to the connector for connecting the device to the USB port. The circuit is powered using the same port.
Thus, we made our own oscilloscope, but to start the device you need to program the microcontroller and install the interface program to recognize the input signals to your computer. The controller is programmed using the programmer and installed on the board. We also install the necessary program on the computer. As you may have guessed, you made your own usb oscilloscope. The basic requirement is that all installation and programming operations must be performed correctly.
As you can see, a digital oscilloscope is easy to do with your own hands . The speed of this device allows you to configure, repair or study the principle of operation of simple electronic circuits. Such a device is useful in a home laboratory.
To increase the speed of the device, several methods are used, but all of them lead to a complication of the initial circuit. You can use a parallel port to connect the device to a computer , this will bypass the sample rate of the USB port and increase the speed.
In addition, there are special boards that are inserted into the computer and are used to process input signals.