EEVblog #926 - Introduction To The Oscilloscope

[EEVblog]

What is an oscilloscope?
What is it useful for?
How is it used?
What is the difference between an old school analog and a modern digital storage oscilloscope?

[whitevamp]

nice vid keep up the good work.
ohh and the embedded links in the vid dont work.

[Markybhoy]

Enjoy the beginner videos 


There seems to be a gap in the market for a good beginner Oscillosope book.

What I'd like to see -

A book that focuses on One model of Osicllosope,  maybe the cheapest rigol.
A tour of all the functions.
Some simple projects that you can build to learn the instrument.
Some faulty projects you build then use the Oscilloscope to troubleshoot it.

[Jeff_Birt]

Great starter video. Instead of delving into excruciating detail about how an oscope works you talked about what its purpose is and why you would want to use one. Starting with the 'view from a height' (shameless Asimov plug) allows the viewer/reader to place the information received in the proper perspective before getting buried in a lot of details.

[eventhorizon]

I agree great video.  Like most of your videos it gives me the beginner more questions than answers and sends me off on a learning path to answer all the questions I have.

[StuUK]

Enjoy the beginner videos 


There seems to be a gap in the market for a good beginner Oscillosope book.

True! I was looking the other day some very old school books but nothing really up to date for todays scopes...

[pickle9000]

It'll be interesting to see how the view count goes.

[strangersound]

Great primer. Continuing from this would make a great series. 

I was especially impressed with the new flipbook plug-in for DaveCad.   

[PA0PBZ]

0:05   “The most essential tool in all of electronics”  I’d say that is a multimeter, not an oscilloscope.
5:10   “0.1 us per division.”  No, it’s 0.1 ms
5:20   “0.5 us” No, it’s 0.5 ms

[Lightages]

I liked this video. Not because I learned anything but because it answers the questions that most newbs have about why they need an oscilloscope. As far as a multimeter being the most essential tool, I would argue that if you have a decent scope with at least two channels, you don't need a multimeter. OK, that might be a bit of a stretch, but it is basically true.

[Smokey]

Good job not trying to tell people they should try to get an analog scope for their first scope.  You could have skipped the analog part for showing what a scope is, but it does make a decent direct comparison for how much more a DSO can do so people won't mistakenly get an analog scope first.

For anyone thinking about bringing up the "everyone should start on an analog scope" silliness here....
Lets make a silly analogy:
You don't go buy a cheap old horse as "training" before getting a drivers license. 
You don't go hang around the glue factory waiting for someone to throw away or give away an unwanted horse if you can't afford a car. 
...But a horse is a perfectly good mode of transportation you may say....
...Think of all the distance traveled by horse before the car was even invented you may say...
...Plenty of people got where they were going with nothing but their trusty horse old horse!!  And even in this world of cars, a horse still works just as well as it always has!

I told you it was going to be silly.

[Brumby]

You could have skipped the analog part for showing what a scope is

I disagree.

By using the analogue scope, Dave was able to directly - and correctly - translate the measurement process from the single point-in-time (meter) to the continuous.  In fact, after the DaveCad flip board plug-in, I would have liked a 15 second description of the spot and deflection process of an analogue scope.  Certainly what followed made it the logical conclusion, but it was not explicitly clear.  While a lot of people will have worked it out, there may be some who would have benefitted from that stepping stone.

The other thing is that I felt there should have been 5 seconds spent being explicitly clear on the need for a repeating waveform for a steady display.

However, once the analogue process was covered, then move on to the digital scope.  I think Dave did this at the right time.

[EEVblog]

It'll be interesting to see how the view count goes.

I'd expect not many of my existing subscribers will watch it because it's not useful for them, so initial view count will probably be low. But about half my daily youtube views come from people searching for keywords, it's really for those people searching for "what is an oscilloscope" or how and oscilloscpe works

[EEVblog]

5:10   “0.1 us per division.”  No, it’s 0.1 ms
5:20   “0.5 us” No, it’s 0.5 ms

You did see the very clear annotation on the video?

[Ampere]

Is this a new video format? It's very compact, lots of information in a relatively short time. I like it. In a few of my previous electronics classes, some of my fellow students had problems using the scopes, and it would have been nice to point them to this video.

Have you considered doing a video on basic transistor building block circuits? Your video on zener diodes was very good. It would be nice to see that same style of explanation applied to another fundamental component like transistors. I know there's a lot of material out there, but most of it is quite dry and not at all hands-on.

[nowlan]

Enjoy the beginner videos 


There seems to be a gap in the market for a good beginner Oscillosope book.

What I'd like to see -

A book that focuses on One model of Osicllosope,  maybe the cheapest rigol.
A tour of all the functions.
Some simple projects that you can build to learn the instrument.
Some faulty projects you build then use the Oscilloscope to troubleshoot it.

http://www.tek.com/learning/oscilloscope-tutorial

Maybe not beginner, but tek are pushing educational market. Im sure they have labs and exercises to help beginners (somewhere).
I think most technical colleges would have their own lab exercise manuals for students to work through.


edit:
http://instrumentationlab.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/BSC01/xyz_scopes.pdf (primer?)
http://info.tek.com/rs/584-WPH-840/images/XYZs-of-Oscilloscopes_03W_8605_7.pdf (full?)

[Brumby]

5:10   “0.1 us per division.”  No, it’s 0.1 ms
5:20   “0.5 us” No, it’s 0.5 ms

You did see the very clear annotation on the video?

I did.

[PA0PBZ]

5:10   “0.1 us per division.”  No, it’s 0.1 ms
5:20   “0.5 us” No, it’s 0.5 ms

You did see the very clear annotation on the video?

Yes I did, and I think you are mixing up horizontal and vertical here

[oldway]

Good job not trying to tell people they should try to get an analog scope for their first scope.  You could have skipped the analog part for showing what a scope is, but it does make a decent direct comparison for how much more a DSO can do so people won't mistakenly get an analog scope first.

For anyone thinking about bringing up the "everyone should start on an analog scope" silliness here....
Lets make a silly analogy:
You don't go buy a cheap old horse as "training" before getting a drivers license. 
You don't go hang around the glue factory waiting for someone to throw away or give away an unwanted horse if you can't afford a car. 
...But a horse is a perfectly good mode of transportation you may say....
...Think of all the distance traveled by horse before the car was even invented you may say...
...Plenty of people got where they were going with nothing but their trusty horse old horse!!  And even in this world of cars, a horse still works just as well as it always has!

I told you it was going to be silly.

Your comparison between analog and digital oscilloscope and  a driver licence and an old horse is absolutely nonsense.
It would be more clever to compare it with buying a Ford model T for training for your driver licence.
When you make such nonsense comparison, you loose all your credits because you proved you are not of good sincerity

NB: A digital oscilloscope has a lot of features that a beginner simply don't need.
But on this forum, there are people who would recommend to a beginner to buy a 6 1/2 digits multimeter...

[PA0PBZ]

I liked this video. Not because I learned anything but because it answers the questions that most newbs have about why they need an oscilloscope. As far as a multimeter being the most essential tool, I would argue that if you have a decent scope with at least two channels, you don't need a multimeter. OK, that might be a bit of a stretch, but it is basically true.

Good luck measuring resistance that way, and even current. Yes you can build part of a multimeter to measure that on a scope, but come on...

[TheSteve]

Dave you need a special edition ds1054z with eevblog branding for such videos.

[WN1X]

Have you considered doing a video on basic transistor building block circuits? Your video on zener diodes was very good. It would be nice to see that same style of explanation applied to another fundamental component like transistors.

I like that idea. Dave could put together a new section of videos covering the basics of electronics, test equipment, etc.

[Smokey]

Good job not trying to tell people they should try to get an analog scope for their first scope.  You could have skipped the analog part for showing what a scope is, but it does make a decent direct comparison for how much more a DSO can do so people won't mistakenly get an analog scope first.

For anyone thinking about bringing up the "everyone should start on an analog scope" silliness here....
Lets make a silly analogy:
You don't go buy a cheap old horse as "training" before getting a drivers license. 
You don't go hang around the glue factory waiting for someone to throw away or give away an unwanted horse if you can't afford a car. 
...But a horse is a perfectly good mode of transportation you may say....
...Think of all the distance traveled by horse before the car was even invented you may say...
...Plenty of people got where they were going with nothing but their trusty horse old horse!!  And even in this world of cars, a horse still works just as well as it always has!

I told you it was going to be silly.

Your comparison between analog and digital oscilloscope and  a driver licence and an old horse is absolutely nonsense.
It would be more clever to compare it with buying a Ford model T for training for your driver licence.
When you make such nonsense comparison, you loose all your credits because you proved you are not of good sincerity

NB: A digital oscilloscope has a lot of features that a beginner simply don't need.
But on this forum, there are people who would recommend to a beginner to buy a 6 1/2 digits multimeter...

I love that your name is "oldway".  Im really sorry man.  Ill get off your lawn.

[Zbig]

I love that your name is "oldway".  Im really sorry man.  Ill get off your lawn.

I stopped trying to argue with this "oldway" guy when he stated that "Capturing single shot or low repetition rate signals is something you really don't need often". No point in wasting your time and energy, just leave him alone in his parallel universe.

[eamoex]

Excellent video, the crazy Aussie Bloke at its best. When he educates wannabe nerds like me!