I'm in a FIRST Robotics Club (Team 4561 TERRORBYTES) and joined not knowing anything about anything, but recently I have been really into the electronics side of things.
I have am slowly putting together a basic (noob) lab, but I still need an oscilloscope. I like this one guy on YouTube (he does this blog called EEV blog or something) and he said that it's best to have both a digital and analog oscilloscope and multimeter.
Is this true, and/or is one better than the other? I already have a Fluke multimeter and don't have an oscilloscope yet so I'm just curious.
I'd also be interested in opinions, which do you prefer and why, etc.
What he's saying there is that if you don't have any money you should buy a second-hand analog scope instead of one of those pocket DSO things off eBay.
That one is a pile of garbage, to say the least. There's a different one called a "DSO Quad" which is orders of magnitude better but doesn't cost much more than that one.
OTOH he has a point. "Real" 'scopes have much better controls and internal circuitry. The DSO quad works well enough but the user interface is horrible and the bandwidth is probably below 10MHz despite what the sellers say.
If you're serious about electronics it's worth waiting a bit longer and saving up to get a proper digital scope.
Hey, glad everyone here seems to know him and knows what I'm talking about
But no, that's not the video. It's the one where he talks about making a semi-decent electronics lab.
He specifically says you should have both, and that you can buy a dirt cheap analog oscillator so that you can see the pattern (?) or something like that.
While that might have been true 10 years ago today's digital scopes are very good and with deep memory there are no longer any advantages to an analogue scope.
I don' think you can even buy a new analog 'scope from a "serious" test & measurement company like Tektronix or Agilent. Where I work, our last analog Tektronix 'scope died several years ago and I've never missed it.
If a beginner in on a very limited budget then obtaining a used older good Tek analog scope is a viable option. But needing both is probably not needed. I have yet to jump into a modern digital scope as my trusty Tek 2213 is still working well and does what I need so far.
David Jones posted a video blog on how to obtain old analog scopes on the cheap.
With so much serial data on Arduino, having an SPI/Serial/I2C monitor and logic analyzer can be handier than a scope. There are times when a scope comes in handy, such as checking integrity of signals, see if one is being overloaded and dragged down or something.
CrossRoads:
With so much serial data on Arduino, having an SPI/Serial/I2C monitor and logic analyzer can be handier than a scope. There are times when a scope comes in handy, such as checking integrity of signals, see if one is being overloaded and dragged down or something.
Agreed, I use the scope mostly for checking DC power supplies noise and other analog low level stuff and some ham radio RF stuff. Still very useful to see those nasty invisible electrons.
Now of course, digital scopes now have LCD displays which use much less power and are (immensely) more compact than the CRT tubes.
The funny thing - in regard to for example, TV sets - is that in the "old days", we had to wait for the CRT tube heaters to come up to temperature.
You would think that digital ones were now "instant on", but in fact, you still have to wait while they do their self-check - and then load Windoze - or something.
