Spark Logic

DIY Oscilloscopes – List and Discussions

ThunderOwl Sun Jan 15, 2017 4:01 pm

Hello, all crazy lunatics of DIY electronics! Me myself – I sure qualify to that description. Recently I got seriously addicted to DIY oscilloscopes. Different kinds of them, any level of complexity really. I was, and still am, collecting links, information, solutions, technical details. Trying already many of them. Why? Because it is addiction, and, feeding your addiction releases some “happiness hormones” into your brain, that’s why. I don’t really need oscilloscope as a tool. Have some decent ones at work, and not even using them that much. So, my point is – I have great fun finding DIY scopes projects and trying them.
Now, when I look at my bookmarks and materials I have collected to this topic, two things comes to mind. First – obviously, I am insane. But that’s okay, nothing new here. But second – hmm, lotsa work done collecting all that. So, I decided to share my findings, and encouragement from some authors and discussions participants helped, so that I am really doing it.
—–End of Lyrics :) ———–

Here I will maintain list of DIY scopes that I have found (and YOU will suggest) and considered interesting for one reason or another.
At first, I will post just list with, minimum (or none) descriptions. When I feel like it, I will add stuff, by editing and expanding original post.
Links to resources will be coded in groups. That, I imagine, will keep things a bit organized, and will help to reference to particular projects in upcoming discussions, if there will be any. For example, “I just tried S-03-(T) and it sucks enormously”. You got the idea.

GROUP CODES:
—————-
S-xx “Simple”, projects that have some MCU and not much else, or some other very simple solution. I mean simple just hardware-wise, don’t ignore them. If some just one MCU has 4 internal ADCs working in tandem (“quandem”…? is that a word?), results might be pretty interesting.

M-xx “Medium”, usually it will be MCU(s) plus some external ADC(s), input buffers, etc, etc.

A-xx “Advanced”, those are where things got pretty serious, usually involving FPGAs and other esoteric magic.

N-xx “Not-Finished”, projects that looks very interesting, but are maybe not finished, maybe migrated to somewhere, maybe will come back, maybe we will find where is it now.

C-xx “Clones”, direct or semi-direct clones of commercial products. Copied, reverse engineered.

P-xx “Price”. Kind of DIY, but you can not really, well, DIY. Need to pay for something. I did want to name it “G” for “greed”… Still, there are some really interesting ones, and let’s hope we migrate them to “C”-category someday.
—————–

NUMBERING
list numbers “xx” does NOT represent importance, coolness, bad-ass-ness, or anything, really. Just some number for reference. Except for “S-01”. But you will see why.
—————–

SUFFIXES
(T) – tested by me. Not necessary in finished state, but somehow tested.
(RU) – source in russian language (i am latvian, but I also know russian and english).
(DE) – source in german.
(PL) – source in polish language.
(…) – maybe some other languages too.
For “T”-marked there usually will be link to some pics of my testing.

Okay, here we go:
=== LIST OF DIY OSCILLOSCOPE PROJECTS ===

Replies

ThunderOwl Fri Mar 17, 2017 8:04 am

New entry, in “advanced” area:
A-13-(RU) FPGA XILINX SPARTAN-6, ADC, USB “OSA-103 MINI”
Just found out about this DIY USB scope project (thanks for tip, Apex!!), and it looks interesting to me – not overcomplicated, but with modern FPGA. It says there, that software is free, but non-copyable, so you have to contact Author for making it for individual use. My guess – Author is providing firmware that is locked to particular hardware (new project “GFXscope v3.0” (my code P-02-(RU)) is doing similar). I will contact Author, will post here, what are terms of getting firmware.
http://u.to/XNjLDw

ThunderOwl Sun Mar 26, 2017 2:52 pm

Entry S-14 now has “(T)” suffix, it is tested by me. Almost finished construction:
http://bildites.lv/a/xfjbphbf#6cn35b7u
as any STM32F103 based scope without additional hardware, it is usable for some tens of kHz.
When (if..) Author updates design, I will follow that and post here.

ag123 Fri Mar 31, 2017 5:57 pm

with the recent fad on stm32f407** boards
http://www.stm32duino.com/viewtopic.php … 91&p=25673

i’m thinking that we could literally do a version for stm32f4 as well :lol:
someone has done a pretty decent 16 ch x 20 msps logic analyzer
https://code.google.com/archive/p/logicdiscovery/

looking at the specs
http://www.st.com/content/st_com/en/pro … 407ve.html
-3×12-bit, 2.4 MSPS A/D converters: up to 24 channels and 7.2 MSPS in triple interleaved mode
… USB 2.0 high-speed/full-speed device/host/OTG controller with dedicated DMA, on-chip full-speed PHY and ULPI
with usb 2.0 high speed raw signaling rate of 480 Mbit/s, throughput at perhaps 200 mbps
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USB#USB_2.0

assuming that it is possible to achieve the theoretical 7.2 msps x 12 bits ~ 86.4 mbps
my guess is that 1 could literally wire that ADC data stream back to the pc & display that in real time
or the permutations of 3 x 2.4 msps or 6 x 1.2 msps
:lol:

ThunderOwl Mon Apr 03, 2017 2:06 pm

I did some testing of various op-amps that I had, how does meandr looks like at 500kHz and 1MHz on one and the same oscilloscope hardware.
Maybe interesting to someone:
EDIT (important!): link to images is changed, and pictures are changed too. Previous tests were at wrong input conditions, MY BAD! I appologize…
http://bildites.lv/a/27ksd5sc#cvytkerv (this is new link, correct pictures)

(i tried to attach zip file with pictures here, but 1MB is too large for this place)

ahull Sun May 14, 2017 10:05 am

Not sure if any of you have seen this before…

… they don’t make ’em like that any more.

zmemw16 Sun May 14, 2017 1:42 pm

OMG Thank G
once upon a time they were the ‘advanced’ model :)
stephen

zmemw16 Mon May 15, 2017 4:26 pm

jaw still on floor :lol:

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