Seems we are in a great time for electronics hobbyists wrt to instruments.
What PC instruments do you use and are you happy with them? I refer specifically to lower cost USB type things, and not old-school big boxes with a GPIB interface.
It largley depends on where your area of interest lies. For low-speed digital, yeah, absolutely, but for somewhat more sophisticated desires I'd yet to see anything like:
All of these would have enough demand that I think you could make money building them, although it's hard to say for certain. One thing that is clear these days is that you might easily spend more time on software than hardware, since everyone expects a nice GUI -- possibly a good reason to build boxes like these as open-source.
The list above is ordered from "almost available" to "not at all available:" There are plenty of USB 'scopes out there, just not with the specs listed. There are some spectrum analzyers (even a handful of 2-port network analyzers), but they're often sound card interfaces and hence quite restricted in upper-end frequency. (And with both of these types of instruments, it's very common to see the designers state that... hey!... they're using, e.g., a 14-bit ADC and therefore they have 85+ dB dynamic range, which very often isn't the case due to analog front-ends that don't quite cut it.)
I think the USRP from Matt Ettus for use with GNURadio is a pretty cool board. There's a *lot* of effort invested in that project.
Commercially, I like National Instruments' USB to GPIB adapter. I also like a USB to SPI adapter I designed myself. :-)
---Joel Kolstad
Where is it? Where?
< drool .... pant ... >-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
Hi all,
While surfing we found this supplier from Germany, which has what Joerg wish :
Cheers, Robert
I dault USB is up to the latency/speed requirement.
Sure it is; the idea is that the high-speed digital smarts are in the USB box and that you only transfer the results. Many digital scopes only have VGAish or even QVGAish display resolutions, so you only need to transfer some "handful of bytes" (depends on how fancy you want ot be with "digital phosphor" or similar enhancements) for a "many hundreds of pixels" wide display fast enough for a real time display (some "dozens of updates" per seconds)... so you're probably not even looking at 1MBps and could easily do this over full-speed (12Mbps) USB.
Bonjour Robert,
That's a great start but these are units with their own display. What I was looking for is cheap USB pods, stuff that won't cause much tears if damaged, lost or taken away by airport security.
If you want to know more about these Aaronia analyzers you might want to contact Oliver Bartels. He participates in the German NG de.sci.electronics and understands English well.
-- Regards, Joerg http://www.analogconsultants.com
I'm working on something like that, but the bandwidth isn't anywhere near 500MHz, more like 40MHz. A version with a bandwidth of 500MHz would cost more than a used oscilloscope on Ebay or an auction house. A few weeks ago I came across a Lecroy LC584AM (4 channel 1GHz) for only 1500 euros.
-- Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.) Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl
Agreed; I'm looking for instruments that are significantly cheaper, new, than what you'd spend on the equivalent box, new, from the likes of Agilent or Tek or LeCroy (where a 500MHz scope is still >US$10k = 7500 euros). I think many people (and small businesses) would purchase the "new" model with the bonus of having a physically small box that could hook up to the laptop over the alternatives of used eBay stuff or some of the (usually Korean, and actually often pretty good) imports.
Of course Joerg is wanting that USB spectrum analyzer to be something like US$100 :-), whereas I'd be thrilled with something like US$1k.
---Joel
ElectronDepot website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.