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First shot with a scope

Congratulations on getting a scope, they are a valuable tool that will go along way in your understanding of electronics.

In answer to your questions, first regarding grounding. The scope requires a reference (ground) to which the signal (probe) is measured against. The most common method of connecting this ground is to use the "small crocodile clamp". This method should be fine for basic measurements of slow signals. If you compare grounding this way to the one you used where you connected the ground to the input plug, you will notice that the loop of wire formed by the signal to ground connection is much smaller with the "small crocodile clamp". In a nutshell, smaller is better as the larger this loop area, the more noise you have contaminating your measurement.

Second, the sawtooth waveform you are seeing on the 9V supply is probaly the ripple voltage that "rides" on the DC output. Most supplies have a specification for the ripple, typically measured in milivolts (mV). To measure this with the scope, you need to determine what you have set as the "volts per division" on your scope. Then using the grid lines on the scope display, observe the signal. One block or division on the grid lines represents the X volts of your volts per division setting. For example, is you are measuring at 1 volt per division and the sawtooth is 1/2 of a block tall, then you have a 1/2 volt peak - peak sawtooth.

Third, regarding seeing the noise from a switch, this is where the time base (or seconds per division) comes into play. The time base settings determines how much time each grid block on the display represents (measured from left to right). The switch bounce is probably on the order of a few miliseconds. What you can experiment with is setting a trigger point, which is a voltage at which the scope will "fire" and start to display. You can set a trigger for a voltage about halfway between the switch being open and closed, to catch the transition. Once you can see the switch transition, you can play around with the time base, volts per division, and trigger settings to better observe the noise.

Lastly as far as 'holding' the image on the display, your scope may or may not be able to do this. This type of functionality falls under the realm of storage scopes. Most new scopes purchased today are "Digital Storage Scopes" where the data is sampled, processed by a computer, and then displayed on a screen. Since the data is aquired and processed by a computer it is much easier to have a persistant display. This would be in comarison to most analog scopes, which may or may not have some form of storage functionality.

Reply to
Noway2
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I consider myself a pretty much novice in the world of electronics, and I've never used a scope before so I bought a used one and got it yesterday. It's in very good condition, but I have yet not learned how to use it for best results.

Reading the manual, I set all buttons and knobs to "initial state" to be able to put up zero volts as a reference in the crt. The probes looks like a hook with an additional small crocodile clamp. At first I thought i could use either the hook or the clamp, but by reading the manual it looks like the cramp should be put to ground somewhere near I am about to measure.

However. The scope has a separate ground-input, so I took one of the ground-cables and attached it, and connected it to GND (Vcc- on my board I was about to measure) instead.

So far so good. Putting the hook on +5 gives me a straight line. Trying some more, I put the hook on the output pin of an oscillating 555-timer on the board and the crt gives me a "square" wave, except for the vertical lines between the edge rise/fall but I take it that it's the natural behaviour of a scope.

Adding another hook in channel B, I thought that I'll measure +5V (regulated) and +9V (from a wallwort) at the same time to see what happens. The +5V is a straight thin line, while the +9V is a very thick line. I changed the time-knob (volts/time i think it was) to a faster value, and the "line" looks like a sawtooth line and I guess that this is the behaviour of any wallwort.

So, what I want to do now are the following steps:

  1. I want to learn how to calculate/find out what the lowest and highest value of the "sawtooth-line" is for the wallwort, using my scope.

  1. When I push a mechanical button on my PCB, there will be lots of noise. How can I "see" this noise on my scope? The dot is way to rapid for me to see just about anything, and even if I slow it down, anything to the left of the dot (the scope sweeps left to right) is gone. Is there a way to "freeze" the measuring? Just like an EKG.

In case you want the manual for the scope, it's available here (about 8MB):

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Sincerely,                      |                http://bos.hack.org/cv/
Rikard Bosnjakovic              |         Code chef - will cook for food
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Reply to
Rikard Bosnjakovic

I noticed that most of your questions were answered, but didn't see this one. A rectangular waveform (such as a square wave) with a fast risetime and fast falltime moves the beam on the scope face too quickly for the phosphors to become charged so those parts of the waveform will be very dim.

Reply to
Charles Schuler

Congratulations! A 'scope is a great piece of equipment to use. I recommend that you google on something like how to use an oscilloscope or similar.

Better would be having someone show you how. The previous reply covered things - I'll just add that6 when you want to use you scope to look at switch noise, you will need to press the switch many times. Each instance of switch closure can produce a little different pattern on the scope, so it takes more than one look to get an appreciation of what switch noise looks like. A good place to start is with the timebase set to 2 mS per division, and the vertical input set to 5 volts per division.

Ed

Reply to
ehsjr

Hi There

If you go to the Tektronix site, they have downloadable pdf docs on understanding and using oscilloscopes (XYZ of oscilloscopes at

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which are great reading for the learner CRO user. They are free to download, and are relevant to all brands of CRO, not just Tektronix

David

Rikard Bosnjakovic wrote:

Reply to
quietguy

congratulations.

ther's a grid over the front of the scope display the lines divide it into a number of divisions, somewhere on the scope near the input connector will be a control marked "volts per division" (or similar)

so counting divisions from the zero point will tell you how many volts the signal is, as you're probably using a "X10" probe it may be out by a factor of 10. use the 5V supply (or the reference connector on the face of the scope) to guide you in interpreting the volts per division control.

Unless that scope has a storage function (it probably doesn't) you'd need to arrange for it to be pushed many times in quick succession...

contact bounce is somewhat unpredictable, I've not had a lot of success attempting to quantify it.

Bye. Jasen

Reply to
Jasen Betts

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