USB oscilloscope for troublshooting?

Question

From time to time it'd be really handy to have an oscilloscope. Something like a Tektronix TDS2010 would be very nice. Too nice, and expensive, for as often as I'd use it. And, much too good for the sorts of things I'm likely to measure. An example would be watching for power supply sags during computer boot-up, or maybe disk spin-up. Basically audio bandwidth, but with the ability to capture transients by stop trigger.

What about "oscilloscopes" based on USB sound cards? The one that's handy is xoscope, available via apt on RasPiOS. It's installed, but the man page gives no hint what sort of sound device, or general purpose A/D converters, are supported.

I don't have a hard-and-fast performance requirement, nor one for price. It'd need to work from below 60Hz upwards, and cost around $10/kHz or less at higher bandwidths with a cap in the $200-500 range. DC response would be nice but not essential, calibrated amplitudes aren't really necessary but would be convenient. Possibly the biggest constraint is that I do not own a Windows license and have no modern Windows-compatible hardware, so the choices are MacOS 10.7.5, RasPiOS or FreeBSD only.

If anybody has experiences or suggestions for devices and software to consider please post.

Thanks for reading,

bob prohaska

Ralph Mowery · Accepted Answer

If you are going to spend 200 to 500 look at the Hantek scopes for  around $ 350.

Kerry Imming · Answer

I have a Rigol DS1100 and have been very happy with it.  The auto signal  find option makes it MUCH easier to use than the old scopes.  - Kerry

HW · Answer

From what I understand, most people who have tried both, prefer a standalone scope over a PC based one.

You can get a very nice, brand new, hobby scope for that kind of money. The Rigol DS1054Z seems to be available for around $450. That is a four-channel, 50 MHz scope. It can easily be hacked for 100 MHz bandwidth.

mjmcl · Answer

visual analyser works on FreeBSD with WINE, but you're limited to  soundcard/chip bandwidth and line level input voltages.

bob prohaska · Answer

Understood completely, if this were for routine use I'd agree. But, mine is a once-in-a-blue-moon use case.

That's better than I need by a wide margin, but it's tempting 8-)

Thanks for writing,

bob prohaska

bp · Answer

[dusting off an old thread]bob prohaska    > wrote:Well, it's three years later and I still haven't bought a 'scope 8-(However, I did acquire a passable Win10 laptop, a Lenovo T400S.Assuming I don't want to spring for a standalone scope, does anybodyhave experience with either OWON or Hantek? From the online reviewsOWON seems a little better-regarded in terms of hardware. The OWONVDS1022i is the model I had in mind, or a Hantek 6022beOne issue not raised in the original discussion on this thread wasrepairability of the standalone scopes. A $100 usb scope is acceptedto be a throwaway if damaged. How fixable are the popular standaloneinstruments? I'm thinking about blown front ends, failed switches and simply getting dropped. There seems to be a wide range of cheap DSOs on the market, allfrom names I don't know and a few not met until yesterday:Rigol, FNIRSI, VEVOR, HANMATEK, Hantek and SIGLENT to name a few.Tektronix is still around, but at a price that needs justificationwhich I...

USB oscilloscope for troublshooting?

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