Need some tutoring on an oscilloscope purchase

[CyFi6]

Well recently I have been in the market for a decent handheld digital oscilloscope which would be wonderful for diagnosing things on my car. This would just be for personal, use, I am not a technician.

The only ones I have any real world experience with are the Snap on Vantage and the Snap On Vantage Pro. I like both of them a lot, the Vantage Pro is an amazing tool, just WAY out of my price league. I looked up the original Vantage graphing meter and they are surprisingly affordable at under $500 for a decent used one.

I am really inexperienced when it comes to these tools, so I would love any guidance on other options out there. I would like to spend less than $500 and need something with mostly basic features, and it needs to be handheld. The Vantage Graphing Meter is looking pretty good, I just really don't know what else is out there.

 

[Nick M]

The only ones I used were Fluke, and it is now outdated according to Fluke. The 95 can be had cheaply on ebay. The 95 will work for any automotive function where you need to plot voltage and time. It will scale up and down very large amounts.

 

[CyFi6]

http://cgi.ebay.com/PHILIPS-FLUKE-9..._Measurement_Equipment_ET&hash=item27bb934354

Is that the one you are refering to?

Can any standard lab scope be used on secondary ignition with the correct leads?

 

[jetjock]

No, not without an adapter or attenuating the signal way down. It won't display typical scope patterns or DLI properly either. No big deal though. Secondary analysis isn't used much these days and takes a fair amount of expertise to interpret. For cars just get a smallish DSO or even an older dual channel analog scope of 100 mhz. It'll do 95% of car stuff and can also be used for other things. Search ebay for ATTEN or RIGOL. Chinese but decent for the price. I own this model and have zero problems with it:

http://tinyurl.com/3wc4j3l

Far from top of the line but likely more than you will ever need. Has math functions too.

Btw I've had a Fluke 95 for 15 years. It died about 5 years ago. Won't turn on and Fluke doesn't fix them anymore. Sits here collecting dust...

 

[CyFi6]

Thanks JJ, I found a similar model for a lot less money, I am having a hard time finding any differences between the two, what do you think?
(edit) Not exactly sure what this means, I assume this is actually a 50mhz rather than 100? "- 100 MHz, 50 MHz Bandwidths". Is 100mhz necessary?
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/rigol-...nnel-digital-color-storage-oscilloscope-30573

Also, whats your take on the handheld?
http://www.dealextreme.com/p/dso106...meter-oscilloscope-with-usb-host-device-35971

 

[jetjock]

Dealextreme huh? I thought those guys went out of business.

I had mentioned lower bandwidth in the previous post but took it out because it limits doing serious electronics work. OK for car use and as a starter scope though.

I looked at Hanteks a few years ago but they were lacking in support. That may have changed though. They have other models as well as automotive scopes so you might want to check out their site before deciding. You could do worse I suppose. Not by much though

It's best to buy more scope (speed, features, sample memory, etc) than you think you'll need because once you learn to use it you'll want them. There's also the adapter/laptop route. I'm not a fan but some people love them.

 

[CyFi6]

When you say support, what do you mean exactly? Are you talking about updates and such or technical support? Would I ever really need that? I am really keen on a handheld battery version...if you saw my "garage" you would understand. I have about a foot of room on either side and maybe 3 feet in front, no benches or anything. Im better off working on my car outside half the time.

I thought about a lap top option but I really don't like that style either. They have some wireless ones, but even so I just hate trying to balance a laptop and use the annoying touch pad etc to navigate, I would much rather have a dedicated unit. The 100mhz dso1200 from Hantek seems like a good option for me, though you did refer to them as almost the worst so I will have to do more research on them I suppose. Are there any other good handheld type scopes in a decent price range that you know of? All the automotive Hantek scopes appear to be lap top based. I know in the future I will be playing with it much more and likely using it on things other than my car, so that is a good idea to look for something with more features (still, I really don't know what to look for as far as features as this point).

 

[jetjock]

Yes, I meant tech support. What if you need parts? When it breaks are you willing to put it back on the slow boat? Or just toss it?

DSO1200 is 200 mhz. It'll do fine. The DSO8060 would be my next choice with the DSO1060 coming in last...

 

[3p141592654]

I was at a conference last week and they were showing network analyzers that are USB powered from a laptop! Seems like this format may be gaining popularity. You might also look at the used market, although scopes don't typically depreciate very fast unless they have some well known deficiency.

 

[mkiiichip]

I have no experience with most of the scopes being talked about here. But i do have experience with fluke and vantage products. The vantage stopped getting updates many years ago, but it does include instructions on how to test most automotive sensors, actuators, switches etc. It will even show connector pinouts, and normal readings for most components . They can be had for fairly cheep, they have shown they will stand the test of time. Hell it was made for "technicians", working on OBD I cars, and from what i gather that s what your looking for. A used snapon product is a better bet IMO. At least find something designed for automotive testing. This is mostly opinion of course.

 

[CyFi6]

Thanks everyone for the help. I may have gone slightly above budget, but I think I got a pretty decent tool which hopefully should last many years! It should be a good learning experience as I slowly figure the thing out, and surprisingly the engrish manual is halfway decent.

 

[CyFi6]

Maybe someone can help me here. I have always had this problem with my scope, perhaps it is just user error. Every time I increase the time/div the scope becomes extremely laggy. For instance, I want to monitor my O2 sensor switching, so I would like at least 10 seconds visible on the screen. The scope updates quickly until I start to approach 1s/div at which point the scope is so laggy it is almost useless. In this video I have the scope hooked up to monitor my O2 sensor voltage, and my engine has some sort of misfire which I presume is why the readings are constantly showing lean, but that is besides the point. Watch how as I increase the time per division the scope becomes slow and quite irritating really. Maybe someone can suggest how to work around this?
[video=youtube;DqAS17hT6wI]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DqAS17hT6wI[/video]

 

[CyFi6]

Bump

 

[3p141592654]

What does the sample rate do as you change your time interval?

 

[CyFi6]

Just spent some time sifting through the menus, but I cant seem to find any way to monitor the current sample rate, is there some other way about doing this? All I know about the sample rate is that it has an advertised sample rate of 500MSa/S

 

[3p141592654]

Typically the sample length is fixed by the available buffer in the scope. So for longer sweeps the sample rate drops to prevent buffer overflow. Obviously at 500MS/s if the sample rate is not reduced the amount of data to process becomes huge over long sweeps.

 

[CyFi6]

That actually makes a lot of sense. I will dig around the manual, maybe there's a way to manually reduce the sampling rate.

 

[3p141592654]

For a long time base sweep it makes more sense to operate as a storage scope than a sampling scope. I don't know if yours has that kind of capability though.