Phoenix Gold Phorum

sooo,

there is this guy, who knows another guy that was thinking to purchase an handheld Oscilloscope to use once or twice a year.

Yes I did a search

I never did find the answer in the thread. What are you guys using?? priced between 100 - 400 bucks.

suggestions??

(no arguments allowed)

DSO Nano

thanks for the reccomendation. My nano should be arriving in the mail soon. So do i need to just buy a stero jack Y cable with 2 female rca. Seems radioshack is my next stop ??

if you have an old RCA that you are not using, cut one end off and put a dab of solder on each of the wires. Then just get a male-to-male rca adaptor and you can just plug into the signal at the front, or the back of the cable.

O.K. o.k.

Help the newbie

I have the nano. Need to understand what exactly i can do with it. I modified the probe to a rca style. I plug it right into the headunit and turn it on. I get a nice wavy line that i can scrunge up and stretch out. not exactly sure on the settings...

what is the recommended horizontal and verticle sensativity?
I am keeping it on auto.
I have a 1khz tone and i can see it reads exactly that on the scope.
What is the setting to check the voltage?
vpp
vram
vavg
dc.v

i am just playing around with it (day one)

I also notice most readings are 3 digit numbers ex: 346v ?? is that 3.4 volts??

Joseph

Have you read the manual? It's short and sweet...
http://www.seeedstudio.com/depot/images ... manual.pdf

For setting gains, none of the values really matter. Just turn up the volume until you see the wave plateau. Just below that is your max volume.

there isn't a recomended setting really, what you want to do is to get one or two BIIIIG PREEETY waves to take up the entire screen.
Vpp- volts peak-to-peak - this means if you have a 4 Vpeak, that then goes down to -4Vp, that you have 8Vpeak-to-peak or how far the signal travels from top to bottom.

Vave- is the average voltage which I would need to look up to be for sure, I think is .707Vp which would be the reading your meter would read if you hooked it up to it.

Really you do not care what the output voltage # is, all you want to do us adjust the gains so that the sign wave stays in its shape, and that the peaks are not clipped, or made to look flat on the scope. Once the sign waves show this, back off the gain a little until it gets its shape back. Now if you wanted to take a peak reading just to see what you have(which is interesting) you can but the number shown really isn't important.

i have not had a lot of time to play with it yet. My question was, the wave can be PREEETY BIIG and not show any signs of clipping on the preamp side, but the voltage could exceed the 3v max input of the XSamp. wouldnt that guarentee clipping on the output side of the amp, even at low levels?

I was thinking i needed to look at the numbers and make sure the max peak to peak was 3v and then turn the gains up on the amp??

thanks for the help.

Joseph

Turn your deck up until it clips first. The XS probably has some headroom for input voltage. If you get to the XS and it's clipping on the lowest gain setting, then you just have to lower the volume of the headunit until it doesn't, then use that as your max level rather than the no-clipping level.

yup agreed, quit lookin at the numbers on ANYTHING till your done and just concentrate on a nice, smooth signal and you will be fine. If you drive it into clipping you will see it, and turn it down.

Sorry to jump into this thread, I've just ordered one of these and am wondering what the max input voltage is? The bumf says 80v with x1 probe, would this be the same with the x10 probe? My mate wants his amps scoping and I'm sure they'll do a fair bit more than 80v before they clip. Anyone shed any light on this? Thanks.