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No, if I connect probes it still doing measures by itself...
If I set ACQUIRE to "AVERAGE 16" I can see 0 values, but if I choose the default "SAMPLE MODE" (that I think is the right one to use) I can reads some variable values on that fields (PK-PK, MEAN, CYC RPM, etc).
Also if I connect probe itself with its ground, nothing changes.
Chippie, so if you don't connect probes you read PK-PK, MEAN, CYC-RMS values to zero, please?
May you tell me which setting are you using, please?
Yes, but please apologize me: someone could help me to understand if this unit is defective or not, please?
I'm not skilled yet with oscilloscopes, this is my first one so I'm not able to understand if this unit is ok or if it is broken.
May you suggest me some tests that I can do to verify it, please?
Someone who owns it, may tell me more about the issue I exposed please?
In few words: If I power on it, also without probes, I can see that it gives me some measures about PK-PK, MEAN, CYC RMS. Is this normal, or should it shows ZERO at all fields, please?
I just switched on my 60MHz portable o-scope, using the AC adapter, removed the A-channel probe, set it to its lowest input value of 100mV, sweep is 5ms, and it reads Vpp=0.00V, Vrms=2.81mV, Vave= -2.81mV (Vaverage). There is no bobble in the readings at all. The trace is steady as a rock. I changed the sweep to 5ns. Same as before. This is NOT a high end brand name instrument.
Five minutes later it's bobbling 125 mV. The three voltage readings from before are now 65 to 75 mV. This is with or without a probe. This is more like it. This is what I expected. I might as well do a recalibration and see what it says afterward.
Most o-scope manufacturers state that the unit must be allowed to run 20 to 30 minutes to allow the front end of the input to stabilize before doing auto-calibration. My Tek scope says to remove the probes before starting recal. This scope says to do the same in the manual, but says to "short terminals 1 and 2 before starting" on the screen at the start of cal. I went with the manual. I removed the probes before starting. BTW, most o-scope manuafacturers recommend you recal if the ambient temperature changes 5 deg C.
OK, the recal is done. All the settings so carefully arrived at with usage are now out the window. After resetting everything in sight and saving it all, I do some testing. I take a fresh AA battery out of the package and measure it with a fairly new DMM. It reads 1.67Vdc. I measure it on channel one: 1.71V. Channel 2 is 1.69V. Fair enough.
And what are the traces doing while sitting there, no signal applied? They are both bouncing up and down slowly, less than 10Hz. Channel one's Vpp is 1V to 1.25V; channel two's Vpp is 780mV to 820mV. If I ground both at the probe, I have hashy traces that measure 340mV (Vpp) at Chan1 and 187mV (Vpp) at Chan2. If I set both their inputs to GND they are dead flat. The measurements are "****", meaning they are too small for even the minimal usable value, something like 2.8mV.
OK, here's the skinny: Digital scopes tend to look "noisy" in their traces as compared to an old fashioned analog scope. This same noise was there in the analog scope, but "bloom" caused by the phosphor on the screen made the trace look "fat" and largely consistent. Digital scopes and their tiny, distinct dots on the LCD screen look "noisy". Your frontend is a couple of FETs and like all transistors they generate their own noise. And the probes act like antennae, even with their cable's shielding. Shorting the tips to the ground clip helps reduce this noise some, but not entirely. An old TV repair trick used with dark screen TVs was to short the ground clip to the probe tip and hold it just above the neck of the CRT. If the horizontal sweep was working its signal appeared on the screen. No signal, dead horizontal oscillator.
So, if you follow the instructions in your manual for a calibration (after 30 minutes warmup) and you get the same results I got when done, you're probably OK. The main thing is, do you get the proper readings when testing against known signals? Does the battery voltage look right as compared to a reading on a known good meter? If you get your hands on one, test it against a known good signal generator. Remember, the quoted bandwidth for any instrument is usuall for a sine wave. A squarewave is good for one tenth that value. Ie, if your scope is rated 20MHz, that's for a sine wave, it will only accurately measure square waves to 2 MHz.
An oscilloscope is an extremely useful tool.
Have fun with your projects.
kenjj
This is stupid but did you test your probe for both 1) continutity on each conductor and 2) short. Just use a multi meter. I have had bad probe right out of a pre-packaged pair that came with an old scope so it is NOT impossible.
I bought an Owon PDS5022S a couple of months ago. It was £197 from CPC-Farnell. Amazing value for money! It has proved reliable, easy to drive and "does what it says on the tin". The 256-bit vertical resolution is maybe a bit chunky, but the 5000-sample resolution is great, as is the ease of expanding a trace for examination - you just capture at one timebase setting, then wind up the timebase ad infinitum to look at the detail. That's much better than the fiddly Zoom control on the £3000 scope I used at work.
I've had my OWON PDS5022S for about 6 months. The only drawback I've found is that you have to look at the screen from just about dead in, get off to the side very much and the screen looks blank. Try looking at a RS232 bit stream with an analog non-storage scope and then with the OWON and you will be convinced to get the OWON or a comparable scope.
Al
I'm going to go against my better judgement here and go for one of these OWON scopes. I'm just getting back into electronics and not really sure if I will make full use of an oscilloscope yet so this is why I'm not going to spend a ton of money on one. I'm sure if everything works as advertised the PDS5022s will suit me fine to begin with. I hope
I'm in the same position you are: considering getting back into this stuff but too uncertain to spend a lot of money. If you purchase this scope please get back to us on what you find.
I'm in the same position you are: considering getting back into this stuff but too uncertain to spend a lot of money. If you purchase this scope please get back to us on what you find.
Well.. The scope works as advertised and I have found it very useful. One thing I would mention is that if anybody gets one of these, Make sure you get one with the latest firmware (v6.2.) With the latest firmwares you will get the FFT function active on the scope. I got a scope with FW version 5.2 which does not have the FFT feature and although I don't miss it It would have been nice to have just incase. Don't worry though as OWON UK in Preston can flash the FW up to the latest FW for about £25 + Postage.
If anybody has a few more £££'s to spend get the Rigol DS1052E from Best Buy UK. It's on offer right now... £266.. BEST BUY
Hello everybody, im new here.
Sorry my English in poor, i will try to be clear!!
After testing my new OWON HDS oscilloscope I can tell you some good and some not very good things about it, most of them are not in the manual:
Model HDS3102M-N
Firmware V1.7
PHYSICAL
-First impresion Very well finished looks strong and nice.
-Inside, PCB, components mount and soldering... exellent.
-BNC connectors apear to be in plastic, not very good.
-Screen 6 backlight levels from very dark to very bigth, hugly color scheme(red blue)
-Screen res. 640x480 (physical) showing a x2 scaled 320x240 image, anyway it look sharp.
INTERFACE
-Menu easy to use but items are not in a very logic order.
-keys good touch.
-Scale keys with practical on screen help.
-F keys not programable.
-Very useful autoset function key bot chanels, only chan1 if autoset is disabled in menu.
-Useful copy screen to USB memory function key (vectored or BMP).
-Only 2 simultaneous on screen automatic measures + cymometer.
-6 lenguge menssages set.
BATERY
-Chargin about 3 hours for full charge.
-More than 4:30 hours charge lasting (continuos use).
PERFORMANCE
-Input HF noise about 2.4mVp
-Saple 500Mhz bot chanels, 1 nS betwen sample chanel 1 and 2 at 500MSample rate.
-Very stable triger system.
-Very wide timebase range fron 100S/div to 5nS/div.
-Good 6K buffer per chanel alow good captured event analisys.
-Useful storange function alowing to store up to 3000 vectored screen captures (each screen up to 6K samples per chanel) in the internal non volatil memory, recall it and playback it.
-4 memory slots A,B,C,D to store screen waves (not vector).
-All functions work as expected, as it is in the manual.
DMM
-Little slow.
-Use DC/DC isolated converter and optoisolators so it is true isolated from DSO blok.
ACCESORIES.
-Beautiful and practical suitcase, plastic and metal made, very protective.
-HDS unit is a high quality device but accesories are mid quality.
My conclution is:
Very good tool, i can advice a friend to buy it, very good product for its price.
The most important thing is the performance that is very good, the functions like cursor measure, FFT, storange, triger, auto set works very well, as expected.
The bad things about it are not critical like color scheme, F key not programable.
I think there are Chinese peopple taying to make good products and they are reaching this goal.
I hope this info can be of interest for you.
Best regards to all.
Luis Gomez B.
Thanks for taking the time to give us that report. However, I'm considering spending a little more money for the Rigol DS1052E scope. Google eevblog for info.
I just picked up an OWON PDS 5022S oscilloscope, and I love it! The only ( minor ) drawback I found is the way-too-short ground leads on the test probes. Fortunately, I found a simple solution: First, carefully remove the ground leads from the test probes. Now, get a jumper cable 2 or 3 feet long, and attach one end to the ground lead of the probe compensator on the front panel, and the other end to your circuit ground. That's it - you're ready to go! I got my scope through Saelig.com, and they gave me a great deal! If you order through them, be sure to call 'em up and ask about any promo codes that might be available - I did and got free shipping! That's it for now - happy scoping!
After having my good old 5022S for just about 3 years now (got it at the original $399 price back in the day) I looked at an upgrade and saw this Bundle which includes one Regol DS1052E and one Regol DG1022 for $799
Researching both but looks like the bundle knocks off just $100 for the combined total is one was to buy each of the two instruments separately.
After having my good old 5022S for just about 3 years now (got it at the original $399 price back in the day) I looked at an upgrade and saw this Bundle which includes one Regol DS1052E and one Regol DG1022 for $799
Researching both but looks like the bundle knocks off just $100 for the combined total is one was to buy each of the two instruments separately.
I just got a Rigol DS1052E 50MHz for 330 USD from a Chinese site called DHGate and I am happy. It has everything a hobbyist would ever need, including simple FFT, USB data storage (you can plug your thumbdrive) and interface with the computer via serial/USB. The scope can be remote controlled via USB using a PC software called UltraScope (however, all controls on the scopes will be unusable once remote controlled via USB). There is a programming SDK for it too, but I have not yet had the time to try.
Something lacking is perhaps a built-in function generator and/or logic analyzer, which is good to have but not totally important. Also there seems to be no way to set the scope system time, so timestamps of exported waveforms on USB are wrong (default to 2006). Not a big problem, though. A Google search found options to set date/time on other Rigol scope, but not this one.
Another minor bug is that if the USB drive is left connected once the scope is powered off, sometimes it may not detect the USB drive once powered on. You need to disconnect and reconnect the drive.
I read somewhere that you can hack the firmware to get it to 100 MHz but do not dare to try (yet). Most successful attempts only report seeing an additional 2ns option on the timebase settings while many other reported accuracy problem with the hack and suggest a reduced life time since components not meant for 100MHz may be stressed to their limits.
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