I blew the budget

[Speakerguy]

And I am looking forward to it:

**broken link removed**

DPO3034 with DPO3EMBD serial bus decoding module. It gets here next week

 

[dknguyen]

$8.5k! Is this just for home personal use? Or what? What do you build? I could buy a turbine RC heli for that much (well, half of one. lol).

 

[Speakerguy]

I run a little home business that may one day generate some profit. I also got a bit of a discount on it after some haggling with a sales rep. The 300Mhz was necessary for looking at digital audio signals (24.576MHz is a common bit rate). And I've used all their other lesser (TDS2k, TDS3k) scopes and found them lacking. The DPO3K series is essentially a stripped down DPO/MSO4000, and I've seen/used both and they are freaking awesome.

But yeah, when I start fiddling with PWM amps and digital audio I will need the bandwidth and the DPO (instead of DSO) features. I worked as a mixed signal audio apps engineer at Cirrus Logic and when it came to doing serious work I had to bust out the 500MHz DPO7000 (of which we had many). This is as close as I could come, budget being the limiting factor. Minimizing RF emissions from a PWM amp takes bandwidth if you don't want to hose the FM band.

 

[HiTech]

Nice scope for sure! Did you consider something PC based like WinScope or some of the better software available? It's a real savings.

Considering your forum name, do you design speaker systems or the digital circuits driving them? I haven't designed a speaker system since college days. In fact I still have my first set of 12" 3-way acoustic suspension I built way back before kids and pets entered my life, only to disregard the sanctity of my efforts! I have this dream that one day I will refurb those speakers and add them to my JBLs to make a whomping system driven by my 650 watt rms Heath amp.

 

[Speakerguy]

I do everything from distortion testing of individual drive units to building cabinets and passive and active crossovers and hopefully in the future digital audio electronics (I worked with PWM amplifiers when I was at Cirrus Logic). I own Liberty Instruments Praxis for the measurement and LspCAD for the crossover design (if you don't know what these are you can google 'em).

These days I'm leaning much more towards the electronics as opposed to the woodshop work. Building cabinets gets very old (they're all rectangular MDF boxes) and wood finishing is the only hard part of it (and I find it waaay more frustrating than rewarding, and I think it's fairly impossible to do without an HVLP sprayer and a proper spray booth). So instead of a fully equipped woodshop which wouldn't be any fun in Texas weather anyway, I'm going the electronics route. And again, I have chartered a company which means tax write-off for all this stuff and I do have a business idea that if it works would fill a niche in a certain somewhat narrow field of research (which means I get to hand build it and charge a butt load per unit if it works out). When I was getting my degree I was known as the DSP and audio guru in my college and I had a grad research group outside of my area approach me about something they were looking to find commercially, but unfortunately I couldn't help at the time. Now that I've quit my job, I've got all the time in the world

 

[Speakerguy]

It came today. The vast majority of my 'scope experience has been with DSO's with memory depths in the tens of thousands (TDS2000, TDS3000, Fluke 199C). 5Mpts is a biiiiig jump, and the wheel navigator thing is awesome, making it all really easily accessible. I haven't had any need for the bandwidth or sample rate yet (no digital audio projects on hand), but the memory depth is sweet. It's variable all the way from 1kpts to 5Mpts and it's fun to see the sinc interpolation when you are running it low.

 

[Salgat]

I always love getting a new electronics toy. I hope you really enjoy this

 

[Speakerguy]

Here's a pin on a 12F683 transitioning from low to high. Also, here is a pic of my doggy

 

[Mikebits]

Since we are sharing doggy pics. This was my sweety. She is no longer around but I still miss the little bugger.

 

[Salgat]

Awesome dogs. Have you found that you are putting the DSO to good use?

 

[Speakerguy]

DPO That image was just a single shot, so no DPO-ish look. And not yet. The current project doesn't need anything >1MHz really and I'm still designing the schematic and PCB. It's the digital audio projects I haven't started yet that's going to require it. That's when the serial analysis (SPI/I2C) module gets here and I start working with 24.576MHz bit rates. Until then I'm working on my C routines for the PIC18F chip I'll be using.

In other news, my OKi soldering rework station gets here this week. I had some boards made a while back that were nothing but a bunch of SMT resistors and TSSOP/SOIC packages for me to practice on. I knew a guy in product test at my last job and when I asked him if he could score me some failed IC's he gave me a dozen 2' long rails of faulty TSSOP's I guesstimated that I had just under a thousand 28TSSOP chips.

 

[Speakerguy]

PS - I like the yorkie. I'm dreading the day my Cali passes.