Damned good scope for the money. I've got one myself and use it for time/freq domain signals analysis with RF communications systems. At work I've helped a customer automate measurements into Excel - something I myself at home. I'm pondering buying one for the lab at work to automate some processes.
thanks after posting I did do a little more research n found exactly what you said go with automotive scope I didn't see that before thanks for your input greatly appreciated your watcher youngguncarcare
Can I get by with the 10Mhz for automotive use to see injector and ignition coil waveforms? What could I miss seeing in the signal on a 10Mhz vs a more expensive model? Little concerned that the square wave you showed looks nothing like a square wave. I have an OBD-I vehicle so a DSO is an eventual necessity for me and my channel and I'm seriously considering the 2204A as my first scope. I've never even seen a scope in real life let alone used one but I'm pretty good with a multimeter and have a solid understanding of waveforms since I produce electronic music too. Gotta love synthesizers. :)
What is the difference, apart from specs, between the 2405a 4 channel pico and the 4 channel 4225 pico? Is there really a real world difference that makes the 4225 more than twice the price? Will the 2405a be ok for just day to day car diagnostics? Or will i be crying out for a 4225 within a few weeks? :-)
How easy is it to capture random occasional signals and inspect them? I have bought a cheap OSC482 scope and somehow it's insanely difficult to get it to view a signal that has been captured by a trigger. I see the signal in their PC Cache preview window, but there is no way to navigate to it - no zooming, no scrolling back in time.
Hi, which kind of probe should we use for the AWG ? The ones used to sample signals or another one ? Your video was posted in 2014 did it break or is it still working fine ? :) Thanks :)
Hi, can this do long term recording? For example if I want to monitor a voltage on a car for several hours and then be able to zoom in to parts of the recording later.
Will I be able to capture the data for 10 seconds in a .CSV excel archiivo ??, I analyze changes amplitud.de periodic signal does not signal less than 1 volt :). Thank you. sampling frequency?
Hey, I'm not sure if you could help me out or not. I have a Fluke Scopemeter 105b II. I use it solely for the purpose of looking at analog audio signals. When using it to test a low voltage signal coming from the HU from 0VAC to 5VAC the Scopemeter displays the signal perfectly. When I use it to look at the signal coming from the amplifier 10VAC to 50VAC the signal looks like it does at 10:27 or much much worse. Do I have to change something on the oscilloscope to look at higher voltage analog sine waves with out the waveform looking like it's having an aneurysm?
***** They started releasing a Linux version of the software as well now... so should work I think! Check the PicoTech website as haven't followed that in a while.
It was my lazy solution of screen recording webcam, which gives horrible frame rates, but if it makes you feel better to think I was recording it ironically let's go with that ;)
hey man, I'm working on some new guitar effect pedal designs, and would the 2205A be good enough for my need ? Frequency will be in the audio range and sometimes I will be needing to filter DC ripples. Will it be good enough for my purpose ? Thanks nice review btw
That's exactly what I'm using mine for. The audio spectrum ranges between ~ 1Hz-30kHz. With one of those scopes you can measure even 300 times that Frequency (9 MHz) and get accurate results. They perform really well for Audio and you can even discover disturbing HF-Oscillations in your circuit, that you wouldn't even hear.
Not sure on automotive stuff - should work fine, you might check the picotech forums to see if there's anything critical you need that would make you select their automotive scopes. I think the automotive ones might be more rugged & forgiving of voltage over/under. Also this isn't isolated inputs, so all your grounds are connected for example (thus must be careful to connect scope ground to the same point).
I'm looking to purchase a inexpensive scope. The Siglent scopes claim to have much better specs for about $300. I know you said the specs can be deceiving on many but how do the cheap Siglent scopes compare to the Picoscope 2204a? I have some electronic background from collage and as a elevator repair tech but seldom needed an oscilloscope so my knowledge of them is low. I'm just looking for a good hobby scope to help me expand my knowledge, some repairs and experiment with Radio Control PPM signals (model airplanes). Please help me anyway you can to choose the scope best for me. Thanks.
I think EEVBlog's got some reviews of the Siglent ones - they are probably great for what you need. If you are doing repair work etc it can be nice having the display around for probing things and looking at the signals. There's also a review here: www.ganssle.com/video/episode4-review-of-siglent-sds1102.html#.VH3gacnqZE4 For some of my work having the PicoScope API for control via computer is critical, and the various protocol decoders I find pretty easy to use (since it's all done on your higher-power computer, compared to the embedded platform the stand-alone scopes run on). But it's a bit of personal preference...
I will probably just be using it for hobby based basic electronic circuits. Experimenting with different ICs, filtering and other basic electronic circuits and sometimes just my curiosity to see a signal. What about the other many features of the Picoscope like the frequency generator? Will they be helpful in experimenting and learning or just stuff that I will never use? I understand the portability of a Siglent can be great for repair work but that is not my biggest concern. Two of my biggest conserns are the low voltage and low bandwith ratings. Will they hold me back from accumplishing my experiment projects? Would the higher rating scopes be mainly for more advanced users and not much use for me? I believe that a couple 20:1 attenuators from ebay for $20 each will give me about the same voltage rating as the Siglents. Am I correct?? And if the Siglent bandwith ratings are poorly rated then the PicoScope 2204a would be about equivalent except for features (Pico) and portability (Siglent)? Please correct me where I am wrong, comment on my thoughts and give me your opinion of which is best for me to learn on. Thanks for your help.
I think I'm missing something here, can you explain please? The scope you bought has a memory buffer of 8kS, at 12:32 I can see you're recording with 8kS per screen yet you managed to capture 7 pages of data, how is this possible? I thought it is not possible to record more that the size of your buffer, this is exactly what ScannerDanner is explaining here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ntJJYhkmR4I.html his scope was capable of capturing 32MS (buffer size) and with sampling rate of 1MS he could record pretty much 32 pages, with sample rate of 2MS he could pretty much record 16 pages, 4MS pretty much 8 pages which always adds up to his buffer size but in this case it doesn't make any sense to me, can someone explain please? What am I missing here?
I maybe misunderstanding you, but his screen is about 8000ish samples. At around 12:30 his screen refreshes multiple times (7?) but it's 8k samples per each time. Perhaps the USB link pulls the pages one at a time per each trigger instance? In other words picoscope device buffers 1 page at a time (8k samples) and sends the data to the software on the PC, adding up to the final 7 pages on the screen? Given that the USB streaming time is slower than the real-time sampling, the pages would have a gap in time in between them; but if the serial command packets arrive with some delay from each other and the next page is triggered on the first edge of each packet, this may be a realistic explanation.
the lowest range on those is 25MHz. In order to reliably measure a specific frequency, you'll need at the very very least double that. So with a 25MHz OSC the maximum frequency you can reliably measure is 12,5MHz (realistically more like 10MHz). Tl;Dr: Yes, 2MHz is well within range of even the lowest Pico 2000
I think, the minimum is 10 MHz that they offer. I heard Picoscope guy that to reliably measure a signal, go for around 10 times the signal speed. Nyquist says that measurement should be more than double the signal speed. So I am confused, who is right here. 10x practical guy or >2x theory guy. I am still very confused with memory depth too, to get memory depth of 32MS I need to buy 50 MHz version which is around €300, around 3 times the price of 10 MHz because of memory.
Nyquist theory requires the sampling rate to be >= 2x frequency to read it in. The sampling rate of this oscilloscope is 100 mega samples per second (MSPS) and is a property of the ADC at the backend of the input signal chain. Therefore the ADC can sample frequencies up to 50MHz. The front-end of the input signal chain though is limited to 10MHz frequencies (the amplifiers, filters etc). So the maximum frequency for this model 2204A is 10MHz and it will reliably capture N K's 2MHz signal.
All Probes come with a Trimmer-Capacitor. You can Calibrate any Probe by feeding it a squarewave signal. If you're getting a perfect Squarewave, it's perfectly calibrated. If you're getting under or overshoot around the edges of the squarewave, turn the Trim-Cap until you get a perfect square.
do you have an option to move trigger left/right arbitrarily (even off the screen) like on this rigol video ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-gxXenzhmz_E.html (orange marker in the top denotes trigger position in time ) ie would you be able to zoom on that burst with 2204a?
