Shenzhen, Guangdong -- (SBWIRE) -- 09/18/2011 -- The digital oscilloscope is an indispensable tool for anyone designing, manufacturing or repairing electronic equipment. In today's fast-paced world, engineers need the best tools available to solve their measurement challenges quickly and accurately.
As the eyes of the engineer, digital oscilloscopes (DSO) are the key to meeting today's demanding measurement challenges. The usefulness of a digital oscilloscope is not limited to the world of electronics. With the proper sensor, a digital oscilloscope can measure all kinds of phenomena. A sensor is a device that creates an electrical signal in response to physical stimuli, such as sound, mechanical stress, pressure, light, or heat. A microphone is a sensor that converts sound into an electrical signal.
DSO oscilloscopes are used by everyone from physicists to repair technicians. An automotive engineer uses a digital oscilloscope to correlate analog data from sensors with serial data from the engine control unit. A medical researcher uses a digital oscilloscope to measure brain waves. The possibilities are endless.
A digital phosphor Oscilloscope (DPO) is a digital oscilloscope but instead of a CRT, it uses a digital flat panel display, usually a liquid crystal panel. These are becoming the de facto digital oscilloscope system. With the relentless march of technological progress: DPOs can offer significant enhancements over traditional oscilloscopes, such as different color traces for different inputs or signal types or even parts of the displayed signal. Also a DPO can emulate long persistence phosphors in traditional CRT systems. Many designs can also provide near real time information on the displayed waveform such as amplitude (including average; peak; peak to peak; and RMS), repetition rate and even more complex functions such as flourier transforms.
Digital oscilloscopes have many advantages over its analog counterpart, like the ability to capture single events, and to display what happens before the trigger. You also can build a digital oscilloscope simply by hooking an ADC and an FPGA together.
*Hardware
This design was created using the Flashy boards.
See also the "hands-on" page on how to build a simple oscilloscope.
*Software
History, features, screens shots.
See also the interference patterns page.