That is unpractical for most of us. Perhaps a more subtle approach would be to advocate using ferrites on the probe cables of our cheap Owon probes to make them function more like expensive Tek probes. This would minimize the antenna effect of the probe cable and is much less of a Draconian measure as opposed to using a Faraday cage.
I have bought more expensive probes plus my Alanogue Bechman Industrial's probes and they all produce the same shitty results. The problems are not with the probes.
As many of you have seen when I started this thread a year ago ( I think I was the first to complain that the scope was defective ) , I am not trying to view minute signals, to the contrary the Owon hits trouble with signals as large as +/-100mV or much greater. As the scope has been sold with a 3 year warranty, I fail to see what kind of warranty this is that fails to recognise the severe fault but instead asks the users to either "grin and bear it" or replace some adapter cards that cost $50 (or was it more) and would surely invalidate the warranty once you open and hack inside the scope!
In this case I believe that since there is a demonstrable problem, Owon should be recalling the affected scopes and repairing them free of charge to the user. There must be laws in the US they are breaking by either not honouring the warranty or by asking users to do their own repairs and have to pay for it.
I think you'll find agreement from many of the members that frequent this thread for must of what you say here!
The suggestion about the ferrites on the probe cables improves the immunity to outside interference, but doesn't do much in regards to the Owon's conductive GND noise. Neither would more expensive probes.
So far Owon hasn't acknowledged the GND noise problem as something covered under their 3 year warranty. The excuse has to do with the fact that the problem is associated with the use of long ground leads, but doesn't seem to affect operation when the scope is connected to the signal source by more noise proof methods, for example the short ground clip, or a scope probe test point.
You'll find that there is extensive disagreement with this position among our members. I for one feel that although GND noise caused by external sources is not Owon's problem, it's a different matter when the GND noise comes from the Owon itself as is the case here, even if it's only associated with the use of long ground leads.
However, there isn't much that we can do about it other than keep complaining or try to mitigate the problem ourselves. As far as laws are concerned, I think the facts of the case could be difficult and expensive to prove, and the outcome of fair restitution would be difficult to achieve.
In the meantime, Owon seems to have corrected the problem as per reports of new customers since June 2013. So the problem still persists only for users with older units that haven't upgraded to the newer boards.
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