| Electronics > Beginners |
| Why are scope probes so damn big? |
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| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: In Vacuo Veritas on November 08, 2018, 03:10:07 pm ---It's also the fact that most circuits now are digital and have self test makes probing and scopes in general much less useful than they used to be. --- End quote --- Unless you are working in the femtoamp domain or with avalanche photo diodes, your circuit is almost certainly analogue. The voltages (or currents, as appopriate) are then interpreted to be a digital signal. "Signal integrity" is the name given to the engineering necessary to ensure and verify that the voltage/current is correctly interpreted as a digital signal. Verifying signal integrity is usually done with analogue instruments, e.g. scopes. (In some cases it is done indirectly by measuring BER and similar.) Once signal integrity is verified, it is best to flip to the digital domain, e.g. logic analysers or printf statements. Hence there is still a need for analogue probing, but doing this is far more difficult (and expensive) that it used to be. Tektronix recently introduced a probe tip that, IIRC, cost $10 every time it touched a circuit! |
| ConKbot:
--- Quote from: Berni on November 08, 2018, 10:28:34 am ---They make small probes too, like this for example: https://www.keysight.com/en/pd-1661742-pn-N2874A/passive-probe-101-15-ghz-13-m?cc=US&lc=eng I have a similar set of probes from Agilent and they are indeed very nice probes. It doesn't make sense making them smaller than this because then they can no longer be held like a pen, and you don't really gain much from going smaller. If you need a tiny probe to solder in then just cut the end off a BNC cable. --- End quote --- Yep, I had a work scope that came with the N2872A probes, or maybe even an earlier version. The cable on the N2872A looks a bit heavier then the cable on the ones on the scope. Nice fine point, tip is tiny without the grabber attached and still pretty small with the grabber. |
| rsjsouza:
Pomona seems to have a very thin probe. It is not cheap, though: https://www.all-spec.com/Manufacturers/Pomona/Test-Measurement/Oscilloscopes-Accessories/Oscilloscope-Probes/6551-19816 Or you can have as many types of BNC breakouts as you want: https://www.pomonaelectronics.com/products/cables/bnc-breakouts |
| mikeselectricstuff:
The issue is often as much the stiffness of the cable as the size of the probe - light silicone cables would be a lot nicer. Attatched pic is how I very often use the light Tek probes |
| Mechatrommer:
i dont have proper panavise, heavy articulated arm or such and my bench is really small, so i need to improvise with 3d printed part, printed a few such as the green one at the front, and yellow at the back (broken i guess due to lee crap PLA material), currently probes are held by transparent parts. circuit to probes using lee crap china micro grabber that i have to re-bend the tip to original shape very so often... fwiw... |
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