Keysight Scope Giveaway - Student/School/MakerSpace

[Nils K.]

My name is Nils I'm 25 and currently a full-time electronics engineering student. In my spare time, I'm voluntarily working since 2014 in an open-air amateur theater non profit association in a small city here in Germany.
Since I joined the association I always worked on tasks around our technical theater equipment and since I completed my training as an electronics technician for automation technology I also work on tasks for our electric installations.

All members of the association do their work voluntarily, we all work together to create, play rehearsals, and build up different sceneries each year to be able to deliver theater and musicals plays for all ages from kids to teens, and adults. Since the foundation, we always have had the basic principle to offer very family-friendly ticket prices.

We are a rather small team of people who are interested in electronics, to get more people in contact with electronics I share my knowledge as much as possible with everyone who wants to learn more about electronics.

Due to our limited budget, we try to repair our equipment and build needed technical props on our own to save up for new equipment to share even more knowledge with everyone interested.
To have an oscilloscope to work with would be a huge step forward for us and something that would normally take some years to get.
This would enable us to repair, test and create even more electronic projects as we all love them.

As an example last year, a large Rubik's cube was needed, which was way too expensive to buy. So we had to build our own: 90x90x90cm in size with 972 WS2815 pixels controlled via an ESP32 which receives the typical lighting control Bus DMX (based on RS485) to control color and brightness from the distance during the shows.
To debug such time based signals and many more in such projects an oscilloscope would be an amazing tool to use.
Because we are an open-air theater the cube also needed to be weatherproof which made the task even more complicated. In the end, after about 1300 soldering joints and 140 hours of working on it, we made it and it looks amazing from my point of view.

As a long time viewer of your YouTube Videos I have to admit the amount of free knowledge which you share with your videos is amazing - keep it up!

[ganymede]

Hey Dave, thanks for the giveaway. I am a student from Romania studying EE, and this would be my first oscilloscope should I win it - can't really afford one. Right now I'm working on building my own linear power supply after watching your design videos and it would be of great help if I could take a peek at the signal. I've also built different amplifiers but they weren't that great and this tool would allow me to optimize them. A nice tool to have in your arsenal to help you learn.

Thanks again and good luck to everyone

[1_pj]

Hi Dave!

I am currently an EE student in Sydney but renting over an hour away from the uni (as you know with all your finding the cheapest house in Sydney videos). Don't have any lab equipment yet so I'd have to lug myself and any personal projects on public transport with me if I want to use equipment which is not ideal. This scope should hopefully alleviate some of the pain with the surprises Sydney Trains offers (stuck at Central for hours twice last week on Wednesday and Saturday) every once in a while! 

Thanks for the opportunity as always, I know whoever gets this scope will be delighted - Good luck to all 

[hnaguski]

Hey! I am a 3rd year university student studying computer engineering. Recently I've been learning about microcontrollers and PCB development, so cool!!
I am in the beginnings of gathering personal lab equipment so a nice scope from the dumpster would be awesome! Most of my supplies have been aquired from various classes (only costs the price of tuition... 🇺🇸)
Using my university rented analog discovery does technically work, but having a real scope would make circuit design and analysis so much easier. Using the scopes in the school lab is night and day.
I'd really like to build my own variable power supply and LED lighting system for my lab and having a nice scope would help with that a lot!

I made a little video showcasing my current "lab" to go along with this post:


Thanks!

[JmkG]

Hi!

I'm a third-year Automation and Robotics student specializing in the design, diagnosis, and implementation of automation regulation circuits.

Currently, I'm working on my graduation project, which involves creating a BLDC motor driving prototype to be used as an educational station in classes at my university. However, due to financial constraints and the high cost of a decent oscilloscope, I am unable to afford one at this time. Additionally, renting one from school is not an option.

I would be incredibly grateful if I were chosen as the winner of this giveaway, as it would significantly benefit my project and education.

Greetings

[Jsavoia]

Youtube Link for video entry:
https://youtu.be/2ApQIdFDFg4

Hi my name is Jaden and I'm a 20 year old electrical engineering undergraduate student up in Alberta, Canada. I have been working on a signal generator project for the past couple months using the DE10-Lite FPGA board and DDS with an R2R ladder for the DAC. Currently I am working on external communication module for the FPGA to communicate with an Arduino through UART to do more of the arithmetic side of things. Winning the oscilloscope would be a huge help in the creation of this and future projects.

Wanted to say love the videos and the in-depth nature of your explanations, would definitely be a few letter grade lower than I am right now if it weren't for your videos!

[pappkopp]

As an electrical engineering student, understanding the behavior of electronic signals is essential to my studies.
While I have access to oscilloscopes in my university lab, it would be beneficial to have a personal scope at home. This would allow me to practice and experiment with electronic circuits outside of the classroom setting, improving my understanding and mastery of the subject. Having my own oscilloscope would also provide greater flexibility and convenience, enabling me to work on projects at any time of day or night.

[AstRii]

Hello Dave!
First of all, thank you for this opportunity and your amazing educational videos! I learned a lot from you.
My name is Mark and I study Electronics at Czech Technical University in Prague. I'm currently in last semester of bachelor study.

One day I would like to teach electronics at my university, my friends always told me I have a gift for teaching and I very much enjoy it.
When I'm explaining something to others I always make sure to support my claims with some amazing experiments. I was lucky enough to give a few lectures at my university to public (while being just 22years old!).

My biggest hobby is doing power electronics, I enjoy creating Tesla Coils as they are the ultimate device to attract people to science.

I've been showing my Tesla Coils on many occasions, in school events and all sorts of Maker-Faire style events.
I love the feeling one gets from creating interest in science in others.

Recently I've been thinking how to even reach a broader audience so I've been even doing concerts including my musical Tesla Coils. I'm also considering creating an educational YT channel.


In case you'd like to see more I have a very amateur website where I try to share some of my endeavors: https://www.uhvlab.org/

Recently though I started focusing on my bachelor's thesis which is titled "Intelligent driver for IGBT/FET transistors". I've come up with this topic since the first time I've blown my first transistor. The goal of my bachelor's thesis is to create such a transistor driver that would protect the switched transistor against desaturation, overtemperature and overvoltage; making the transistor virtually indestructible. I know there are already some of those drivers around, but they are usually extremely expensive or out of stock.

This is also where such Keysight scope would help me extremely much! My cheap scope does not have any bandwidth limit and it's very hard to scope power electronics because of all the switching transients which I am unable to filter out.
I also bought cheap 20MHz function generator which broke down after 2 months Currently I'm unable to obtain another function gen. so a scope with implemented function generator would make my life so much easier and it would yield in better results of my bachelor's thesis for sure!

If you pick me as the winner of the Keysight scope, I promise I will make sure to put it to good use and you will not regret it! If you're not going to pick me, I still want to thank you for this opportunity and for your YT videos. Your video on basics of op-amps saved me and many of my friends from a difficult exam
So, Thank you so much Dave! And I'm off to the lab again to build some more educational electronics:)
- Mark



 

[TELCO]

Hello to all,

My name is Pedro. I have been experimenting with electronics since becoming a ham radio operator in 1997. Today I have enrolled as a student in an Associate’s Degree in Electronics at one of the local universities. I am truly excited because finally I will have the formal training needed to be a 100% successful and "complete" Electronics Technician.

I would love to be the proud owner of one of these equipment so I can enhance my studies and perhaps help my fellow students learn more with this instruments. Thank you for the opportunity.

Best regards,

Pedro Castillo
Honduras

[oelapaloma]

Hi Dave,

I have recorded a 1:15 minute video for you: https://youtu.be/zPxXMGH-Xd4

If you prefer reading, this is the transcript:

Hi Dave, this is Thomas from Germany. Germany near Austria, not Australia.
We have a hackerspace or makerspace and we educate children in electronics.
We planned this in 2017 and since then we have now seven workplaces for the children, each with an oscilloscope in analog style, a laptop, a power supply and a soldering station.
We start with younger kids with thumbtack technique soldering and then move on to THT soldering. After that we do some breadboard stuff using logic circuits. And when they understood digital signals, then we move on to Arduino programming.
A digital oscilloscope would be quite handy in our lab, compared to those analog devices we have right now.
Thank you for this giveaway and thank you for your great videos.
Bye.

Good luck to everyone,

Thomas Weller

[TizianoHV]

Hi Dave,

My name is Tiziano, I'm 21 and I’m currently studying Electrical engineering in Italy. In my spare time I work on my projects in my laboratory/bedroom.

In the past I used to snob electronics (I liked analogue instruments and contactors logics) but after watching your videos I caught the highly infective volt-nut and I understood the potential of electronics. I started with easy projects like a speedometer and a thermal chamber (needed to cook PPMs) and now I’m working on a high speed wattmeter that I use to monitor (and record on microSD) power spikes during my mad experiments (see photos).

At the moment I’m using an old Philips scope but it has been through the smelly Rifa madness and it’s slowly dying. Such calibre oscilloscope would be extremely helpful for electrical and electronics projects.

Thank you for the opportunity and good luck to everyone,
Tiziano.


(p.s. Before reading this thread I signed up for the worldwide giveaway, is that ok?)

[Anshchawla521]

Hey Dave,

I am Ansh Chawla , a final year college student of Punjab engineering college and the head of Robotics Society.

So some students of the society were recently working on an autonomous drone . During that they were dealing with SBUS protocol, and the protocol was not open-source and only very little documentation was found for it offline, the students also went to college labs for decoding the protocol but were denied.

One of our students is also working on h-bridge inverter using MOSFETs but he isn't able to get the circuit working. So we are in dying need of an oscilloscope , it would be of great help if we win the oscilloscope.

[Sredni]

My real name is Oyele Boatung, and I am the nephew of the late Great 'mBebe Adimunga, most honorable and respected Prince of Accra, Nigeria. As the last and only living member of my honorable family, I stand to inherit my uncle's great fortune, in the form of forty-one million dollars (at the actual change) in gold ingots. Most unfortunately, in order to release the full amount of my inheritance, the evil lord Ktulu of Biranga (near Accra) has required a payment of about 50 thousand American dollars in taxes. The procedure to release the funds is very convolute, but fortunately I have already secured the help of a very skilled attorney at law, Mr. Johnson Mariemba, esquire. Thanks to the donation of ten thousand dollars from a most kind retired lady from Alabama, U.S.A., was able to negotiate the release of the inheritance for the much lower sum of 48 thousand dollars. Which, by the way, were wired to me via Western Union by a group of disabled veterans of South Carolina, U.S.A. But here comes the real predicament: for reasons unfathomable to me and to Mr. Johnson Mariemba, the attorney at law of the Inheritance Office of Biranga disposed that the receipt - which is required to release the gold bullion - be put in a waterproof container secured on the back of a dolphin which was released at sea.
And here comes the reason I need that oscilloscope: the waterproof container is rigged with a radio transmitter that changes frequency every 41 seconds. I need the oscilloscope to analyze the transmission received from aboard my yacht (a generous donation from the Hospital for Orphans of Tallahassee, Florida, U.S.A) and direct the explosive laser-guided harpoons to their fish-eating target.
As you can see, I have a very compelling reason to put the hands on that oscilloscope, but even more important is what I will do with the forty-one million dollars in gold I will recover thanks to it.

One word: solar paved waterways!

EDIT: Dang, the Scots have beaten us to it!
https://www.gov.scot/news/floating-solar-panels-ready-in-first-for-scotland/


(Here where I am it's still the day after March 31st. To avoid any misunderstanding, I am not entering this competition, of course.)

[Ondresim]

Hi Dave,

thanks for the opportunity to participate in this giveway.

My name is Simon and I'm 23 years old student of Electrical Engineering at Czech Technical University in Prague. I would like to introduce you to the project I'm currently working on as an example of what I would use the oscilloscope for.

The name of my project is In-door Positioning Using Visible Light Communication and the goal is to test alternative positioning method for GPS, which does not work well inside buildings.  I have three LED lights with voltage-controlled current source circuits driven by microcontrollers and each of them is transmitting sine wave signal at different frequency.





Robot car, which is shown in the following pictures, has transimpedance amplifier circuit to convert current from photodiode to voltage. The TIA output voltage is sampled by ESP32 ADC and samples are sent over Wi-Fi to my computer. The samples are then processed and position is determined by trained K-nearest neighbors classification model.



And a video which demonstrates the whole system:



Having oscilloscope like the one you showed in the video would be great. It could really help to test and troubleshoot circuits like those shown in pictures. It would also help me build my own function generator, which I'm planning in the future.

Regards,
Simon

[JulianEstrada]

Hello Dave, My name is Julian Estrada, I am the lab manager at Envigado’s University Institution in Colombia. We currently have a lab equipped with very old analog gear, and some Tek digital oscilloscopes from the 90’s with basic functionality.

Some of Our classes would be significantly streamlined if We had access to gear capable of frequency response analysis and of protocol decoding, as well as a good FFT since We currently only have access to one spectrum analyzer for all of Our students.

Having access to a great instrument as the Keysight would also help Us motivate our students by showing Them that electronics is not all clunky analog stuff, and that it doesn’t have to be a pain to complete a laboratory report.

Thank You for Your attention. Here’s a video showing three of Our students talking about the equipment We work with at the moment.

Here is a transcript of the video in English as well:

Hello! My name is Luciana Serna, mine is Camilo Castro, and mine is Valeria Sanchez Arango

We are Electronics Engineering students at Institucion Universitaria de Envigado (Envigado’s University Institution)

Now We’re going to show You the equipment We use

First of all, this is an oscilloscope, which, as you can see, it’s leaning toward the older side, but We try to make do with it. As You can see, I’m setting up the scope, I just attached the probe to the cal port, and I’m adjusting the vertical scale and the horizontal scale, now You can see it’s been set up.

-Professor: What kind of scope is it?

-Luciana: It’s an analog

-Professor: Is it a modern one?

-Luciana: No teacher, this is super old, We could use better equipment

-Professor: That’s fair, now, Camilo, what are You going to show Us?

-Camilo: Well, I’m going to show You the generator, and how the signal looks on the scope, as My classmate said, an analog one, which She supposedly set it up manually, as this doesn’t have auto-set like the modern ones, this also really old, anyway, here We can see the signal being represented on the scope. As You can see, a sinusoidal signal in the kilohertz range.

-Luciana: And, this oscilloscope, being an antique model, doesn’t have readouts, so We need to count squares, which slows down Our work, and counting squares not being very precise, it’s not really effective, and could take Us a long time to set up.

-Valeria: As You can see, We have all these modules, but they are all equipped with the same gear, same kind of oscilloscope.


To conclude, We want to thank You for Your attention, We hope You can see with this video, We could really use better gear, which would allow Us to do better work and receive a better education.



Thank You Dave.

[Feyman_Follower]

Hi all!
I am Edoardo, a 16 years old scientific high school student from Italy.
I always loved science from when I was very little and I am working on a complex project to participate in a prestigious national and even international science competition, https://fast.mi.it/i-giovani-e-le-scienze/ .
The oscilloscope would help me a lot; I already have a cheap hantek one but it is not enough and with the new scope I would be able to finish the project after working for two years on it.
I send here a short video with a little bit more info: https://youtu.be/bZZ8ShsO-nY
Please watch it 

I also attached a picture of a small prototype pcb that I made, this will be just a small part of a much bigger circuit.
I wish good luck to everyone

[scrog1er]

after years of tinkering and trying to understand/fix things as a broke musician, just this year have started formally studying electronic engineering in my late 30's. 8 years, part-time (long slog!), in the hope of balancing the financial strain of study and juggling a neurological condition.

the decision to study just happened to (unexpectedly) coincide with my partner and i having our first baby due in july. a high quality scope would mean the absolute world to me. my partner and i don't exactly "do well" so the ability to do more from home, and be a present parent would just be the greatest gift.

mid-term the aim is to start producing some smaller music focused devices as a source of income through-out my studies, and this would be a huge step forward in achieving that goal! beyond an eev multimeter, and some basica soldering kit, there's no "lab" to speak of just yet!

thanks for doing this, and more importantly thanks for all the video content you produce. i have learnt so much, and continue to pull from the incredible pool of resources you've created. hadn't come across the forums before, but looking forward to the treasure trove of knowledge within.

appreciate being considered for this, truly - but reading some of the entries thus far, there's so so many deserving candidates. good luck to everyone, in this and on their respective journey's.

[EEVblog]

Winner #1 is Victorman222
Winner #2 is elapaloma

[EEVblog]

NOTICE! Both winners have NOT come forward to claim their prize, even after emailing them!
I found an alternative email for the makerspace, so have tried that email.
But hnaguski gets the individual prize now.