Oszilloskop demo board

[oldiled]

Hi guys,

Does anyone have information on a test board for oscilloscopes.
The manufacturers SIGLENT and RIGOL have such boards
for training purposes. Rigol DS6000 demo board or
Siglent STB-3 demo board.

I'm thinking of own development with stm32 Nucleo or blackpill (bluepill) with own extensions.

The reference book Beginning STM32 by Warren Gay contains some software for testing and is well suited for your own development.

I use the Rigol MSO5104 and electronics or electrical engineering is my hobby.

Greetings from the Rhine
Kurt
 

[oldiled]

Hi,

here is some info from Batronix.

This board is under development.
Delivery time approx. 6-8 weeks.
I'm really looking forward to this part.

Kurt

[Gixy]

Hi,
More info on this board? Didn't find anything on the Batronix site.

[Benta]

Seems completely pointless to me compared to buying a function generator that can also be used for other things.
You'll get a Feeltech FY6600 for under $100.

[pdenisowski]

We (R&S) have several different demo boards for our oscilloscopes, but I'm not sure if we actually sell them to customers - let me check with the product line

[tautech]

Ideally a demo board could include a fixed current pulse generator so it can also be used for calibrating/setting current probes and correcting channel skew.

Siglent offer DF2001A:
https://siglentna.com/product/power-analysis-deskew-fixture/

And a little while back a homegrown version was born:
https://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/scope-probe-deskew-fixture-pcb-project/
It's pretty simple and uses the imfamous 555 IC.

We have the STB-3 and it offers a pile of functions and waveforms some of which are quite a challenge to trigger on.
https://siglentna.com/product/stb-3-oscilloscope-demo-training-board/
You can find the manual for it from that link to examine what it can do.

[smallfreak]

I hope I may hop on this thread, even if it is dormant for a couple of days now. But the question is still a good one and the answers might be different as time goes by.

I have a Siglent SDS2000X+ for about a year now. The problem of such a capable tool is, that it does much more than a casual hobbyist needs regularly. At least much more than I do. I do find my way around with the most common tasks and I have the manual ready to help me with more sophisticated ones. But it's one thing to "know" about a feature you could use in certain situations and to be ready to use it when you never have seen such a case in reality. So I'm thinking about adding some kind of "problem creator" to my toolset to gain (and keep) better knowledge to track them down - and get more confidence in using sophisticated triggering.

With this scope, aiming on the "STB3 demo board" seems straight forward. On the other hand, the new Batronix seems quite useful too and has a way better documentation. The STB3 manual is more a collection of screenshots. Pico makes quite some PR on their MSO test board - which looks exactly as the Batronix board. 

Are these still the actual options? These parts seem to be quite expensive considered that they look just like "some small microprocessor and a couple of connectors".  An ESP32 seems to be of comparable complexity and goes for about 3 bucks.  It looks a bit like calculating the "merchandise" to match with the premium products, like a Lexus keychain is more expensive than a Dacia one.

Certainly I do underestimate the challenges creating such device and if they are meant for teaching classes, then you invest just once and use multiple times. But is such a device a one-shot, gathering dust, once you walked through the exercises, or is this tool a long lasting benefit that you grab regularly?

For 200+ € one could buy an entire scope that is not even a toy or a pretty capable signal generator...

Are there any alternatives that better fit for a hobbyist budget? There does not seem to be a market for "pre loved" parts either. Which may be a good thing, as it suggests, that people tend to keep them instead of trying to sell them once they have the lessons learned.

[tautech]

TBH you have a selection of signals available from the SDS2000X Plus internal AWG to experiment with.
Certainly you won't use all the X+ capability by a long shot but enough to get comfortable with trigger capabilities.

[smallfreak]

The internal AWG is OK but as with all of those things, they are built to give a clean and trusty signal to work on.

The demo circuits are deliberately built to simulate certain problems in a signal. Thats what makes them interesting.

Maybe I should really try to buils something around an ESP32 that has a fair share of digital, analog and seial capabilities to start with.

[pdenisowski]

Certainly I do underestimate the challenges creating such device and if they are meant for teaching classes, then you invest just once and use multiple times. But is such a device a one-shot, gathering dust, once you walked through the exercises, or is this tool a long lasting benefit that you grab regularly?

For 200+ € one could buy an entire scope that is not even a toy or a pretty capable signal generator...

The R&S demo boards shown above were developed for ... demonstrations   If you demonstrate T&M instruments for a living, it's very helpful to have a small and simple "DUT" (device under test) that you can use to show how the instrument works (and/or for teaching).  Obviously, we use them a lot - so much so that I have people regularly trying to "borrow" demo boards from me.

Carting around other instruments to use for demonstrations is not uncommon at all, but it sometimes requires ... a cart   [see below]

And although I'm also a hobbyist, I can't really speak to how often a "pure" hobbyist would use a demo board.