Fun analog oscilloscope hack...

[w2aew]

Here's a fun little circuit to turn your old analog oscilloscope into a video monitor using XY mode and Z-axis modulation.  Try THAT with your digital scope!  How many digital scopes have a Z-axis input?

[MikeK]

Love it!

[HLA-27b]

  Good work! We want more!

[Rufus]

How many digital scopes have a Z-axis input?

The Agilent X 3000 does, only on/off though.

[free_electron]

[joke mode]
Using a scope to display video is not spectacular. the first tv sets had 3 tubes ( besides the picture tube) and could do it... here you have an analog scope full of electronics , and you still need to provide external trigger circuitry.

Come back when you can feed it an HDMI signal and show the image in 3d, full color at 1920x1080 ...  Now THAT would be impressive...
[/joke mode]

[w2aew]

[joke mode]
Using a scope to display video is not spectacular. the first tv sets had 3 tubes ( besides the picture tube) and could do it... here you have an analog scope full of electronics , and you still need to provide external trigger circuitry.

Come back when you can feed it an HDMI signal and show the image in 3d, full color at 1920x1080 ...  Now THAT would be impressive...
[/joke mode]

LOL!  That would certainly be impressive, and take a lot more time than my 60min hack!

[w2aew]

Cool!  My scope hack got posted to Hackaday!

http://hackaday.com/2012/05/03/watch-a-shop-tour-through-the-screen-of-an-oscilloscope/

[HLA-27b]

Cool!  My scope hack got posted to Hackaday!

http://hackaday.com/2012/05/03/watch-a-shop-tour-through-the-screen-of-an-oscilloscope/

Rock on!

[Tube_Dude]

Hi, w2aew

Awesome! You really are an analog oscilloscope Guru! 

Cheers...

[w2aew]

I tinkered with the circuit some more, and dramatically improved the linearity and contrast/focus of the video on the scope.  I think this circuit is going to have to be more permanently built onto a breadboard rather than the proto-board it's on now.  I think I'll want to continue playing with this one in the future!

[vk6zgo]

We used to do this with a 545B back in the day,when afternoon shift at the TV site got a bit boring!
We could cheat,as we had a horizontal & vertical  drive generator in the rack,which we could lock to the incoming video.
The image was negative,though,because we were too lazy to make up an inverter,& the 545B didn't give us access to the output of one of the vertical channels.
It was always fun to show visitors!

[amyk]

For about as long as scopes and TVs have existed, people have also been doing the opposite...

[T4P]

You would be hard pressed to guess where this came from.

[SeanB]

I will take a flyer and say mains neutral.

[T4P]

I will take a flyer and say mains neutral.

Not even close  It's a full reso 2MP picture so it's not exactly from a scope

[robrenz]

Looks like trend plot on a 8846A but without the graticule

[w2aew]

Many folks have asked me via PM for a copy of the schematic for this little hack.  Here is a scan of the final schematic - including several enhancements above/beyond the schematic shown in the video.

[Short Circuit]

For about as long as scopes and TVs have existed, people have also been doing the opposite...

That reminds me of my first 'scope' about 20 years ago, except I used an old Hercules PC monitor.
No triggering, fixed timebase, unknown Y scale, but at least it allowed to get some insight in the signal. 

Luckily I could afford to spend the HFL500 for a 1-channel 5MHz russian scope quite soon thereafter
(roughly equivalent money to a 2-channel entry level Rigol these days).

[nctnico]

My first stab at scope was a hacked VU meter and a LED matrix readout. I created a 16x8 LED matrix which I connected to the VU meter kit. By multiplexing the columns I got a voltage/time graph. Fortunately my parents gave me a real scope when I was 14.