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| Why are oscilloscopes so inaccurate? |
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| magic:
You will sooner reach limitations of the scope than the probe. Particularly at DC. Scope probes are actually usable with DMMs in a pinch if you calibrate them beforehand. I did it once to measure something that needed not to be disturbed by extra capacitance and noise, though I was only after 1% or so accuracy. A scope I wouldn't trust to get even 1% right. |
| tggzzz:
--- Quote from: magic on August 28, 2019, 12:02:28 pm ---You will sooner reach limitations of the scope than the probe. --- End quote --- DC voltage maybe, maybe not. Otherwise poor probing technique frequently dominates measurement validity. |
| SilverSolder:
Playing around with a ratio transformer the other day, I decided to check a 54622D scope, just for fun. Fed an accurately sourced 1V rms signal at 50Hz via a 10:1 probe, the Agilent was able to achieve ~0.7% accuracy on the calculated RMS value it displayed on the screen. This level of accuracy (better than the spec of 2%) was only achieved right after running the self calibration function. The accuracy was a lot worse before running user cal - several percent out! Overall better than expected performance, and a good demonstration of the value of the Auto Cal function. |
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