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| Budget ($150-$400) scope recommendations? |
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| Performa01:
--- Quote from: kissel on July 08, 2022, 05:31:46 pm ---One more question: With my lack of experience, it makes me a little nervous to think of spending $400ish on a scope. How robust/repairable are they? In other words, what are the odds that in the process of learning how to use a scope I accidentally cause expensive or irreparable damage? --- End quote --- Don't worry. You'll hardly be able to damage a Siglent DSO with its 400Vp tolerant inputs, unless you directly feed it with the output of a powerful transmitter. You could make dangerous ground connections to mains powered circuit nodes that aren't actually at ground level (better don't do it!), but even that would more likely give yourself an unpleasant electric shock and/or fry the probe rather than the scope. |
| Fungus:
--- Quote from: kissel on July 08, 2022, 05:31:46 pm ---One more question: With my lack of experience, it makes me a little nervous to think of spending $400ish on a scope. How robust/repairable are they? In other words, what are the odds that in the process of learning how to use a scope I accidentally cause expensive or irreparable damage? --- End quote --- Keep your probe on 10x mode and you should be OK. 400V inputs in 10x mode is 4000V. 1x mode is for special use cases anyway, 99.9% of the time you want to be in 10x mode. If you clip the ground lead onto something you shouldn't then you might melt the lead but the scope will be OK - the BNC goes direct to earth. |
| G0HZU:
I think it's worth mentioning that typical 1M scope inputs are only 1M || 15pF at lowish frequencies. The Rp resistance tends to reduce quite markedly once up into the RF region. Therefore the safe voltage level gradually gets derated with increasing frequency. A typical modern scope might begin to derate the voltage limits at about 100kHz. Some of the more expensive scopes might begin to derate above 4MHz and usually the voltage level gets derated by 6dB (factor of 2) every doubling in frequency above this knee point. Somewhere around 30MHz this then levels out at about 12-20V peak all the way up to the bandwidth limit of the scope. |
| nctnico:
--- Quote from: Performa01 on July 08, 2022, 06:01:22 pm --- --- Quote from: kissel on July 08, 2022, 05:31:46 pm ---One more question: With my lack of experience, it makes me a little nervous to think of spending $400ish on a scope. How robust/repairable are they? In other words, what are the odds that in the process of learning how to use a scope I accidentally cause expensive or irreparable damage? --- End quote --- Don't worry. You'll hardly be able to damage a Siglent DSO with its 400Vp tolerant inputs, unless you directly feed it with the output of a powerful transmitter. --- End quote --- This is true for any general purpose benchtop oscilloscope! They all survive connecting a 1:1 probe to mains voltages. |
| G0HZU:
Also a typical x10 scope probe also has to be derated against increasing AC frequency in a similar way. The input of a x10 scope probe is only 10M || 12pF at low frequencies. Generally speaking, a typical x10 scope probe might only be rated to 25V peak once up into VHF. |
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