Do you keep your scope probes connected all the time?

[SeanB]

One of my cats sometimes chews mains cables, he likes to live dangerously.

My uncle was killed in a house fire caused by a dog chewing a cable (so the fire forensics people reckon based on the fact it was welded to the cable face first). I'd get rid of the cat. Poisonous dust, parasites, pissing on your data sheet folders (this happened when I had a cat) and leaving dead things around the house. Yuck no more. fuzzy death machines.

My sister's Canis Africanus also liked to chew on cables. She got up one morning, and had left a lamp out the previous night for the braai. Goes outside and the cable is gone, with only the small piece that was just short of the window left. The cable was still live, the dog had chewed off the cable, leaving small 5cm long pieces all over the back yard. Same with the car wiring, he ate the indicators off along with the lamps. eventually she got him an old tyre to chew on, rather than eating plastic cabling and such. Lovely dog, literally a quarry special, as he came from the brick quarry.

[tautech]

I keep them connected all the time and I hang them on probe holders on the side of the rack to keep them out of the way and the full weight of the cable off the probe and compensation box.  It's very convenient to grab one and start measuring.  I keep the hat on the probes to prevent being stabbed by the tips.

The holder is Tektronix 352-0351-00.  Each one holds 2 probes and was included in the accessories bag with P6131 probes I bought years ago.

Those are Agilent probes in the picture.

Nice, and soooo simple. 

I'll make something just like that out of a piece if alloy angle section.

[ivan747]

One of my cats sometimes chews mains cables, he likes to live dangerously.

The day he gets an electrocal shock he will never do it again. Hopefully he'll be alive 

[bitwelder]

[Cat] Darwin Awards 2011 Calendar: Miss March
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/bd/6f/29/bd6f291f10f89aa68caa610fe0a55bc5.jpg

[Howardlong]

OP: I leave them connected unless the scope's packed away in which case I remove them and store appropriately coiled up in the original transparent probe bags. I leave them on mostly through laziness, but also I don't want to unnecessarily cycle the BNCs. I'm the only one in the lab anyway, apart from the cat, who prefers chewing through iPhone headset cables to scope probes anyway.

I keep them connected all the time and I hang them on probe holders on the side of the rack to keep them out of the way and the full weight of the cable off the probe and compensation box.  It's very convenient to grab one and start measuring.  I keep the hat on the probes to prevent being stabbed by the tips.

The holder is Tektronix 352-0351-00.  Each one holds 2 probes and was included in the accessories bag with P6131 probes I bought years ago.

Those are Agilent probes in the picture.

Nice. So nice, I just made my own from slotted trunking in about five minutes.



Get some narrow slot trunking 25mm W, 40mm H, with narrow slots at 10mm intervals, cost £2.41 for 2m

( eg ABB 05143: http://www.edwardes.co.uk/en/products/abb-05143-w-25mm-x-h-40mm-grey-4-6mm-narrow-slotted-panel-trunking-2m-length )

Cut to length, snap off alternate fingers (they snap off very easily by hand), and mount.

[kakureru]

I set out trap cables for the cats connected to a small voltage divider that puts out like 1000v @ a minisqueal of mah. (its more like the feeling you get with carpet static shock)

Does not "hurt" the cat but makes them think twice about chewing random wires.

[mushroom]

"Do you keep your scope probes connected all the time?"

No !

Disconnecting them makes components a lot easier to store. (and requires less probes)

[smjcuk]

Ha very funny

[Dave Turner]

Never mind my scope probes' which I tend to leave connected - if my cats want attention they'll pull components out of my breadboards, but only if I'm watching them.

On the other hand a friend of mine had a house rabbit (came in through the cat flap to curl up with the cat in front of the coal fire) who had a predilection for biting through the telephone cable. He clearly got a buzz from the mild electric shock.

[Rupunzell]

Not possible to keep one set of probes on the scope. Often no probes are used, direct coax connection or BNC connectors come off the DUT direct into the input BNCs. There are a variety of other probes used from active probes to current probe & current probe amplifiers and more. 10x or 1x scope probes are used maybe 30% of the time, the remainder is varied. This does not include swapping plug ins which always results in BNC connector cycling.

All these decades of inout BNC connector swapping as yet to cause a wore-out BNC connector on the Tektronix analog scopes, portable or plug in. Thinking about that, wore out BNC on high quality test gear appears to be very rare.


Bernice

[Howardlong]

Although as mentioned earlier I generally leave the probes connected if the scope's on the bench, on MSOs I only connect the pods when needed because I don't use them that often, and they tend to get tangled up with other stiff too easily.

Usually the standard passive probes are good enough for what I do, but occasionally I'll use a Z0 or active probe depending on what I'm doing, but not frequently enough to warrant spending time pulling the standard pasive probes out when I'm done for the day.