Buying an oscilloscope HOKAY?

VHS no longer has a decent digital scope. The last one broke literally three days after the last discussion on buying one.

Generously, @tdwebste has donated $200 or $250 (I don’t remember - Sorry! - will check) towards buying a decent one.

I’ll kick in $30 + some time / duty costs / overflow / whatever.

According to the subsidized equipment purchase policy, VHS will kick in 33% if 10 people or more also kick in, assuming no one vetoes. But if we have ten people, VHS probably won’t need to contribute, in all likelihood.

The exchange rate hurts right now, but I’m looking at possibly this:

It’s $400 USD / $600 CAD.

That’s the go-to cheap hobbyist scope, but I’ve never used that model so I’m not married to it or anything.

There’s also a cheaper one on craigslist:
http://vancouver.craigslist.ca/rds/ele/5363164059.html

I’m not a huge fan of only two channels, and the logo looks familiar, but I can’t recall anything about the brand.

Here is a Tilt:
http://tilt.tc/FTId

I’m happy to discuss pros and cons of Tilt with anyone offline :slight_smile:

So:
What do we want to buy? And where? This is important. Craigslist is pretty dry, I don’t know anything about local resellers, and eBay is mostly American.

2 Likes

+1 on the DS1054Z. It’s still the best scope for the money IMO. There are some cheaper, though nothing near the bang-for-buck quite yet.

Unless you can find something local, I recommend buying from Tequipment (whose eBay store you linked). If you buy directly from them they will give a 6-10% discount for EEVblog members and free shipping within the US (I think there are some members with US addresses), though when I bought my DS2072 a few years ago they shipped free to Canada when I asked. Might even do a special deal for the hackspace…

Just now I checked again for Canadian distributors and found these guys: 1000Z Mixed Signal Oscilloscopes | Electro-Meters | powered by RIGOL . Might end up a bit cheaper and easier than ordering from the US, but no chance of a free ride through the border that way.

My understanding was that the policy that passed as amended was “VHS Quorum Number” of people - currently defined as 3 (section 4.2.3).

I’m in for $10, but have tilt allergies.

I second Rigol, they even have software options for upgrading in the future. We can tilt that too. :wink:

Some other places to buy:

Ebay:
$568.04 Buy It Now

  • $23.45 Shipping
  • US $59.3 Import charges:
    = $674.823403 Canadian dollars
    Taxes maybe?

Amazon:
tems: CDN$ 598.50
Shipping & Handling: CDN$ 20.00
Total before tax: CDN$ 618.50
Estimated GST/HST: CDN$ 30.92
Estimated PST/RST/QST: CDN$ 43.30
Order Total: CDN$ 692.72

Rigol Canada:

Item total $559.00
Shipping and handling:$19.00
Total $578.00 CAD

Does VHS qualify for educational discount?

http://www.tequipment.net/Rigol/DS1054Z/Digital-Oscilloscopes/

seems we need to call to ask 877 571 7901

I do have a US Washington state address if you need to use it. I can take
up $800CND without duty changes.

They offer free shipping, so with current exchange
564.78 Canadian Dollar
If we can’t get a discount, I’d prefer to order from Rigol Canada, and eat the 14 dollars, so we have better access to warranty service. Thoughts?

I have a DS1054Z that I’m willing to bring to the space if you would like to try it and convince yourself of the value of this scope.

TEquipment has a “EEVBlog” member discount on the DS1054Z that is better than the Educational discount. I believe it’s around 8% (Edu is 5%)

Good to know! I will be contacting distributors and explaining our
situation to try and get some good deals. We’re an education hub, and this
will be the first time some budding electronics hackers will have ever used
a scope :slight_smile:

I like the fact that the DS1054Z has 12Mpts memory depth. I would not want
a scope with significant less.

I have found a large memory depth to be essential in diagnosing power
consumption and other transit issues.

One week left! Spread that link around, we’ve still got a long way to go!

As with anything else, I’m happy to give people a quick lesson in
Oscilloscopes if you catch me around the space. The are a cool and useful
tool.

1 Like

Learning to use a scope is kinda like if you all the sudden learned you had fingers and you can use them to eat, after getting quite good at slamming your fists and hoping food lands in your mouth.

And Jarrett isn’t spamming the tilt link enough.

WE NEED YOUR MONEY.
Here is the Tilt:
https://www.tilt.com/tilts/a-vhs-oscilloscope
GIVE US YOUR MONEY

We need those 10 people to tap into that sweet sweet VHS general fund. So please, donate what you can.

*edit: Fixed my link

3 Likes

Above Tilt link not working?

This is the one cut and pasted from the start of the thread:
http://tilt.tc/FTId

1 Like

OSCILLOSCOPES ARE TOTALLY AWESOME GUYS

There is literally no other way to troubleshoot a lot of electric circuits!

The reason I want this Tilt now, is that I’m planning on taking a
commercial point-and-shoot camera, tapping all of the lines with an
oscilloscope, and reverse engineering it so I can do my own thing! This is
not possible any other way! And you, yes, you can do the same thing!

Wow, we’ve doubled the contributions in the last 24 hours, and are over half-way to the tilt.

Keep it up everyone! This is a “must have” tool for the space.

Bump.

We’re ALMOST there. Thanks everyone who’s contributed.

Everyone else, even if it’s only $10, drop some change in there. Even a small donation counts as a “vote”. If you haven’t used a scope, this is a chance to get a good one at the space and learn an AMAZING skill that makes electronics debugging super easy. It’s like a cheat code for electronics.

Some fun links:

Hacking the DS1054Z into a better model:

Turn it into a spectrum analyser:

Safe cracking with a DS1054Z:

A whole lot more here:

@laftho swoops in gets all the credit for getting this to tilt.

Good works, guys!

Keep the donations coming in, we’ve got $550 in member donations, including
Tim, Jon, and me. It looks like the Rigol is the only thing with all of the
bullet points. It is around $600, and the next-best scope from anyone else
is $1,500 minimum.

With the %33 from VHS, we’re currently at a $731.50 cap. It would be nice
to not have to use VHS funds, though! With another $50 or so, we can do
that, or with another $500 or so, we can get an even better scope.

http://tilt.tc/FTId

4 days left!

http://tilt.tc/FTId

2 Likes

What is the “even better scope”?

Haven’t done all the research yet! That unlocks options other than Rigol,
who seem to be the only player in the sub-$1000 scope market right now.

Without looking at other companies, this one is the logical upgrade from
the DS1054z:

It has all of the same features and unlocking capabilities (and same
chassis, it seems), plus 16 digital inputs for mixed signal work. Remember
that the Rigol has onboard I2C and other protocol decoding, so that could
be pretty cool.