The oscilloscope has been a staple instrument for the past 50 years from the television technician to the aerospace engineer. It is probably the most widely used electronic instrument in the field of designing, testing, and troubleshooting electronic circuits. Rightly so, I might add. It has the ability to graphically display the waveform, magnitude, and time base of electrical signals on the display screen. Furthermore, it can be calibrated so that the magnitude and frequency can be accurately observed. Also, many if not most have more than one input, allowing two or more signals to be viewed at the same time.

It is, therefore, a valuable and useful tool for those who wish to observe in real time the operation and operation of electronic circuits. Since the operation of an electronic circuit is generally not visual (Oh, how many electronics students have wished there was a visual feature in their circuit on the lab bench!), the ‘oscilloscope’ becomes a window into its operation. From a simple audio amplifier or oscillator to the video signals inside a television receiver or the output of a broadcast transmitter or heart monitor in the hospital, the oscilloscope becomes a universal window for the engineer or IT technician. laboratory.

The first decades of oscilloscope designs were based on analog amplifier circuits that raised the amplitude of the signal to be displayed to a level sufficient to drive the baffle plates of the cathode ray tube in the oscilloscope. The oscilloscope had built into its circuitry a sawtooth waveform that moved the CRT beam back and forth and quickly returned it for another scan. The vertical deviation is converted to the analog of the input signal. Through this mechanism, the signal under test is now traced on the CRT display, allowing the symbolic representation of the electronic signal of the device under test to be viewed.

Then came the world of digital electronic circuits. They are called flip-flops, logic gates, accumulators, counters, comparators, sample-and-hold, binary counters, etc.; you can get the image. This new world of electronic circuitry placed a unique requirement on the visual function of the oscilloscope. Now it should be able to be triggered at the exact moment of a digital event. And you need to be able to show what happens in other parts of the circuit when a digital event occurs, which may or may not be repetitive. Hence the development of trigger systems that can cause the oscilloscope to sweep only when the incoming pulse tells it to. In addition, it may be necessary to synchronize the horizontal sweep with the digital system clock frequency, thereby displaying digital switching events relative to the clock, since time is often of great importance to the engineer, technician, or person who does such things and debugs a logic module.

It is no wonder that the digital oscilloscope has become a big box of electronic circuits to achieve everything necessary for its functionality. The digital oscilloscope quickly became very complicated, requiring some of the best digital electronics experts in the field to design and refine their performance as digital equipment (especially including the PC) became more sophisticated, faster, and exotic. It would be inconceivable, for example, for a computer engineer to do design work without the use of a handy digital oscilloscope.

A leading company in the field of digital measuring equipment is Tektronix located in Oregon, USA. They have a very long line of such instruments, related modules and upgrades, software and application programs for testing and measuring products in the fields of computing, communications, manufacturing, automotive, space, fuel, government and many others. These rather complicated tools can range in price from $200 to $20,000, depending on what needs to be done and how they are applied in a given system environment.

There are many other companies that make digital oscilloscopes and related test and measurement products. If you need such an instrument in your work, you can contact this writer for more tips on how to do it.