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Rocketmagnet
Joined: 09 Aug 2005
Posts: 10
Helped: 1
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 22 May 2009 12:53 digital scope projects |
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Hi all,
I would love to have a digital oscilloscope capable of at least 1Gs/s. Does anyone think it would be possible to make a homebrew one? If anyone is interested, I'm sure we could work this out. This is roughly the plan:
Use 10 ADCs capable of 100MS/s each, and interleave the sampling. They would all be controlled by an FPGA.
I look forward to hearing from anyone.
thanks
Hugo
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22 May 2009 12:53 Ads |
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pascor
Joined: 28 May 2009
Posts: 1
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29 May 2009 20:54 circuit digital scope |
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A design like this requires *lots* of development resources: digital and analog circuit design, FPGA design, PCB design, PCB manufacture (no perf boards or even quality 2-sided PCBs for this !) Is this a work project ? If so, you had better already be in the digital scope business. If not, this is definitely *not* a home-brew project.
Am I that this is to be a USB/PC device ? If so, take a look at the Link Instruments PC Based USB 60MHz Model MSO-19 ($250). It is *only* good for 60 MHz. Think how many man-hours it would take to develop just a properly working prototype !
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Rocketmagnet
Joined: 09 Aug 2005
Posts: 10
Helped: 1
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29 May 2009 21:36 usb oscilloscope 1gs/s |
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Hi Pascor,
Yes, this is definitely a hard project. But I figure that the kind of people who might need this (like myself) might also be those kind of people who would be able to help.
I hope you don't think I was imagining this soldered on perf board! It will obviously require properly designed PCBs. I've just purchased a seat of Altium Designer, so I've got access to fairly good tools.
I know it's hard, but if we manage to come up with a design, it would be such a great resource for the community.
Hugo
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davidgrm
Joined: 08 Apr 2006
Posts: 232
Helped: 21
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29 May 2009 22:54 good will digital scope |
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take a look at this - slow (100Ms/s) but interesting
http://www.fpga4fun.com/digitalscope.html
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swingbyte
Joined: 18 Jun 2007
Posts: 44
Helped: 4
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31 May 2009 15:53 make digital scope circuit |
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I too thought of designing one of these and did a bit of work to get there. At these frequencies everything becomes hard! PCB tracks and even the PCB material have to be chosen for the right properties. All tracks are transmission lines and very high speed logic techniques must be employed. I'm not suggesting you don't try it - its a fun challenge. But if you want a 1GS/s scope - do what I did and peruse ebay. With a little patience you can pick one up for ~$400. It will cost you more than this to start to build one and the design equipment required even more.
However, the path I would wander down if I wanted to build one would be to look at the evaluation boards of the fast ADCs out there (usually $1000 to buy). All these systems use very large Xilinx FPGAs as the interface and RAM for the ADCs. Wideband amplifiers have another swag of complexities to consider along with the input attenuators. Of course all of these would have to be SMDs. Also read the HP journals for highspeed scope design articles. Although old, all the basics are described very well and these still apply nowadays.
Good luck!
swingbyte
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