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solid state oscilloscope, greater range - how to

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neazoi

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Hello I have found this solid state oscilloscope that does not use a micro and it is very easy to make. **broken link removed** (10mb)
The author states it goes up to 1MHz with the optional time base circuit.

I was wondering, can I make it work in higher frequencies, using an even faster timebase circuit and leave the rest of the circuit unchanged?
 

The author states it goes up to 1MHz with the optional time base circuit.
LM3914 isn't designed to work correctly above a few 10 or maximum 100 kHz. There even isn't a dynamic specification of the chip. Also ULN2803 column driver will show considerable on- and off-switching times.
 
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    neazoi

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LM3914 isn't designed to work correctly above a few 10 or maximum 100 kHz. There even isn't a dynamic specification of the chip. Also ULN2803 column driver will show considerable on- and off-switching times.
any thoughts of making it go higher about 10-30mhz?
 

You'll need a fast ADC, 20 to 50 MS/s 8-Bit converters are rather cheap now. Instead of transfering the sampled data to a display in real time you can better store it, making a basic digital storage oscilloscope.
 
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    neazoi

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You'll need a fast ADC, 20 to 50 MS/s 8-Bit converters are rather cheap now. Instead of transfering the sampled data to a display in real time you can better store it, making a basic digital storage oscilloscope.

How about "cheating" and using a mixer to downconvert to 20KHz?
 

Wow... that project article brought back some memories... and not necessarily good ones. Save yourself the pain and DON'T build it!

I built a remarkably similar unit back in the late 80's - a couple of cascaded decade counters drove the x-axis of the LED array, and an LM3914 drove the y axis. After spending an eternity building it on a wire-wrap board (and don't get me started on how much of my precious newspaper run money went into [then] hyper-expensive LEDs...) it was C.R.A.P. Granted, the main problem with the unit I constructed was the absence of a decent timebase triggering mechanism - something that this unit seems to have sorted out. That aside though, the display resolution was practically unusable. It was fine if you wanted to look at a textbook sine wave out of the high school signal generator, but utterly useless for any prototyping/debugging work.

Sure, it's a neat curiosity, but a PICxx driving a Nokia 5110 LCD (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIoTnZGjgoM) can be had for a fraction of the price and smashes the LED oscilloscope in performance.

Please don't :)
 

Wow... that project article brought back some memories... and not necessarily good ones. Save yourself the pain and DON'T build it!

I built a remarkably similar unit back in the late 80's - a couple of cascaded decade counters drove the x-axis of the LED array, and an LM3914 drove the y axis. After spending an eternity building it on a wire-wrap board (and don't get me started on how much of my precious newspaper run money went into [then] hyper-expensive LEDs...) it was C.R.A.P. Granted, the main problem with the unit I constructed was the absence of a decent timebase triggering mechanism - something that this unit seems to have sorted out. That aside though, the display resolution was practically unusable. It was fine if you wanted to look at a textbook sine wave out of the high school signal generator, but utterly useless for any prototyping/debugging work.

Sure, it's a neat curiosity, but a PICxx driving a Nokia 5110 LCD (e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xIoTnZGjgoM) can be had for a fraction of the price and smashes the LED oscilloscope in performance.

Please don't :)

Yes I didn't expect something really usefull, I allready own a 100MHz surplus oscilloscope, which bought almost at the same cost as this little one will cost. It is just fun to build just 4 pcbs and have a quite portable oscilloscope made out of "discrete" chips. This project is so complete and because no micro, it can be build from a hobbyist almost two decades ago from it's publication :)

Nevertheless I would be glad if I could see a better micro/lcd oscilloscope that can do up to 30MHZ, but I haven't seen one neither. Most of them go up to a max of 5MHz.

Any propositions/schematics?
 

I once designed a similar LED matrix display for an analog audio spectrum analyzer, with 16x30 Leds, if I remember right and kHz scan clock. That's an appropriate application for a low resolution display and it's achievable speed. Needless to say, that the application can be implemented with a recent microcontroller.
 

I once designed a similar LED matrix display for an analog audio spectrum analyzer, with 16x30 Leds, if I remember right and kHz scan clock. That's an appropriate application for a low resolution display and it's achievable speed. Needless to say, that the application can be implemented with a recent microcontroller.

I haven't seen anything at higher than 5MHz frequency...
 

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