Birthday gifts - part 1

It's like a microscope in the hands of a biologist. It's like a telescope in the hands of an astronomer. It's like the remote sensors on Star Trek and it's like Sherlock Holmes' magnifying glass. That's what an oscilloscope is to someone working in electronics - it helps you see things you couldn't see any other way.

This was one of the gifts I got for my birthday. I've wanted my own scope for as long as I've been out of college but I could never afford a good one. Now, really nice oscilloscopes are available and they are relatively inexpensive. I first got a Tektronix digital oscilloscope (I think it was the TDS 1001) at work and I loved it but its display was only monochrome. Now, this scope has a color display and it costs about one fourth as much. The model I got is the Owon PDS5022S which is a two-channel, 20 MHz bandwidth model. Yes, 20 MHz isn't great but it is fine for my purposes. It has nice variety of triggering modes and you can store the waveforms for later analysis and comparison. You can hook it up to a computer for even more options. It's very flexible and has a number of different menus that show up on the screen to help you set it up correctly. It has a rather large manual but a lot of the functions are easily figured out by going through the options in the menus. It's very easy to use and I recommend it to anyone who would like a Tek scope or a Rigol scope but can't afford it. We bought it from a company named Saelig that is worth checking out, too. Their banner says, "Unique Electronics" and it's true. They have some very interesting products.

It's not perfect, the display can be hard to read under certain conditions, but for the price, it is hard to complain. I can't wait to start some small projects and to be able to trace the signals through the circuit to see what is really happening. Those electrons are tough to follow any other way.