7 ms·

I did not know you could get dirt cheap USB oscilloscopes

nickysielicki 8y ago
My understanding is that generally speaking, it's throwing money at bad and you're much better off spending the $350-$500 or so for a proper entry-level scope. Check out the eevblog forums if you're in the market. [1] edit: it is worth noting that if you can deal with the design and hardware limitations, the limitations of the included proprietary software should not necessarily scare you off, sigrok [2] has support for a lot of these cheap devices. Since writing this comment, I also just discovered a newer project called openhantek [3], which seems to be very active. [1]: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/ [2]: https://sigrok.org/ https://sigrok.org/ [3]: https://github.com/OpenHantek/openhantek https://github.com/OpenHantek/openhantek
- nebulous1 8y ago
  Saw that OpenHantek when I was making sure I'd be able to use it with linux. I have no need for an oscilloscope, nor do I even know how to use one. They've always seemed pretty interesting to me, but when I've looked before I've managed to convince myself out of spending XXXX on something I may only use once. If we're talking in the sub 100 range then it seems like something I could use or not use, and then upgrade it if I actually find it wanting (ie I invest enough time to find something I want to do with it but can't). I think I'll do a bit more research anyway.
  - iamleppert 8y ago
    Not every use of money has to be “efficient”.
    - eric_h 8y ago
      Certainly - but it makes sense to optimize expenditures in the slightly uncomfortable range to avoid excessive waste.
      - iamleppert 8y ago
        The knowledge you get from the scope is going to be at least worth the cost assuming you use it a few times...
  - jacquesm 8y ago
    If anything having an oscilloscope will allow you to look at all kinds of signals and you will learn a lot from that.
rpcope1 8y ago
The "oscilloscope" Jochen used for this is a huge piece of junk, quite frankly. I wrote the library he used to interface with the scope for this attack, and I frankly wouldn't even bother touching that "scope" unless I needed a kind of quick two port DAQ. It would be far smarter to spend a little more and buy a Rigol 1102 (or similar) instead. In terms of technically why it's really a bad piece of hardware, I can elaborate if someone wants details, but at a high level it lacks any form of hardware triggering (and everything is pretty much driven by the relatively slow on-board 8051 (no FPGA or anything similar)), and data transfer only happens over bulk USB transfers; furthermore sometimes the firmware just drops data.
- tomswartz07 8y ago
  Agree, a Rigol 1054z is easy to come by inexpensively, and it can be software modded to unlock some extra features. The scope also works great on Linux with Sigrok.
  - setquk 8y ago
    Definitely. 1054Z is a bargain for what it is. I’ve got a DG1022Z gen as well and you can use the two together to do protocol injection. Record with the DS1054Z and dump into DG1022Z arb memory then use the DS1054Z pattern trigger to trigger the DG1022Z. Totally amazing bits of kit and together cost me less than a bottom end 100Mhz Tektronix scope. Both have Ethernet too so I do a lot of scripting with python and the two. You can add your own features then! So far I've written a simple distortion analyser similar to the one bob Pease described for ED magazine in around 2001. Basically it subtracts input and output and then applies arbitrary phase shift and gain and then subtracts that from the original signal to see where the distortion occurs in the cycle. Only complaint is that the DG1022Z csv parser is a piece of shit if you want to load your own arb data. Works better over LXI.
    - brokenmachine 8y ago
      I have a 1054Z and use it in a pretty basic manner, but when I want to take screenshots, I find that the Ultrascope software is super crashy. I'm on Win7 64bit. It basically crashes almost every time I run it. I can restart it but it's irritating. All I need to do is take screenshots, is there a quick way to do that over USB without having to use Ultrascope?

My understanding is that generally speaking, it's throwing money at bad and you're much better off spending the $350-$500 or so for a proper entry-level scope. Check out the eevblog forums if you're in the market. [1] edit: it is worth noting that if you can deal with the design and hardware limitations, the limitations of the included proprietary software should not necessarily scare you off, sigrok [2] has support for a lot of these cheap devices. Since writing this comment, I also just discovered a newer project called openhantek [3], which seems to be very active. [1]: http://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/ http://www.eevblog.com/forum/testgear/ [2]: https://sigrok.org/ https://sigrok.org/ [3]: https://github.com/OpenHantek/openhantek https://github.com/OpenHantek/openhantek

nebulous1 8y ago
Saw that OpenHantek when I was making sure I'd be able to use it with linux. I have no need for an oscilloscope, nor do I even know how to use one. They've always seemed pretty interesting to me, but when I've looked before I've managed to convince myself out of spending XXXX on something I may only use once. If we're talking in the sub 100 range then it seems like something I could use or not use, and then upgrade it if I actually find it wanting (ie I invest enough time to find something I want to do with it but can't). I think I'll do a bit more research anyway.
- iamleppert 8y ago
  Not every use of money has to be “efficient”.
  - eric_h 8y ago
    Certainly - but it makes sense to optimize expenditures in the slightly uncomfortable range to avoid excessive waste.
    - iamleppert 8y ago
      The knowledge you get from the scope is going to be at least worth the cost assuming you use it a few times...
- jacquesm 8y ago
  If anything having an oscilloscope will allow you to look at all kinds of signals and you will learn a lot from that.

rpcope1 8y ago

The "oscilloscope" Jochen used for this is a huge piece of junk, quite frankly. I wrote the library he used to interface with the scope for this attack, and I frankly wouldn't even bother touching that "scope" unless I needed a kind of quick two port DAQ. It would be far smarter to spend a little more and buy a Rigol 1102 (or similar) instead. In terms of technically why it's really a bad piece of hardware, I can elaborate if someone wants details, but at a high level it lacks any form of hardware triggering (and everything is pretty much driven by the relatively slow on-board 8051 (no FPGA or anything similar)), and data transfer only happens over bulk USB transfers; furthermore sometimes the firmware just drops data.

tomswartz07 8y ago
Agree, a Rigol 1054z is easy to come by inexpensively, and it can be software modded to unlock some extra features. The scope also works great on Linux with Sigrok.
- setquk 8y ago
  Definitely. 1054Z is a bargain for what it is. I’ve got a DG1022Z gen as well and you can use the two together to do protocol injection. Record with the DS1054Z and dump into DG1022Z arb memory then use the DS1054Z pattern trigger to trigger the DG1022Z. Totally amazing bits of kit and together cost me less than a bottom end 100Mhz Tektronix scope. Both have Ethernet too so I do a lot of scripting with python and the two. You can add your own features then! So far I've written a simple distortion analyser similar to the one bob Pease described for ED magazine in around 2001. Basically it subtracts input and output and then applies arbitrary phase shift and gain and then subtracts that from the original signal to see where the distortion occurs in the cycle. Only complaint is that the DG1022Z csv parser is a piece of shit if you want to load your own arb data. Works better over LXI.
  - brokenmachine 8y ago
    I have a 1054Z and use it in a pretty basic manner, but when I want to take screenshots, I find that the Ultrascope software is super crashy. I'm on Win7 64bit. It basically crashes almost every time I run it. I can restart it but it's irritating. All I need to do is take screenshots, is there a quick way to do that over USB without having to use Ultrascope?