Pocket scope - anyone else have one of these?

[poppo]

I have a pretty extensive set of test equipment including a bench o'scope. But sometimes it's a pain to drag it over to something (like a slot machine) when you can't bring the equipment to the bench.

So I saw these on ebay. I was sceptical, but figured it would be something to play around with. I got mine for $64. This thing is way cool, especially if you update the firmware to the latest version. Now it's no high end scope, that's for sure, but it does the job of quickly checking signals. The tiny display has a wealth of info found on high end bench scopes. It also will save images to a micro SD card.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=180690531238

The first picture is of the pocket scope connected to the door optics receiver. The second is the screen shot of that saved to the SD card. BTW, the display looks a lot better than the first picture which is blurry because I didn't use a flash.

[tjkeller]

I got something in my pocket but it SURE ain't one of those! 

[poppo]

I got something in my pocket but it SURE ain't one of those!  

This thread was not about pencils.  

[dhellis]

I have looked at that device but the problem that I have is that it only has 1 megahertz of bandwidth. This is great if you are just checking switches or want to see how much ripple there is on your power supply but not very good if you want to look at the clock signals of a CPU board or even take a look at logic states.

I have been looking at a device called the Uni-T UT81B

http://cgi.ebay.com/Uni-T-UT81B-Handheld-Digital-Multimeter-Oscilloscope-/290412292890?pt=BI_Oscilloscopes&hash=item439debeb1a

This is both a very good digital voltmeter but also has a scope that has 8 megahertz bandwidth. You can measure voltage, resistance, capacitance and frequency (up to 10 MHz)
A 8 MHz scope may not be good enough for the new machines but will certainly be good for anything that uses the older CPU chips.

Of course the UT81 costs 3 times what you paid but it is offset by having DVM, frequency counter and scope combined and you don't have to hook up different meters when measuring
and you can hook it up to your PC to view everything from the screen

Here is a link to a quick overview of the meter

<a href="http://www.youtube.com/v/o2Sv_3Qs9mk&rel=0" target="_blank">http://www.youtube.com/v/o2Sv_3Qs9mk&rel=0</a>

[poppo]

I have looked at that device but the problem that I have is that it only has 1 megahertz of bandwidth.

Like I said, it not a high end unit. But even 1Mhz is more than sufficient for 90% of general troubleshooting and IMO will do quite a bit more more than check switches and ripple. It's not meant to replace a decent scope (which is why I have one on my bench). 

The one you posted the video of is fine, but connecting it to a PC/laptop seems sort of worthless to me as you can just buy a PC based scope to begin with to do that. IMO portability is a key factor for a device like this.

[dhellis]

Oh, believe me, I am not arguing to value of the DSO scope,it is handy. The UT-81 does not have to be attached to the PC, just pretty cool that you can do that
and collect the datalogs.