Arduino Powered 5 Million Samples Per Second Oscilloscope

Bob davis has been writing a book about “Arduino Oscilloscope projects” in which, he shows about 4 different LCD’s, 5 different Analog to digital converters, and 3 different analog front ends and provide a perfect solution to how to use ADC (Analogue Digital Converter) 

 

Analogue Digital Converter comes together with the Arduino. By default the ADC of the Arduino Uno provides a speed of approx. 200 kHz at 10 bit resolution. It is possible to change some registers, which can enable you to increase the speed up to 1MHz without too much loss in resolution.

 

To start with, Arduino is an easy-to-use microcontroller board. The main feature of the same is its design. It is designed in a manner that is really easy to use, that even non-technical people like designers, artists and so on can use them without any error. Further, it has number of inputs and outputs which are easily controlled by simple commands. In the same way, in which a program is written on a computer.

 

Next is oscilloscope. This is an instrument that is used to measure voltage over time. It is required especially when the circuit is not working. It will help you to figure out what is going on. For instance, you want to build a music player and when you try to plug in the power, it doesn’t work and you can’t hear any sound. Oscilloscope will help you to measure different points in your circuit where the sound signal should come from.

 

Well, there is no substitute for a proper oscilloscope but you can use an Arduino board and then you can pair it with another IC. It can give you an approx. of 5 million cycles per second samples.

 

But you can make it by yourself. If you need an oscilloscope right now, then Arduino oscilloscope is perfect. All you need is an Arduino. In order to make one, we can start with the incoming signal that must be decoupled from the arduino to preserve it. It is possible to see negative signals with an offset of the signal. Make sure that data is buffered properly. Now, you need a hardware to trigger, this will be required to catch the signals. Prior to trigger, a circular buffer can give the signal shape and then using the lower lever functions that the standard ones will makes the program run faster.

 

 

You can start with some codes, which will be required to read the analog value from the analog input pin A0. It can be easily done by using the analogRead() function.

 

Further, by using serial port, you need to send this value over to your computer. This can be done in various ways. Well, the value is sent as two bytes with one 0xff byte in between, in the following code. Then the code reads an analog input and simultaneously, writes the value to the serial port.

 

This is really all it takes on the Arduino side to make an Arduino oscilloscope. But to display the values, you need some code on your computer too.

 

 

After you are done with this, all you need something on your computer that can receive the values. Those values are sent from the Arduino, make sure to display them nicely. This will help in installation

 

Then comes processing. It is a simple programming environment to do this, then connect two jumper wires to your Arduino. One from ground and one from the A0 analog input. You should now be able to use these wires to measure things and see the measurement on your computer.

 

Working on an Arduino based oscilloscope requires exploration and patience. You need to squeeze more to get an up to performance out of it.