Architectural Proposal for Low-Cost Portable Digital Oscilloscopes Based on Microcontrollers and Operational Amplifiers

Abstract

Recently, an increasing number of people have employed do-it-yourself (DIY) and do-it-with-others (DIWO) techniques and processes to develop unique technology products. This trend is commonly called the maker movement and fosters the creation of own electronic and mechanical devices and tools. Oscilloscopes are really useful tools to diagnose problems and analyze electronic devices and electrical circuits, and thus they should not stay outside this trend. To contribute to this field, an architecture to make low-cost portable digital oscilloscopes is proposed. The proposal is mainly based on general-purpose microcontrollers and operational amplifiers. Following this approach, a portable oscilloscope with two input channels, a graphic display, a synchronism detector, internal and external triggers, and a digital signal analyzer function is designed. Furthermore, different options for the implementation are proposed and discussed.