Electronic – Cheap 1MHz oscilloscope

oscilloscope

I'm learning electronics (and basic electricity) and I wondered if a 1MHz oscilloscope like the DSO Nano is enough for (very) basic electrical and/or electronic circuits. I'm almost broke and I need a cheap portable oscilloscope to try various circuits (wherever I am, hence the required portable property) with resistors, capacitors, transistors, and microcontrollers (if I study hard enough). I don't thing I need a more powerful oscilloscope because I'm learning and I'm just following the exercises in various books right now. This would be my first oscilloscope and I would eventually buy a 20MHz portable oscilloscope later.

Thank you!

Best Answer

IMHO for its low price, the DSO Nano is actually a good first-time scope. As others have mentioned, you will have problems with showing anything faster than 100-250KHz coherently, but this is pretty high for quite a lot of uses. Yes, you won't be able to see system clocks or PWMs with it, but in my experience a scope is more useful for analog signals, and as long as they don't rise and fall too quickly, you'll be fine with the DSO Nano.

Once you get more money and become more serious about the projects, you should invest in a 2nd hand scope, something real with at least 100MHz bandwidth.