I ended up popping for a Rigol DS1074Z. My reasons for getting it:
- I studied biology as an undergrad, spent a lot of time in labs, and worked as a lab tech for a few years. I like having access to workhorse instrumentation and using it to figure shit out. I’d probably find more uses a UV/Vis spectrophotometers but they are bigger and more expensive, plus…
- I want to learn more about electronics, specifically, but not exclusively, switch mode power supplies, microcontrollers and realatively low-bandwidth serial communication.
I originally I thought I might save some money and some space with a USB scope, but changed my mind because:
- It wouldn’t actually save me much money. Most of the people who use scopes, learn to use stand-alone scopes, plus stand alone scopes keep potentially dangerous voltages separate from your computer. As a result, USB scopes are kind of a niche market, and as such they don’t have the economies of scale that stand-alone scopes do. So, the savings, which are minimal in the first place (what does a screen and an SoC cost: think $100 android tablet), are offset by their niche market status. The small savings might be relevant if a $70 USB scope is sufficient, but less so in the $250+ price range.
- The software for most USB scopes isn’t that great, in part because they are newer, and in part because they are a niche product.
So, I ordered a solid scope that would cover all my known use cases and include room to grow in plausible directions (4 channels instead of 2, 70MHz bandwidth instead of 50).
I’ve had it for a couple of months. After a few weeks and poking at a few circuits, I felt like I’d maybe let my enthusiasm run away with me. Then, one day, after banging my head against a wall for a few evenings trying to figure out why a little arduino sketch I’d written wasn’t working, I started thinking about how I could get more information. I hooked up the scope to see what was happening on the output pins and I saw…nothing. I’d misread a confusing area of the arduino documentation and my sketch was manipulating different pins than I thought. At that moment, I thought, “well, maybe I’ll get my money’s worth out of this thing after all, it’s already saved me hours of frustration.” I’ve had one or two more of those since.
As to why you should get an oscilloscope, it sounds like it could come in handy for looking at PWM modulating LED output. If any of the LED lighting you use is controlled over a serial protocol, it could help with debugging that.
But really, I think the question is, if you have one, will you look for reasons to use it, or will you find excuses to leave it on the shelf?
That, and do you already have a decent multimeter?