PC Powered Oscilloscope ECE342-W24

Our project is a two-channel oscilloscope with the goal of reducing the required hardware needed to operate, allowing the user to fully operate the scope with minimal hardware and reducing the costs of setup. This system is compatible with standard 1x BNC probes and uses any computer with Python for a majority of its operation. Features include a sampling rate of up to 300Khz, vertical and horizontal scaling, trigger and measure functionality, and data exportation to CSV files. The voltage range that our oscilloscope allows for is +/- 3V. The system hardware comprises of a Teensy 4.0 microcontroller for its ADC functionality, and a single rotary encoder to allow for user input. The Teensy interfaces with a computer through Python, which fully processes the signal data and graph the data using Matplotlib. The Python libraries allow for a multitude of different customizations and ease of use, with the downside of being a slow and costly language. The code had to be optimized to reach 300Khz. Our most notable accomplishment is the successful Python - Teensy interface, which worked much more smoothly than we expected. We faced many challenges, such as the lower than desired sampling rate and poor voltage range on the oscilloscope. Future improvements include increasing the voltage range through improved hardware, and allowing for the use of a 10x probe by creating a 1Mohm input impedance. Python might need to be scrapped if we want a higher sampling rate, but Python has not been fully explored just yet. Additionally, having additional trigger functionality, such as an option to trigger on either rising or falling edges or on additional trigger levels could be an improvement made to this project.

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Artifacts

Name Description
Project Summary Summary of our requirements and design process to achieve the requirements, along with some key lessons learned.   Download
PCB for Input Bias KiCad files for PCB for Input Bias   Download
Schematic for Input Bias KiCAD schematic file for Input Bias   Download
Bill of Materials for PCB Bill of Materials for Input Bias PCB   Download
Project Showcase Video Video describing our project, challenges, design choices.   Link