Analog Lab 4

Charlie Reynolds

Every oscilloscope come with essentially the same basic mechanics. Each oscilloscope has similar sections.

Display: First, there is is the Display where after turning the oscilloscope on, the display graphs your signal’s amplitude over time.

Vertical: Then, there is the Vertical section. This section controls how the voltage is being displayed on the display. There are two main parameters in this section. First, there is the volt per div knob which allows you to set the vertical scale of the voltage you are displaying. A larger volt/div means will represent the voltage’s amplitude as if you are zoomed out, where as a smaller volt/div will appear zoomed in. We found that around .2 to .5 volts per division allowed us to properly display. Then, there is vertical position which allows you to simply align the start of each wave to be y=0. There are two available channels since we were working with a two signals. Each channel has its own controls. Vertical Mode allows you to display one or both channels. Also, there are two switches for whether your signal is AC/DC or if you want ground.

Horizontal: The horizontal section controls the scale of time for the display. This means how much time you want to represent of one square on the x axis. This allows you show multiple waves or zoom in on a particular part of the signal.

Trigger: The trigger allows you to focus and stabilize the signal you can have a clear graph of the waves. The trigger allows the signal to come through to the display. There are generally are a trigger source switch where you control the channel. Also, a trigger knob that focuses the trigger. Additionally, there is a trigger position knob so the waves are held steadily on the display. You must make sure the trigger is working or else the graph won’t be displayed.

Probes: There are two probes that allow us to connect to both channel sources, each with a positive input and a ground clip.

Once, we connected the probes properly we displayed both channels. As we turned the potentiometer the second channels amplitude decreased to zero volts on the y axis meaning the audio signal after the potentiometer would be zero percent of the original input wave.