Portable dso recommendation

Thread Starter

lewy255

Joined Sep 13, 2024
3
Hi everyone, I am an electrician working with smart lighting systems such as c-bus, dynalite, knx, dali, dmx etc, for large commerical buildings. Most these systems use a 2 wire bus similar to rs-485 and some use rs-485. I would like to get a portable scope to fault find bus communication issues. Although these scopes may be overkill for the application I would like a 100mhz scope. Ive been looking at the hantek TO1112 and the OWON HDS2102. I had a miniware dso203 a long time ago which i dont recall being very useful although at the time i didnt really know what i was looking for.

Just wondering what people think about these 2 scopes for their main intended use. Thankyou.

Sig gen and multimeter not necessary.
 

MrChips

Joined Oct 2, 2009
34,807
I think what you really need is a protocol analyzer.
They are not usually seen in portables. And they are very expensive.
 

Thread Starter

lewy255

Joined Sep 13, 2024
3
I think what you really need is protocol analyzer.
They are not usually seen in portables. And they are very expensive.
Oh? From what i have been researching, I can use a oscilloscope to view the reflections, noise and psu performance. Im not familiar with protocol analyzers, what would i be able to check with one? Thankyou for your guidance.
 

MrChips

Joined Oct 2, 2009
34,807
Yes, an oscilloscope can show those fundamentals at the physical layer.
A high end oscilloscope will even decode the serial data and show the hex code or text messages being transmitted.
 

tautech

Joined Oct 8, 2019
498
A very nice scope, about 4x my budget though. I dont really need to see the data comming through as i can do all types of digital tests using the diagostic software and the system hardware.
Well I'm not sure what you think you want or can get for $250.

Just a small/compact and portable mains powered scope or fully portable with its own battery ?
 
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