Scopes for on the go?

Hantek 6022BE PC Scope sub £40

Sadly we don't all have access to scopes, especially some of the rather specialist Tektronic units found at Broadcasters and Engineers benches. Sometimes you're caught on the hoof and wish you had one.

I've long been looking for a useful pocket scope but have always found them disappointing, expensive and not always useful as a lot of the smaller pocket units are sub 10MHz which is no use for video really.

Being a tight northerner, I finally decided to plump for the Hantek 6022BE which has a bandwidth of 20MHz, 2 Channels, samples up to 48MS/s (1.0us) and runs on a PC (my laptop) therefore offering good viewing and coming in at a pocket money price of £39.99, but is it useful? Hantek are Chinese and do offer a very respectful line up of scopes, so who knew? The on-line reviews were very scathing. 

Well... its not bad, but then at sub £40 I wasn't expecting all that much.

Having thrown the software (v1.0.4) onto the Laptop I checked the system by lining up the probes using the built in 1KHz 2V p-p on the side of the unit, I then pointed it at the standard engineers friend, Composite Black and Burst (BBGen Info), and it wasn't too bad, it almost looks like a burst... the voltages are high as the signal is not terminated correctly (T pieces and 75ohm term would sort this), but look about right with regards to the fact that the burst is almost the same as the sync (40 IRE) (click image below for a closer look)

Composite Reference signal on Hantek Scope SW v1.0.4

It does struggle at the limit of its time sampling to give you a locked image, so, as you can see above, I appear to get the best result and stable image on the scope when sampling at around 4MHz (20us.) If you do struggle there is an Auto button that will try and get as close as possible but this can cause the software to try and lock to 48MHz sampling and go into a run away state where it can't give decide if its 1us or 2us. If this happens you just have to exit out of the software and try again. So to this end, I just dial in the voltage and sample rate myself.

I'd use it more just to check a signal but never to do any measuring. Its a very simple unit but does offer the option of carrying out 2 channel Math functions and also be able to save data off and then load it back in as a Reference for comparisons.

The unit is small and looks robust so it slips into my ever heavier bag for taking about the country, that said have a look at Phils blog if you're looking for a truly portable scope you'll always have with you - should you feel the need...