Automotive Oscilloscope Starter Kit | PicoScope 2204A

in this video we're going to take a look at what you need to get started with Automotive oscilloscope Diagnostics we're going to have a look at the cheapest way to do it but also making sure that you're buying decent equipment we're going to take a look at the minimum equipment required to get started some of the differences you need to look out for when spending different amounts of money on similar pieces of equipment and will also take the scope for a test drive at the end so you can see what it's capable of when it comes to choosing the type of oscilloscope you've got a couple of options so you can get something handheld like this now I picked up this o1 hds272s recently I've not had a massive go with it yet the only thing God say about these although they are very convenient these settings can be a little bit fiddly to get used to and they're not as versatile as what you might get with a laptop based oscilloscope like this so for one of those oscilloscopes you're going to need the lap top and you'll be able to use the software so when it comes to choosing a laptop based oscilloscope you'll find the handtech come up quite high in the search ranking so handtech make this eight channel oscilloscope is marketed as an automotive oscilloscope I did a video on this recently I think once you get all eight channels loaded up the waveforms that you get out of it aren't as useful as they might be on a more expensive oscilloscope however it does do the job it works and we've also got this 6022be this is a handtech two channel oscilloscope again the specifications are pretty good when it comes to things like sample rate however what I don't like particularly about the handtech options is the software now there are a couple of other software Alternatives that you can go for and however I generally always recommend the picoscope 2 1000 Series in particular the 2204a to get started so you can get this oscilloscope for around about a hundred dollars and you know it's a very powerful bit of Kit and the software I'm really getting used to picoscope seven now as well has just got so many features that you can really make the most of that cheap little oscilloscope which costs less than my multimeter so I was pretty impressed with this the first time I uh used this oscilloscope I had been using the automotive oscilloscopes before I bought this and I was just really impressed that you know the oscilloscope software is is the same pretty much between the two Scopes what makes that really good is that if you are serious about oscilloscopes and you really get into them at some point you're going to want to upgrade now if you buy one of these and then move up to the 4425a you will not be in unfamiliar territory you everything you learn with this you'll be able to carry over onto the more expensive oscilloscopes on the subject of learning make sure you come and check out mechanicmindset.com where we've got some free training giving you over two hours of free training videos plus access to all of the picoscope waveform files that we use on the mechanic mindset YouTube channel now just something to be aware of with this is it's not marketed as an automotive oscilloscope because there are a few specifications which make Automotive Diagnostics potentially a little bit difficult one of the first things is that it can only take a maximum of 20 volts into either of its two channels okay now that's fine for most things like canvas battery voltage measurement sensor signals power supplies pulse with modulation it's absolutely fine as long as it's below that 20 volts however if you were going to measure things like injectors or ignition coil voltages then you're going to need to go higher so what you will need to get is one of these this is called an attenuator and I've got a video on an attenuator on what it is and what it does but basically it reduces that input so that you can put More Voltage in without damaging the scope you can pick up an attenuator for anywhere between 10 and 20 dollars so if you went ahead and bought the 2204a with the leads I think you can buy it with and without the leads and if you bought it with the leads this is the type of lead that you would have got so it's a times 10 probe it means you can switch it to reduce that input by a factor of 10 and what these probes allow them to do is measure very high frequencies which is not what we're usually doing on on Automotive applications the main problem is the leads aren't very long and it comes with this like little hook attachment at the end and if you removed it then you'll see that you can't really use that to probe into the back of connectors and things like that the ground lead is also really short however they're worth keeping because there are a few things that you might be able to use it for what I suggest getting is two of these These are the handtech automotive oscilloscope leads they're about three meters long they're the BNC type connectors so that's what you'll get on the front of the oscilloscope there you'll notice that the attenuator is also that BNC type connector and they just push and screw on like that now the other great thing about using these BNC type tools is that you can use them across most oscilloscopes so the handtech has the same connections as these so let's say you bought a hand Tech didn't really get on with it you could get rid of it without worrying about having to boil your equipment again same if you then upgraded to something like a automotive picoscope you can use all that equipment with it so these handtech leaves are really great value I've got two of these I've been using them for a couple of years now without major issues there's a video I did on these a little review just showing you some of the things you need to be aware of and this is the picoscope lead now this is probably about four or five times the cost of this one however it is a little bit better quality and we haven't got the metal kind of BNC connector there which might be useful in in some measuring situations however they they are a bit more expensive but they are kind of a better quality now to go on the end of these you'll notice that they've got these four millimeter connectors or banana connectors what you're going to want to get is some crocodile Clips or alligator clips we've got two sizes here and I was using these ones quite a lot but I've since moved on to the bigger Clips here just much better for getting onto those ground points and battery connections and then you're going to also want some back probe so again there's a number of different types of back probes you can can get and again they just push onto the four millimeter connections like that so I would say that what we've looked at there would be the absolute minimum that you would need to get started so let's take a look at some of the other accessories that you can buy for you know a fair price which will allow you to do some different types of tests okay so these are the handtech amp clamps we've got the CC 65 which is a 65 amp amp clamp for for low current things you can see it's low current because the the Jaws aren't very big not really designed for big fat battery cables and then we've got the cc650 which is a 650 amp amp clamp which is much bigger and you'd generally be using this for things like relative compression testing where we can do an engine compression test around the battery cable now both of these are really quite good value I think you can pick them up for anywhere between 50 and 70 dollars they do take a nine volt battery which isn't included when you buy buy it so just one thing you need to make sure is that you remember to turn it off when um you've finished using it otherwise you get it out and it's turned on and the battery's off and you know that you've just killed the batteries and I did a video on these recently actually comparing them to the slightly more expensive picoscope amp clamp now performance wise there wasn't much difference however as you might expect if you're going to spend a little bit more money you get a slightly better product and this has also got much longer cable which is really quite useful you know might have the oscilloscope over there and you know we're trailing out to over here somewhere okay the cables on the Pantech ones just they're not very long we'll take a look at a few examples of these tools in action towards the end of the video now after buying your amp clamps there is a load more different accessories which are really useful convenient for doing different kind of types of tests and so we've got something like this this is is uh from hand Tech it's the HT 25 secondary ignition probe so the idea is that that goes around the ignition lead and you can take a an ignition coil waveform and look at the spark plugin ignition coil and things like that and however if you've got a coil on plug system then you're going to need something like this to take that measurement and all you would do is remove the ignition coil and put that on top of the spark plug so that you can then clamp around the extension lead to take your secondary ignition measurement and you can also get some coil on plug testers so you might have seen the video if if you haven't go and check it out where we use a coin on top of an ignition coil to take a ignition reading this is a similar tool which will be used to then go on top of the ignition coils to take a really quick measurement so this was a tool that sent to me by Ma Diagnostics actually 3D print and make these themselves so that's really cool there's quite a few guys out there making their own tools a great way to support technicians and in fact he also sent me this tool here which is called a pulse sensor and again I've got a few videos on using these pool sensors but they're a really good way to check kind of mechanical Integrity of engines for you know valve train problems and things like that again another place to check out got a video looking at some of the really great value probes from Rock key this is the same kind of tool as this one here however it's it's all in one it's a little bit smaller at this end and again this is just a different type of pull sensor but it's got the it's got the cable already on there another really cool tool from Rock key again they're really good value go and check out rockkey.com is again this this tool here is similar to the kind of coil on plug probe that we've got there from ma diagnostic so you can just use that as your kind of sensor and then you can just go along the coils and quickly check them so I'm just going to show you a couple of the things that this thing can do so straight up you can see here that we've got a camber signal up there so that's a canvas High signal you can see there that it's a pretty good signal that we've got if we just now show you the power of this thing what I've done is I've increased the sample rate to a maximum and what we will do is increase the time to a much longer time base like one second now what you can do with this is stop it and then actually zoom in and you look at how clear this waveform is for the price that's just amazing okay what I've set up in this example is we've got the amp clamp going around the ignition coil power supply and we'll be taking the trigger ignition signal on the other channel there okay so now you can see here that we've got the uh the current ramp there for the ignition coil and then the blue one here is the ignition trigger from the engine control unit we reduce that time a bit we were able to see those in a little bit more detail just increase that voltage a bit and you can see there now that we've got that current ramp from the ignition coil and this is the primary ignition signal from the ECU okay now what I've done is I've switched out that voltage measurement to the secondary ignition clamp there that handtech ht-25 and now we can see on the screen that we've got that ignition waveform as well we can see the current ramp is still there so that's where the ignition coil is being activated now that ignition waveform looks upside down to what people might used to be looking at the really great thing about Pico 7 is that you can quickly invert the waveform and see what you get in there so I just increase the voltage a little bit there and you can see now that we've got a nice waveform fitted on the screen so hopefully that will help you get up and running with your Automotive oscilloscope setup and don't forget to go and check out the training that we've got at mechanicmindset.com you can also sign up for the free trial and download those waveforms that we just took

Channel: Mechanic Mindset

Views: 54,230

Keywords: mechanic mindset, picoscope, automotive, diagnostics, picoscope 2204a, picoscope automotive, oscilloscope, automotive oscilloscope, picoscope basics, picoscope training, hantek, hantek automotive oscilloscope, hantek automotive, how to, picoscope tutorial, automotive diagnostics, automotive diagnostics training, hantek 1008c, automotive oscilloscope kit, automotive oscilloscopes for beginners, owon hand held oscilloscope, owon, rotkee, rotkee oscilloscope, oscilloscope training

Id: A0wwhPJNDKk

Length: 13min 12sec (792 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 24 2022