5
Basics
This section will help you become familiar with adjusting the vertical and horizontal controls, taking
continuous or a single measurements and how to adjust the trigger.
Autoset and Default setup
Normally when you are measuring a signal you can press the
Autoset
button and the oscilloscope will
automatically adjust the vertical and horizontal scale setting to an appropriate setting and display the
peak to peak voltage, mean, period and frequency values. You can adjust this setting following the
instructions below. If you ever get the oscilloscope into a setting where you can’t see the signal your
measuring, you can press the
Default Setup
button to restore the oscilloscope to a predefined state.
Note
: the default setup button does not affect the save / recall settings.
Vertical Menu
The vertical menu allows you to measure the voltage of an alternating current or signal. The screen has
8 blocks going from the bottom of the screen to the top. The value of each square is set by the large
control knob (
Scale
knob) below the channel number button. You will normally adjust the vertical
Scale
knob where you can see the largest signal on the screen without having the signal go off the screen.
The position knob above the channel number in the vertical menu moves the entire signal up or down.
By pressing the
channel number
(1 or 2)
button, you can bring up the
Coupling
softkey. This will
normally be set to
DC
. This means you will see the DC component of the signal with the AC component.
By setting the
Coupling
softkey to
AC
, you will remove any DC voltage from the signal you are
measuring.
The probes that come with the TBS1052B-EDU are x10 probes. This means a 10 volt peak to peak signal
will come into the oscilloscope at 1 volt peak to peak. Because we know the signal is actually 10 times
larger, the oscilloscope is defaulted to show the signal it receives as 10 times the actual input. If you use
an oscilloscope probe that is not a times 10 probe, you will need to press the
channel number
(1 or 2)
button then the
Probe
softkey. This will bring up the
Attenuation
softkey. Press the
Attenuation
softkey
and use the
Multipurpose
wheel to select the correct probe attenuation.
Horizontal Menu
The horizontal menu adjusts the time parameters of the oscilloscope. There are 10 blocks going from
the left side of the screen to the right side of the screen. The large
Scale
knob in the Horizontal menu
will adjust each square to a different time scale, from 50 seconds to 5 nanoseconds. The position knob in
the horizontal menu moves the entire signal left and right on the screen. Pushing the
Position
knob will
center the signal to the middle of the screen. The
Acquire
button will allow you to take continuous
samples or take an average of different sample sizes of the signal.
Trigger Menu
The signal on the screen of the oscilloscope is drawn from left to right many, many times a second. In
order for the oscilloscope to draw a repeating signal that is steady (doesn’t drift or freeze), it needs to
