Analog Discovery 3 Usage Notes

Why I bought it in the first place

The Analog Discovery 3 seemed like a band-aid solution to an ongoing problem I have been facing here at Cambridge: how do I get my own oscilloscope so that I can get back in to doing electronics without having to rely on the few shared scopes at the Dyson Center (the Dyson Center is sort of like a makerspace for engineering students, it isn’t great though…)

When I was considering my options, the Rigol DHO800 series has just been anounced, and at that price point and form factor, it was an extremely compelling choice, and I’m still probably going to get one some day later.

Ultimately, it was the student discount that was available at the time that drove me to pull the trigger on the Analog Discovery 3. Since then though, it has exceeded my expectations and proven to be an amazing allrounder when it comes to debugging hobby level projects.

That being said, as with all test equipment, it isn’t without it’s quirks. This guide serves as a series of lab notes detailing my experience with this little beast, and what it can and cannot do.

The rest of this guide is split into sections that loosely correspond to the different personalities/modes that the waveforms software has to offer.

Title^[draft]

TODO: Write in the quickie SLG47004 example

Analog Discovery 3 Supplies^[draft]

I’ll say it up front, in case you missed it like I did, the power supplies on the Analog Discovery 3 cannot do current limitng, which is a huge bummer. No constant current limiting for you sir! Also, just go ahead and set the power limit to 5.5W please…

Analog Discovery 3 Calibration Quirk^[draft]

Failed Calibration Coefficients For some reason, going through the calibration wizard in Waveforms (as of June 2023) introduced offsets and gain errors which were different for both scope channels. This doesn’t make sense, as both scope channels are calibrated with the waveform generator channel 1, after that has itself been calibrated, of course. My failed calibration attempts were done with a calibrated Keithley DMM7510, so basically with the best multimeter in the world save for the insane 8....

Probe Compensation on the Analog Discovery BNC Adapter Board^[draft]

When I got my Analog Discovery 3, I made the decision to also purchase the BNC adapter board. Trying it out with some OWON scope probes I got from Amazon, it unfortunately didn’t cut the mustard. This was the most square I could get by twiddling with the compensation adjustment. To prove that I haven’t goofed it somehow, this is at the opposite end of the compensation range: This waveform ain’t even square at this point....

Why I bought it in the first place#

Why I bought it in the first place