Oscilloscope

After I graduated college, I had no access to an Oscilloscope. So, being a glutton for punishment, I decided to build my own. This is the oscilloscope that I built and that I use and that I continue to improve. I call it the PPMScope and I thought other may benefit from the software and hardware design. The hardware is based on the PIC16F877A Microcontroller and has a sample rate of up to 1 MHz and an equivalent sampling rate of up to 5 MHz (i.e. it can sample a periodic waveform at 5 MHz). The human interface to the oscilloscope is both a part of the box (knobs, switches, etc) and through a PC program written in C for Windows.

Function Generator

This function generator was designed to mount on top of the PPMScope Oscilloscope as a second board. It generates sinewaves, squarewaves, and triangle waves. You can adjust the frequency, amplitude, and offset. It only utilizies a comparator, a few opamps, transistors, and passive components. I call it the "Jelly Bean Function Generator" because it is doesn't utilize a function generator IC. The design was inspired by a college project, but it operates fairly well for a simple low cost function generator.

LC Meter

This is a simple LC Meter designed by Phil Rice that I built one weekend. I constructed the case from basswood and used point to point soldering. Sorry, I don't have a PCB design. I laid out the components by "feel". It has served me well.

Solder Fume Extractor

I decided to make a solder fume extractor to help clean solder fumes out of the air around my electronics workbench. This was a fun project you can read more about here.

PIC Assembly Library

This is a collection of assembly libraries that I have written for PIC16F microcontrollers to simplify tasks such as:

  • Expanding the assembly language vocabulary
  • Intelligent memory banking
  • Time delays
  • Reading and Writing to the EEPROM
  • Bitbang I2C interface
  • Bitbang Serial interface

FreeMat Library

This is a collection of functions for FreeMat. They may also be used by MATLAB, Octave, and Scilab, but they may need modification since they were written and tested on FreeMat.  They cover functions such as:

  • General Use:  cumtrapz, trapz, gradient, tril, triu, sign, stem, gdc, and lcm
  • Serial Data: a dymanic linked library and M files which adds the ability to communicate over a serial port using FreeMat
  • Control Systems: functions I wrote to help me with some control system problems, including the creation of transfer functions, bode plots, and root locus plots
  • Signal Processing: a partial implementation the filter function, fir1 function and freqz functions for use in digital filtering applications

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Page last update 2016 Nov 15.