Oscilloscope - are these "practical"?

[grimly4]

[Graham.]

this...

>>> Nice. I want one, and I don't even have any use for it! ;-)

Yes, but hewe is a much better link ;-)

[js.b1]

Royal Mail customs clearance is likely to be =A313.50 for the ebay item referenced by the OP.

Picoscope stuff is good, but not cheap either.

[Peter Parry]

"Any package assessed by HM Revenue and customs as being liable for customs charges will also incur a Royal Mail handling fee of £8."

[The Other Mike]

Yes, you've got to account for VAT.

Of course you might get a supplier with a dislike for figures larger than say one in the tens column, and a hatred of any digit at all in the hundreds column, such that when the wind blows in the right direction, with a customs officer that is overworked / hasn't got a f*cking clue, you pay less VAT and handling fees on a few hundred quids worth of scope from HK or China than on say 50 quids worth of electronic components imported from the USA.

Going back to the original posters possible purchase of a scope, items in small packages tend to get through without charge, even if their value exceeds the customs limit. For work in the field, where there isn't any main supply and you can't afford a 'proper' battery powered scope costing over 1k for a bottom end Fluke Scopemeter then they are fine.

[Man at B&Q]

two rates depending on the declared value. Lower =A38 and higher =A313.50.

Also incorrect or at least confusing on that site is the requirement to fill in a CN22 appearing under the "Recieving mail from abroad" heading.

MBQ

[Peter Parry]

Actually it is the right answer. It is Parcelforce who charge £8 for parcels below 1,000 Euro and £13.50 for packages sent using EMS or over 1,000 Euro.

[Theo Markettos]

It's possible, but quite different from a sound sampler. Sampling is 'press Record and then Stop', while a scope is 'twiddle the knobs until it looks right' including messing with triggers, scaling levels, etc. You can do that with a mouse/keyboard interface but it's annoying... a scope is really best with a screen and some physical knobs so that your bench is clear for the pile of wires. A touch scope might be sufficient second best (I've used one, but not one designed for touch only input).

That too... a soundcard only gets you to about 24KHz signals of limited amplitude.

Theo

[Dave Plowman (News)]

One of the very useful things a scope can do is look for signals well outside the audio range which might be causing intermodulation problems. Can't do that with a sound card input which will be bandwidth limited.

[Another Dave]

It's worth looking in the properties tab of your sound card. On mine (a bog-standard Sound Blaster) you can put the sampling rate up to 96KHz. This is worth doing. Changing to 24 bit is obviously a waste of time.

Another Dave

[John Williamson]

Not if you're using it for measurements. It pays to have more precision than you need, just in case, and with modern computers, the overhead for the extra bits is negligible.

It's possibly also worth looking into measurement mics, which aren't expensive by some standards. They aren't especially quiet, but have a known response within their limits.