LCS-1M - A Full-Featured, Low-Cost Hobby Oscilloscope

Step 15 Build Your Own - Step by Step

On the next few pages, I'll show how to put together your very own oscilloscope.

Please look at the design pages for the bill of materials (on the oscilloscope homepage). You will need to obtain free samples from Maxim and Microchip, all the other components are from Jameco (usually have much better prices than other web retailers); if you are living outside the USA and don't want to pay for international shipping, you'll need to find compatible parts from a local retailer; still the Jameco links are useful because they have a downloadable data sheet for each component.

Based on the schematic you could build up the scope on a protoboard, stripboard or veroboard, but it's going to be a lot of wiring work and it is easy to make mistakes - and unless you are an experienced electronics person, troubleshooting a non-working circuit designed by somebody else can be difficult (and no, I can't do the troubleshooting for you :-) Etching your own board based on the published layout may be possible, but line widths are quite narrow (mostly 10 mil / 0.25 mm) and there are hundreds of holes to drill and vias to connect. So in essence, I recommend getting a blank scope board (from the oscilloscope homepage) - after a few repeats I can now put together the full scope in less than two hours and so far every single one worked right away.

In addition you will need:

• A soldering iron (approx. 20 Watts) with reasonably fine tip
• Solder wire
• Flat-nosed pliers (to bend component leads)
• A wire cutter (to cut of component legs)
• A screwdriver

If you are new to soldering, you may want to have a look at this instructable that gives a good introduction. It's really not that difficult but of course a little bit of practice always helps.