[ENG] Hantek 6022BL Oscilloscope (basic and cheap items for a maker laboratory)

In this post i will talk about the most important and versatile item in an electronics maker laboratory, the Oscilloscope. The main goal of this post is to talk about a useful and cheap oscilloscope, what bring us to talk about the Hantek 6022BL.

This post will be split in two parts: Oscilloscope definition/Hantek 6022BL description; Installation and operation on Windows 10 (+ comments about the oscilloscope operation in Linux);

1 - Oscilloscope definition and Hantek 6022BL description

Before all, follow a definition of oscilloscope from wikipedia

Antes de tudo segue uma definição do que é um osciloscópio segundo o wikipedia: An oscilloscope, previously called an oscillograph, and informally known as a scope or o-scope, CRO (for cathode-ray oscilloscope), or DSO (for the more modern digital storage oscilloscope), is a type of electronic test instrument that allows observation of varying signal voltages, usually as a two-dimensional plot of one or more signals as a function of time. Other signals (such as sound or vibration) can be converted to voltages and displayed.

The Hantek 6022BL oscilloscope was developed by Qingdao Hantek Electronic Co. Ltd. (China). This oscilloscope includes all waveform acquisition hardware and it runs using a PC (through an USB connection) as a display to illustrate the acquired waveform, as well as to configure the equipment through an graphic user interface.

I had brought this oscilloscope from Amazon through this link. The oscilloscope costs USD 89.99. This oscilloscope has two analog waveform ports (it includes two probes), and 16 digital logic analyzer channels (it includes too the probes).

The Hantek oscilloscope manual says that the equipment is capable to achieve 48,000,000 samples per second (48MS/s), and associate this directly to a 20MHz bandwidth (2.4 samples per period for a 20MHz signal).

In the next post about the Hantek oscilloscope performance analysis you will see that the above statement does not reflect the reality in terms of performance (in principal when we are acquiring square wave signals).

A good practical rule to define the oscilloscope bandwidth from the samples per second feature is to consider at least 10 samples per period (practical rule of thumb), which limits the Hantek oscilloscope bandwidth to 4.8MHz (which still works perfect for 90% of maker and IoT applications that communicates through low frequency signals).

Follow below the Hantek 6022BL unboxing pictures: the first picture illustrates the oscilloscope box, the second picture illustrates the oscilloscope hardware + USB communication/power cable + 16 digital probes (+2 GND probes) and yours respective probe heads, the third picture illustrates the two analog probes and the remaining accessories. I had choose to no illustrate the user manual and drivers CD due the reason that we can get newer versions at the internet.

If you want to see detailed specifications from the oscilloscope click in this link and visualize the oscilloscope user manual at this link.

2 - Installing the oscilloscope at Windows operating system (+comments about Linux)

To install the oscilloscope at Windows operating system we need first to verify that the oscilloscope back button stays at H position (pressed position = running Hantek oscilloscope firmware).

After this step, we need to download the right driver with digital signature at the following link (direct Hantek forum link, first register yourself in order to be able to see the drivers link at the post).

After download the driver, unzip it to a known folder and plug the two USB type-A cables at the from Hantek oscilloscope to the PC where will be illustrated the signals.

As soon as you had connected the cables correctly, enter in the Windows 10 device manager application and visualize a unknown device (in the case that you do not have already the Hantek driver installed at your system). Next, click Fast two times at the unknown device, click on refresh driver, and locate the folder where you have unzipped the Hantek oscilloscope driver files, click on OK, and click on Next.

Then it will appear a Windows security dialog box asking for permission to trust and install the Hantek device software driver. Click on install.

If you have already installed the CD-rom driver that do not have the digital signature, you will visualize the below warning screens ("Windows found a problem during device driver installation", "It is necessary a digitally signed driver"), and the installed driver will presents a subscript warning signal (indicating that the driver will not work properly).

In case you had installed the correct driver (the digitally signed one that you downloaded from the Hantek forum post), you will visualize at device manager application the Hantek6022BL device through the Hantek6022BL DRIVER 2.

With the driver correctly installed at Windows 10 PC, download the oscilloscope GUI software at this link (illustrated at below picture) after made the login at Hantek webpage (if you do not have yet the login, please register first), and then install the software at your PC (HT6022BL SDK).

With the SDK software installed in your PC, open as administrator the Hantek6022BL software (illustrated at below picture).

After you had started the software, you can make a work function test plugging the channel #1 or #2 at the test square wave (1 kHz and 2 V peak-to-peak), as illustrated at below picture.

After this step you must click on AUTO button at the graphical user interface, to verify that the square wave is being acquired by the Hantek 6022BL oscilloscope, assuring that the oscilloscope is working properly, as illustrated at below picture.

The Hantek acquisition software runs only in Windows operating system. To run at other operating systems like Linunx, there are some open softwares for this purpose.

The sigrok project provides a portable software, multi-platform and FREE that supports several devices, including Hantek6022BL.

The openhantek project (github link) has the main goal to provide a FREE software to enable the hantek oscilloscope to run at Linux operating systems.

At the next English language post, i will make a performance analysis between Hantek (USD 89.99) oscilloscope and a Keysight MSO (USD 25,000) measuring square wave forms acquired from the previous AD9850 post.

The previous AD9850 post describes in a very detailed manner, how to use the Logic analyzer feature from the Hantek6022BL.

#Electronics #Hardware #osciloscope #dataaquisition #realtimemeasurement #maker #English