Hey guys,
I am working on a project with deals with 220VAC circuit. I need oscilloscope that can measure the load side voltage and current which I cannot do with my cheap usb oscilloscope.
Since you guys run workshops and probably have access to such expensive test equipments, I was wondering if I can handover test procesure and my prototype board to your engineers and get them to run the test for me OR betteroff allow me to run the test myself ? Happy to pay usage charges for this service.
Thanks
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Hi Presham
You would be lucky to measure the current with any oscilloscope without a current measuring probe which is usually a coil arrangement which one wire passes through. Similar to a clamp meter principle. In fact unless you are particularly interested in the “shape” of the current waveform why can’t you use a clamp meter for current and your oscilloscope or voltmeter to measure volts.
Be a bit careful here. Unless there are special circumstances oscilloscope measurements are usually made WRT ground. If the need is otherwise your scope mains input ground would have to be removed then the case could (for safety read “will”) be “live”. If this involves 240VAC this could be lethal.
However your USB scope will probably be USB powered so I would recommend ALWAYS measure WRT ground or be very certain about what you are doing or your whole PC could finish up damaged or if a laptop “live”
Cheers Bob
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Hey Prashant,
While we do have some equipment that is outside of normal hobbyist capability, the majority of our test equipment will not be able to measure that high of a voltage as we generally focus on hobbyist level electronics and aren’t fully geared for that.
It may be something more geared towards an electrician or engineering consultancy company rather than us as hobbyist/makers, but we wish you the best of luck with your project!
Cheers,
Blayden
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Thank you both.
The project I am working on is basically a VAC dimmer circuit with phase control and I wanted to measure phase shift without using a step down transformer as it may add a shift to my test signal due to its inductive nature.
I believe there’re some companies renting out such high end test equipments. I will try and ping them for assistance.
Thank you.
Prashant
