General Questions

What is BitScope ?

BitScope is a low cost high performance mixed analog and digital signal aquisition peripheral designed for use with a PC. It is useful to anyone who needs to capture information from the real world for processing, analysis and/or display on a PC.

Yes, but what is it really ?

BitScope is effectively an integrated digital oscilloscope and logic analyser where the PC provides the display and much of the processing power and BitScope itself provides high bandwidth signal capture of 2 analog and 8 logic signals.

How much does BitScope cost ?

BitScope is not expensive. A fully working BitScope costs as little as $ 475.

Where can I get BitScope ?

You may buy fully manufactured BitScopes online. See the store for details.

Alternatively, you can download the designs from this site including the parts list to build one yourself.

We used to sell kits of parts but unfortunately we've been forced to discontinue this as some of the through-hole components have become very difficult to find at reasonable prices.

Where's the BitScope software for my PC ?

There free software from us and others available here.

You can even use a terminal program and spreadsheet if you want!

Where did BitScope come from ?

BitScope is a winner of Circuit Cellar's Design98 engineering design contest.

Norman Jackson originally built it to solve some serious high speed digital signal processing bus logic problems for Discrete Time Systems Pty. Ltd. Read his article in the August 98 issue of Circuit Cellar for more details if you like.

How do I connect it to my PC ?

BitScope was originally an RS-232 peripheral. However these days most BitScopes use USB or Ethernet which are widely available and much faster then RS-232.

What's so great about BitScope ?

BitScope is powerful, flexible, open and very low cost.

It costs a few hundred dollars but is capable of performing many of the same functions as stand-alone test equipment costing thousands of dollars.

It's different to other low cost data aquisition PC peripherals because its design is published and free for download so you get to learn exactly how it works.

It uses a simple virtual machine architecture which can be controlled by scripts you can write. You can also write your own PC software to do exactly what you want with the data captured by BitScope.