Topic

I have a slight pulsing on the brake pedal of my ZTT, I suspect it may be a bad segment or cracked reluctor ring on one of the wheel hubs, so I picked this handy gadget up to see if I can locate the problem or at least narrow it down to which wheel.
Its a handheld Oscilloscope bought off ebay, under 20 quid and ready built complete with a power supply. I should be able to connect it to the ABS sensor, spin the wheel and hopefully spot a missing pulse in the trace, showing me where the bad sector is on the reluctor ring.
Normally you would expect to pay several hundred quid for a scope, so this is an absolute gem. You could also use it on crank sensors and stepper motors, such as IACV's.



Also got this cheap voltage adaptor and put it into a handy enclosure, since the scope runs off 9V DC, this will convert the 12V on my car battery so I can power up the mini oscilloscope when using it on my car.



This should be a handy diagnostic tool and one that I could use on my TF if I need to!

Sundance

SundanceUK wrote: wrote:

I have a slight pulsing on the brake pedal of my ZTT, I suspect it may be a bad segment or cracked reluctor ring on one of the wheel hubs, so I picked this handy gadget up to see if I can locate the problem or at least narrow it down to which wheel.
Its a handheld Oscilloscope bought off ebay, under 20 quid and ready built complete with a power supply. I should be able to connect it to the ABS sensor, spin the wheel and hopefully spot a missing pulse in the trace, showing me where the bad sector is on the reluctor ring.
Normally you would expect to pay several hundred quid for a scope, so this is an absolute gem. You could also use it on crank sensors and stepper motors, such as IACV's.

Also got this cheap voltage adaptor and put it into a handy enclosure, since the scope runs off 9V DC, this will convert the 12V on my car battery so I can power up the mini oscilloscope when using it on my car.

This should be a handy diagnostic tool and one that I could use on my TF if I need to!

Sundance

I’ve been toying buying one of those. Did you sort the ZTT? It is probably your rear wheel bearing


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Only got the unit yesterday, hopefully will have a look at it over the weekend, I think the rear offside is usually the best bet.

Sundance

Those little scopes are brilliant for diagnosing low-speed signal issues. No use at all for anything else - but they are good enough for slow (less than 100s of kHz) digital signals. They're not very good for diagnosing faults in analog electronics, as they miss too much higher frequency noise and harmonics - so while you might see the general shape of a signal - it might not be telling you the complete picture. If the signals look correct and whatever you're measuring isn't working, there might be a short transient spike or noise ruining the signal that you'd need a faster scope to see.

Hope it works well for you

Should pick up the trace ok from the abs signal, I think its 0.7v low and 1.7v high so should give a good traceable image.
Its max freq is rated at 200Khz and the built in test point gives a frequency 1Khz at 3.3v.
I do have access to a picoscope oscilloscope if required, I really only bought this as it was nice and cheap and should do the job. Its max input is 20V, not sure if you can use X10 leads with it, but for automotive it should do everything I want. Let you know how it goes on.

Sundance

I often thought a simple little oscilloscope would be handy for checking sensors like the O2 sensor but never knew what one to look for.