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ArchivesUsing Your PC Sound Card As an Oscilloscope in Linux
June 6th, 2006If you a home hobbiest such as myself, having an oscilloscope is ideal, but may not be economically feasible. However, there is a free option available. xoscope For Linux is a GTK application which allows you to view signals through your PC's sound card (thus limiting the range to audio frequencies dependent upon the sound card being used). This can come in handy for robotics type hobby projects. Additionally, the author (Tim Witham) has provided a buffer hardware circuit to buffer the proble similar to a true oscillosope and protect your PC's Line In from excessive voltages.
Installing xoscope
- Download xoscope For Linux.
- Extract the tarball.
- Configure, Make, and Install:
./configure
make
su
make install - Enable capture from your Line-In audio jack (Gnome):
Open the Gnome Volume Control from the menu: System > Preferences > Volume Control.
Click Capture tab.
Enable capture for the Line-In channel by clicking the "Toggle Audio Capture from Line In" button.
Posted on
Tuesday, June 6th, 2006 at 8:49 am
Categories
Linux Robotics/Electronics
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July 15th, 2008 at 8:11 pm
Do you proof read you text?
July 26th, 2008 at 8:01 am
Works! Thanks... I was looking for something like for a while now and... well... I just "stumbled" on it.
Jerry
July 26th, 2008 at 6:51 pm
Do you proofread you text?
Do you proof read your text?
Do you proofread your text?
Apparently not
July 26th, 2008 at 10:45 pm
"Do you proofread your text"?
No, this is a blog. That should be enough of an explanation... but... I write this very, very quickly in what very little free time I have. I write this to share information, for free, to the community.
When writing books or articles or papers, yes, I proof read my work and write multiple drafts. When I write on my personal blog, sharing information in my free time, I do not proff red my work. I rely on my readers to put the mistakes into context and determine the meaning and appreciate the fact that I took time to share what I've learned.
That being said, I appreciate emails pointing out mistakes, and if/when I have time, I'll make the correction. But if it's not a technical error I don't give it much priority.
September 17th, 2008 at 11:21 am
I've used this before succuessfully with other versions of linux but I can't get it to compile with Fedora 9. Is it possible to compile with an earlier version of gcc?
Thanks
September 21st, 2008 at 7:01 pm
Great, just what I needed, thank you very much
greetings for the site
September 27th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Thanks Micah!
With the buffer circuit it's as good as a hardware scope, apart from the frequency limitation.
December 30th, 2008 at 4:20 am
Will this work with the microphone input as well?
March 22nd, 2009 at 1:15 pm
Hi, my only question is that this sound card thing probably has a freq. range from 20Hz - 20kHz.
Am I right ?
April 11th, 2009 at 3:45 pm
Thanks. Shame about the petty pedantic people that stumbled upon your guide!
May 14th, 2009 at 9:30 am
What kind of CPU is needed to run this at decent speeds? Say for example, is an Atom 1.6 enough? Thinking about ripping a cheap netbook apart to build a rack mounted oscilloscope.
July 9th, 2009 at 5:44 am
@Andreas: Considering the original was created in 1996, I think an Atom 1.6 will be more than enough. You could probably get by with an old Pentium 2 or 3.
July 28th, 2009 at 5:34 am
Basic sound card goes up to ca. 20 kHz. New motherboards and chipsets go over 100 kHz, but sometimes there is still antialiasing filter cutting off frequencies above 20 - 24 kHz. Lower frequency is low, somewhere 10 - 30 Hz. It is possible to get DC response over a few minutes by reverse filtering the recorded signal. Exact sampling may be alternate times or exactly same time or undefined relationship between left and right channels. I have not enough experience with xoscope, but with similar programs it looks like 1 GHz PC is good enough, even slower. Some other programs, esp. networking may overload even fast computer and cause random loss of one or a few samples now and then. Better to stop other programs when recording something really time-critical signals. Thanks Micaf for the links. (Proofread by Firefox)
October 17th, 2009 at 3:17 am
Hello,
How must I install this program? What must be typed in the terminal?