The ‘Scope Of This Kickstarter? Ten Years.

It may have taken ten years to come through on this particular Kickstarter, but a promise is a promise. In late August 2023, backers who had since likely forgotten all about the project started receiving their oscilloscope watches from creator [Gabriel Anzziani]. Whatever the reason(s) for the delay, the watch looks great, and is miles ahead of the prototype pictures.

As you may have guessed, it functions as both a watch and an oscilloscope. The watch has 12- and 24-hour modes as well as an alarm and calendar, and the ‘scope has all the features of the Xprotolab dev board, which [Gabriel] also created: ‘scope, waveform generator, logic analyzer, protocol sniffer, and frequency counter.

Internally, it has an 8-bit Xmega microcontroller which features an internal PDI, and the display is a 1.28″ E ink display. When we covered this ten years ago, the screen was the type of Sharp LCD featured in the Pebble watch. [Gabriel]’s ‘scope watch features eight buttons around the edge which are user-programmable. One of [Gabriel]’s goals was for people to make their own apps.

Of course, the Kickstarter rewards are no longer available, but if you want to build your own small, digital ‘scope, check out this DIY STM32 project.

Image via the Company Formerly Known As Twitter

Tiny OLED Oscilloscope Gets A Fancy Case

[Gabriel Anzziani] has just unleashed a newer, more convenient version of his Xprotolab portable oscilloscope, logic analyzer, and function generator. It’s up on Kickstarter, and the price is actually very nice for a tool of this caliber.

We first saw the Xprotolab early last year and ran into [Gabriel] at this year’s World Maker Faire in New York. On both occasions we were impressed with the size and capability of this very, very small OLED-display oscilloscope and general breadboarding Swiss army knife.

The Xprotolab features a two-channel, 200 kHz oscilloscope, 8-input logic analyzer, and an arbitrary waveform generator that should be good enough for all your breadboarding adventures. On top of that, the Xprotolab can sniff SPI, I2C, and UART protocols, and even has a small spectrum analyzer tucked away in a device small enough to lose in your pocket.

The updated-for-Kickstarter Xprotolab features an enclosure with a LiPo battery good for 12 hours of use per charge. Sure, it’s not a bench full of old HP and Tektronix gear, but for the budding maker, this seems like a very useful tool indeed.

Xprotolab: Oscilloscope And Xmega Development Board

Here’s a nice hands-on overview of the Xprotolab, a development board based around the AVR ATxmega32A4 microcontroller. The tiny DIP package includes an OLED display, four tactile switches, and it can be powered via a micro USB connector. The device ships ready to use as a two-channel Oscilloscope, but check out how small it is in the video after the break to decide if this will actually be useful for you. It’s not that it doesn’t have a lot of features, in fact it’s packed with them, but that screen is quite small for meaningful work. Still, at $35 it’s an inexpensive way to get your hands on the hardware and acquaint yourself with this line of microprocessors. Not that in order to flash new firmware you will need a PDI capable programmer. Continue reading “Xprotolab: Oscilloscope And Xmega Development Board”