Fluke 97 Scopemeter, any comments on them?
David Covell
>Hello,
>I have been looking into the possiblilty of getting one of Fluke's new
>Scopemeters. These are their new portable digital multimeter/digital
>storage scope combos. They look very nice, and I'm sure they are of
>very high quality (being Fluke). The price also seems reasonable, for
>what the things do.
>If anyone has used one, or has seen one in use, I would like to hear
>their impressions. Does it work as well as the ads describe? What
>aren't they telling us. Is the scope display updated quickly (quickly
>enough that it looks like a real scope, and not a computer drawing a
Well, it uses and LCD display, so regardless of sampling speed it doesn't
look like a crt scope. Fluke had a display here at Intel and the 97 looked
pretty good to me.
>picture)? What limitations have you run into? What doesn't it do that
>you think it should do?
I can think of one possible draw-back to the 97: I'd be pretty cautious
about using the DMM portion of a near-$2000 DMM/scope combo like this in any
high-voltage/high-current aplication. I suspect the DMM and scope share some
or all of the same processor, so any fatal over-voltage to the DMM could
take out the scope too. I've learned the hard way that fuses don't always
save you from your own negligence. Thus, I'd likely use the 97 primarily for
the scope, and in that case I'd be better off with a separate scope and DMM.
It may be that the 97 is rugged enough to handle massive over-voltage, but
I'd hate to find out differently.
David Covell (who destroyed a $200 Phillips with 1400 VDC and learned the
hard way that some meter manufacturers won't sell you replacement processors).
John De Armond
>I have been looking into the possiblilty of getting one of Fluke's new
>Scopemeters. These are their new portable digital multimeter/digital
>storage scope combos. They look very nice, and I'm sure they are of
>very high quality (being Fluke). The price also seems reasonable, for
>what the things do.
>If anyone has used one, or has seen one in use, I would like to hear
>their impressions. Does it work as well as the ads describe? What
>aren't they telling us. Is the scope display updated quickly (quickly
>enough that it looks like a real scope, and not a computer drawing a
>picture)? What limitations have you run into? What doesn't it do that
>you think it should do?
I have a 97 and love it. First off, forget any of the scopes except
the 97. The others are unconciously gymped.
here's the good stuff.
It really does have a 50 mhz bandwidth on one channel. Less when running
dual trace.
The screen is adequately fast, though the display update does sometimes
lag the input by a fraction of a second. Think of it as a delay line.
For signals that vary rapidly, there is an envelope mode that turns on
all dots the signal crossed during the sample.
Fully isolated case qualified to attach to power lines of up to 600 volts.
A,B,A-B mode allows one to view all three phases of a three phase
circuit, say of an inverter.
Several setup and waveform storage memories. Waveforms can be recalled
to the display in any combinations.
Auto-setup. On repetitive signals, pushing this button picks the proper
sweep and vertical scale to display a reasonable waveform.
Digital zoom. works by changing the sweep and trigger delay to keep
the center of the screen centered.
Trigger works very well and is displayed on the screen.
Several transforms available including smoothing, averaging and pass
filters.
Delay can be samples, events or sweeps.
Scope can accumulate twice the screen display's worth of samples which
makes the pretrigger queue fairly deep.
Optically isolated data output can dump data, memories, the screen in
either epson or HP format and accept remote control commands.
Voltmeter mode works very good, is fast and can display a mini-scope
trace even on ohms. Min/Max mode displays min, max, average all in
one display. AC is true RMS.
Is small enough to be carried almost everywhere. I hauled mine to the
dragstrip this weekend to use to observe a radar gun output.
If the ni-cad pack goes dead, you can remove it and install dry cells.
Nice touch.
Battery life is good. Days with the backlite off, spec'd 4 hours with it
on. I've gotten more.
Here's the bad stuff.
You gotta kiss Fluke's ass to get 'em to sell you one. They began
advertising the scope months before production started. I started
trying to get mine back in November. Raising hell, including calling
Fluke's president, did no good. I got mine about a month ago.
Fluke has honed the art of unbundling to a fine edge. The scope is
reasonable but by the time you get through equipping it, you've
got real money involved. Examples: Serial interface - $150,
PC interface software - >$500, Amp clamp $100-$150 (ac or dc),
Carrying case - $70 to $150, Service manual - $50 and so on.
Scope probes are fragile - I broke one the first day - and not anywhere
near the quality of Tek probes.
HP printer output is not really PCL. It drives my clone laser printer
fairly well (actual screen sized dump, rotated to landscape) but
I've had a hell of a time trying to inport it into publishing software -
one reason I bought the scope.
Screen dump is very coarse.
Backlite is inadequate. Needs to be much brighter.
Keys are heavily overloaded. Too many softkeys. Even trigger level
is on a soft key.
Voltage readings must be taken through the the A channel probe. It
cannot be routed to the bannana jacks where ohms and such are done.
When the mini-scope display is up on the ohms screen, the sweep is fixed.
It has a dumb software limitation that one trace must always be on.
That means you can't just turn off both channels in preparation of
recalling stored traces. You have to turn your traces on and then go
back and kill the real time traces.
The A/D is noisy, displaying a couple of pixels off of baseline even
with the input shorted, either with a shorting plug or by selecting
"gnd" on the input selector. It appears to be independent of range.
Input channels share a common ground. While this is typical of analog
scopes and at first blush would not seem to be a problem, you find
yourself using the scope in situations where separate grounds would
be nice. Fluke will sell you a ground isolator - for a price.
The front of the display is extremely glossy which means reflections
of overhead lights kills the display. I usually turn the lights off
and use bench lights when using the scope. This is really dumb
and unnecessary.
The highly touted signal/function generator is useless. Only a couple
of fixed, oddball frequencies. This is obviously a case where a few
bytes were available in ROM so the developers gave marketing something
else to crow about. Forget it exists when evaluating the scope.
The manual kinda indicates arbitrary waveform might be available
using the PC software but I don't know since I refuse to pay the
extortive price.
The fluke reps were very unresponsive. I got more info from distributor
salesmen. I originally contacted Fluke to obtain a unit to do a magazine
review on. Even this didn't faze 'em. They're not gonna like my
review.
The scope is actually a Philips. I HATE philips scopes. That was a
major reservation against my buying the unit. I know Fluke could have
done a better front panel.
--------------------------
If you get one, save your money on the serial interface. Just to to
radio shack and get that IR LED/photodetector they package together
and wire them through level shifters to an RS-232 connector. I
think they'll probably insert into the holes in the scope body.
The factory cable powers the level shifters from the RS-232 handshake pins.
This is a real f*ckup which precludes using a serial to parallel
converter on parallel printers. First time the converter handshakes
(typically between each byte for the cheap portable ones), the
interfaces loses power and the dump is gone.
I'd make the same purchase again mainly because there is nothing else out
there. The Leader is a joke. So are the new Tek handhelds. For a
third more money ($2400 list), you don't even get trace annotations
or on-screen data. I had one in for a couple of days to evaluate
while waiting for the Fluke. Tek apparently thinks their isolated
input channels and CRT are going to sell the unit. NOT!
I like the scope and use it about 85% of the time but I do still the
465B sitting on the bench.
John
--
John De Armond, WD4OQC | If speed kills, I musta died and
Rapid Deployment System, Inc. | gone to heaven. UN-1261 forever!
Marietta, Ga |
j...@dixie.com |Need public access in Atl? Write me.
Gregor Winslow
screwing around with this piece of crap Beckman Industrial calls a scope
for the last 2 hours trying to get a decent reading on a nonlinear capacitive
discharge. Fluke guy walks in & tries to show me his "look at the nice sine
wave demo". Boring. Stop says I, plug it into this. Okay says he. I press
the AutoSetup button and bingo: one perfect reading to go. I started to jot
down the readings in my notebook when he just plugged the 97 into my the
HP on my desk. Initial connect to hardcopy: less than 5 minutes. I ordered
one on the spot.
That was back in December: still haven't got it. Fluke is backordered up the
wazoo. They say May 15th. According to the Fluke rep, software bugs aren't
the major concern for the 97 that they usually are for most embedded systems:
he says that the entire firmware (about a megabyte) resides in nonvolatile ram.
Bug fixes can be downloaded to the client through the serial port. Excellent
move. Made me feel comfortable ordering a revision 1.00 unit.
winslow(at)capella.eetech.mcgill.ca