Thursday, 7 June 2018

Using oscilloscope safely with AC mains


I know there is quite few discussions already on this topic, but since English isn't my first language, I though it better to get some more information about this.


I have used oscilloscopes to troubleshoot electronics problems and measure AC engine current spikes at startup, but I have no experience using them to measure high voltage levels and my experience is with old analog scopes.


So now I have this new DSO and the input rating is 400V peak to peak AC, so it can handle about 140V AC RMS? Not that I'm going to input that much there.


Since I live in Europe the mains here are 230 V @ 50 Hz I can't measure them directly.



If I set the attenuation from the scope and probe to 10X, the voltage is 23 RMS and it is safe to measure? And yes the probes are rated for 1kV.


If that is true, it's also safe to measure voltage between two main lines (400V RMS), since the peak-to-peak would be about 112 volts?


SAFETY: When I am measuring AC, I will be using the scope from its internal battery or with a isolating transformer (1:1) so that it is floating, meaning that there is no connection to earth ground. Are there any other safety issues I have not realized?




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