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The original award winning BitScope design was published in Circuit Cellar in 1998.

This classic BitScope is published here so you can learn how it works.

BitScope has evolved a long way since 1998 but all BitScopes are still based on the same Analog + Digital concept of the original design.

Released as kits, BitScope BS220 and BS300 became very popular with electronics enthusiasts the world over. We have since been forced to discontinue the kits as some through-hole parts used are obsolete.

The current models BS120, BS325 and BS445 are now all SMT designs and have become very popular with professional engineers in design and development, manufacture, testing and service fields.

Now all models are available as manufactured products but the core design at the heart of all these BitScopes remains the same and is published at this website.

Likewise the BitScope Virtual Machine programming API is explained and its specifications published so anyone can write software for BitScope or build their own add-on modules.

While we no longer sell BitScope kits the main features of the original design that made it so popular remain in the newer manufactured models:

Original BitScope Mainboard

• BitScope is user programmable and reconfigurable.
• A detailed programming manual is available and the hardware design is published online for free download.
• DSO/logic analyser software for the PC is available for download from this site and other software is available elsewhere, mostly free of charge.
• Because it can use USB, Ethernet or RS-232 (older models) it is able to work with almost any host computer from PC to PalmPilot. Note that when connected via USB or Ethernet, BitScope can upload data many times faster than RS-232.


Original Parts Kit

• BitScope's expansion pod architecture allows custom interfaces to be built for specific applications.
• Multiple BitScopes may be used together when more acquisition channels are required.

Our objective in publishing the BitScope design is to make available an open system you can understand in detail, which is capable of solving real world data acquisition problems at very low cost.

By documenting the design, anyone may build BitScope. The only caveat these days is the availability of some of the through-hole parts.

By encouraging open source software development, we hope to see a range of applications developed that will be of benefit to many people. Indeed many BitScope owners have written software for their own customized purposes.

We of course provide our own software for BitScope, free of charge and we offer related interesting hardware designs such as the PICuP prototyping family and WavePOD.