I am a relative beginner at scopes so take all this with a grain of salt.
(BTW I bought a Tek 475 off ebay about 18 months ago.  I like it).

You can trigger the scope of the 60 hz power line (similar to using a
function generator at 60 hz), but your signal will not be correlated to the
external trigger so I don't think it will be much use. (but try it, and see
what you can see).

My guess would be to try to get the gyro to produce a periodic signal.  You
could put together a little rig that would move the gyro back and forth at a
constant rate.

Something like a cam on a drill (or other) motor in contact with a board the
the gyro is attached to.  Use gravity or a spring to keep the board in
contact with the cam.

Or use a rod - one end pivot attached the the gyro assembly, the other pivot
attached to a spinning disk.

Or, double side tape the gyro to a washing machine and put it in spin mode
with an unbalanced load :)

With a period signal form the gyro, you will be able to sync up and get a
close up picture of a small signal.

--BobG

-----Original Message-----
From: pic microcontroller discussion list [mailto:PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU]On
Behalf Of Bob Japundza
Sent: Thursday, August 22, 2002 11:26 AM
To: PICLIST@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
Subject: [EE]: measuring jitter on a scope

I am working with a piezo gyro that puts out a bit of noise/jitter in its
output.  I have a couple of different op-amp filter circuits I've thrown
together to see how well they clean up the output of the gyro, but at the
same time not screw with the bandwidth of the gyro's output.  The gyro puts
out approximately 2.5v at a steady state, and goes up/down from there
depending on the direction of rotation.  I have been trying to measure the
noise level of the output with my scope without success; I assume it is
because I don't have anything to trigger off of.  My guess is that I need a
function generator (which I don't have at the moment, but one is on the way)
tied into the external trigger input of the scope and "sample" that way.
Can anyone tell me that I'm correct in my thinking?  What frequency should I
use to sample the output?

Also, it seems my scope is a bit out of calibration (Tek 475).  I have just
located some manuals on ebay; is it difficult for one to calibrate this
scope, or should I be looking to send the scope off somewhere to be
calibrated?

thanks,

Bob

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