Autonerdz forums

Hello Blue,

Any amp probe can be configured HOWEVER, beware of the quality.

Cheapie probes although a good deal tend to drift and have a lot of RFI that your captures are inaccurate.

So buy the best!

HTH

daveyK wrote on Feb 7^th, 2015 at 4:41pm:


Blue_Heisenberg wrote on Feb 8^th, 2015 at 2:47am:


Read carefully what Dave quoted above.

In part its all to do with the shielding.

In one of them you need extra adapter to attach to the BNC.

Blue_Heisenberg wrote on Feb 8^th, 2015 at 9:43am:


Are you going to use them at the same time?

Blue_Heisenberg wrote on Feb 8^th, 2015 at 10:24am:


Yes, and you can simply attach your banana current clamps to the ends of the test leads.  This gives you additional reach as well.  However, it does not help with the fact that the banana clamps and leads are not shielded.  In the early days, Pico supplied unshielded current clamps.  They quickly learned though that shielded clamps perform much better. 

These would be better than no amp clamps though and you can apply filter to help with all the RFI hair on the resulting captures.  Also, if you know the voltage to amps ratio, you can create a custom probe within the software to scale them in amps.  While not as accurate as the Pico ones I think the accuracy and response time of these probes would be suitable.

Blue I have this amp probe. I use it on a daily basis. Its pretty good probe for the money. I have had to re-zero it a couple of times before because it was off. you can plug it right into your shielded pico scope leads. http://www.aeswave.com/Universal-Low-Range-Current-Probe-Custom-p9136.html

Blue_Heisenberg wrote on Feb 15^th, 2015 at 12:17am:


You could yes, if the volts to amps is the same. 

But, we don't recommend using the built in probes even for the Pico clamps.  They are too limiting.  We have our own in the probe library that are better.  You are better off making one of your own. 

The Autonerdz PicoScope installer populates your custom probe library with a bunch of probes that are a lot more functional.  Our users don't really need any of the built in probes.

Blue_Heisenberg wrote on Feb 15^th, 2015 at 1:15pm:


It's just for our Picogroup members.  It's the same software, just bundled in a custom installer that offers tweaks to the settings and preferences for best performance and to add some goodies like custom probes and math channels for the libraries, logo, etc.

The built in Pico amp probes work fine for the most part but, for they limit the useful range.  For example, the 600 amp probe is limited to 600 amps even though the probe will read up over 800 amps just fine.  600 isn't enough to see the initial inrush current for most applications.  They also don't allow you to set any other ranges within the probe unless you edit  the probe to open up that option.  It's easier just to build another properly, from scratch than to copy that one to the library and try to fix it.