DSO 138 Oscilloscope 2.4" TFT Digital Oscilloscope Accessory Spare Parts Transparent Acrylic Case DIY Kit Electronic Learning Set (Acrylic Case DIY Kit)

I have had my DS0138 Digital Oscilloscope for a while, but did not use it as much as would have liked to, because I was always afraid of accidentally shorting out the exposed PC board. Finally I figured someone made a case for it, which brought me to this. The finished product is spectaular! Clear acrylic that still shows the inner workings and allows access to all of the necessary connections. In my opinion here are the up and down sides of this DIY case kit: PROS: - Beautifully precision cut acrylic pieces. - When assembled, VERY solid and attractive. - External access to every necessary connection, including both power connections, the input connector, test point, and programming jack. - Extra button/switch extenders (to compensate for the one you will inevitably drop :) - Reasonably priced. CONS: - Because it IS precision cut, a patient steady hand is required. Don't drink a gallon of coffee before attempting to assemble this kit - If you have poor eyesight, lots of light is recommended. Clear acrylic is hard to see in low light! - Removing the paper from the acylic sucks, but it always does. - You may need a pointed tool, such as a toothpick or small screwdriver to line the push buttons up for the final assembly of the top piece. I used a sharp-pointed pair of soldering tweezers. - Care should be taken when removing the protective paper from the acryic. I did break one piece near one of the thinner cuts. Fortunately is was an internal "shim" piece and was not vital to the structual soundness. - The assembly instructions are not included. Rather, ther are availble here on the Amazon listing, shows 4 small acorn nuts for the top, to give it a smoother, more finished look. The kit only included regular hex nuts. They still work fine, but are not as aestheticly pleasing. - There is a whole set of TINY bolts and nut included, that I found no use for, nor did the assembly instructions say anything about them. They appear to not be needed, as my scope is solid as a rock. - DO NOT over tighten the nuts that hold the top piece on. This will cause the top piece to warp just enough that one of more of the control buttons will not depress correctly. Remember: precision cut! It took me about 75 minutes to put this together, mainly because I have bad eyes and low patience threshold. Once it is complete, though, it is beautiful. For the price, it is a good bargain! God speed, fellow DIYers...

This case works, but it's tricky to assemble correctly. Read the other reviews to see how it goes together. It might take one or two iterations to get it put together so all the buttons work right and nothing is being bent or stretched.

This was a fun kit to build!!! I dont know everything about electronics, however i used common sense to figure out the steps (that were not labeled specifically in the “directions”) and built this scope easy!! Thanks for providing this opportunity!! It seems as tho the 50/99% of people who buy stuff like this are NPCS. Anyway, i think this will be a great gift for anyone you know thats COMPETENT… ps this is autisteasy if you know electronics, and simple if you can follow context clues. Otherwise DONT WASTE YOUR TIME NPC. Ps ps i only bought this because of a referal that its “SUPER DIFFICULT” which i must add…. Is a laughable statement. Either be smart or focused and this will be a fun project!

OK, so I had low hopes and just wanted a fun project that might end up being useful. It didn't. Whenever I attach a power supply it goes crazy pulling weird voltages. Tried replacing caps, inductor, diodes, you name it. Can't get it to pull a consistent voltage and when it does, I get half voltage at all test points, if I'm lucky.

Great fun putting it together. Most elaborate kit I have ever assembled. Even more fun when it actually worked. SMD parts were already installed thank goodness. Not a great scope, but adequate for most of what I do, and I don't worry too much about blowing it up. Probably great just for the educational value.

The device worked the first try, came with all the required parts. As somebody else pointed out in the comments, this is not a good kit for amateurs because the instructions are borderline terrible. If you have experience soldering electronics and navigating ambiguous instructions then you will be fine.

One page of the instructions lists some resistors--DO NOT LOOK AT THAT PAGE, it is not a parts list. Look at the step-by-step instructions to find the breakdown of parts. I was still missing one capacitor so I had to purchase more. Finally figured out how to get this thing together.

This is an excellent project. It would be challenging for a beginner, but taking their time, double checking everything, and getting it all right it's extremely rewarding to finish a project in a working thing (and the test loop ensures you have a square wave to check). It doesn't have fancy modern oscilloscope features, but mostly, if I'm going to use a scope, it's to see IF there's a wave, or its general shape, so this is a perfectly sufficient tool for me. A 450 dollar scope would be wasted on me. You can use it to test the function generator Amazon recommends the scope with (that would probably be a better FIRST project for a beginner, but this is a good second). I'm going to try it with the 9v battery to 2pin molex connectors to try running it off a battery. The documentation is good for assembly, but not *great* for trouble shooting, BUT the project is VERY well documented online, it seems to be a very popular board/chip/project. Can't recommend highly enough!