Mirko Pavleski Turns a Wio Terminal Into a Cheap Two-Channel Oscilloscope with Goji's Firmware
The device "is not very fast," Pavleski admits — but it works as an educational tool, and even for debugging if you're in a pinch.
Maker Mirko Pavleski has demonstrated how to turn a Seeed Studio Wio Terminal into a compact two-channel oscilloscope, "primarily intended for educational purposes" but usable in a pinch for troubleshooting and more.
"An oscilloscope is a highly useful electronic test instrument used for visualizing and analyzing electrical signals over time," Pavleski explains of the project. "It provides a graphical representation of electrical waveforms, making it a crucial tool for engineers, technicians, and scientists working with electronic circuits and systems. I will describe a simple way to turn [the Wio Terminal] into a small two-channel oscilloscope."
Designed as an all-in-one microcontroller development platform, the Wio Terminal is based on an Microchip SAMD51 chip running at 120MHz with 192kB of static RAM (SRAM) and 4MB of off-chip flash. To this, Seeed Studio has connected a 2.4" color display, inertial measurement unit (IMU), microphone and buzzer, light sensor, infrared emitter, and a microSD slot for storage — plus three buttons and a five-way joystick for local interactions.
It's these which provide control for Pavleski's oscilloscope project, which is based on a firmware developed by the pseudonymous "Goji" and originally written for the Microchip PIC24 in 2014. Pavleski's contribution to the project is a housing which provides an easy way to connect devices on test to the Wio Terminal while keeping the cabling neat and tidy.
"[The] Wio Terminal ADC [analog to digital converter] is not very fast," Pavleski admits, "so this device has almost no practical use, but it is therefore simple, inexpensive, and very good for studying the way this type of instrument works, as well as its adjustment especially because of the extremely professionally made graphic interface."
Pavleski's write-up is available on Hackster; Goji's original post is available on goji2100.com in Japanese.
