Hi, my name is Rich Munchgesang and I am a new member here. I have a repair shop on Long Island NY, I have been at the same location for over 15 years, last year we went out of business and I re-opened the shop. It has been going very well. So I decided that for my 40th birthday and to celebrate my first successful year in business I wanted something cool. So I bought a picoscope 4 channel scope. I am really looking forward to reading up on this tool and getting better at using it. Yesterday I got it all hooked up and messed with it for an hour or so. Since I am new here and there is so much to read, if anyone has any old posts that they recommend for a new pico user, please link it for me so I can acclimate myself to this new "toy" ;)

Thanks for reading this and I cant wait to get playing with this thing.

Hello Rich,

Welcome aboard.

You only played for an hour?

don't be afraid to ask questions. we all started crawling before we learned to run  ;)

Welcome Rich!

This is the place to ask questions and learn.  The search function works well, but make sure you read all the options so you don't limit your searches.

As for where to start, I would first have to ask what your experience with lab scope diagnostics has been.  I started a couple waveform analysis threads and plan on doing more soon.

Good Luck

Hi, I would have played around a lot longer but I had trouble setting everything up. I had to get my wireless internet up and running to get the pico to load onto the laptop and that took longer than I figured it would. I have Verizon and never set the laptop up, before the scope I only had a DRBIII emulator running on that particular laptop, and I never logged onto the internet with it. And of course, I couldn't find my passwords for 30 minutes :(

I then had some other jobs to take care of and never got back to it.  Most of my work is what is generally called "gravy". I do mostly brakes, tires, alignments, fluid changes and most of the MIL things I get seem to be quite simple. I got the scope because I think it is a great skill and will help my all-around ability as a tech to understand how the systems operate and lead to better productivity.

While I was playing around I got some odd waveforms from the ignition coils on two separate vehicles. Both ramp upwards at 45 degrees and then shut right off. No hold at the top at all. Very triangular. Both of these were perfectly running vehicles. Any idea on what I may have been doing wrong? All my other tests showed waveforms close or identical to what I thought I should see. Thanks for any help on this. Hope this isn't to freshman of a question.  :)

richmunch wrote on Jun 14^th, 2013 at 8:53pm:

Any idea on what I may have been doing wrong?

Sounds like typical ramp and fire primary strategy.  This strategy was developed to reduce excess and wasted heat in the drivers from excess dwell.  PCM uses adaptive or predictive dwell to turn on the coil so that it will reach saturation just in time to fire.  This way the coil drivers could be placed in the PCM and not fry stuff or need gigantic heat sinks.  Ramp and fire primary current has a shark fin appearance.

Welcome to the zoo.   8-)

Hello. Dont forget those attenuators. Good luck. How or what did you do to continue your business? Did you remain in the same location and keep the name?

Hi Rich,

welcome mate  [smiley=thumbsup2.gif]

My only advice would be to lock your self away as often as possible to study "known good" vehicles and test as many systems/components as possible.
Looking at broken cars will send you down the 'rabbit hole' more often than not.
The Picogroup offers up hours of good reading and does come across a little 'overwhelming' at first.

But don't worry, if you look like you're having a go and putting in the time to study, all questions will be answered. There's no bagging or big egos here and you will learn a lot quicker than you think  ;)

As Don said, don't forget the attenuators on anything with a coil winding.

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