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  The Autonerdz Community Forums › General Public Area › PicoScope › 4423 picoscope on home AC
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4423 picoscope on home AC (Read 1,921 times)
Sam1
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4423 picoscope on home AC
Feb 21st, 2010 at 12:44pm  
Hi

Can I plug my picoscope with attenuator into my home AC and expect it to work?

thx
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Tom Roberts
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Re: 4423 picoscope on home AC
Reply #1 - Feb 21st, 2010 at 4:26pm  

Sam,

I'm glad you asked.

No!   Smiley

That is very dangerous.  You have a 50/50 chance of creating a ground loop through the scope and PC back to the AC power supply and blowing everything up risking bodily injury.  This is stated in many places.

This is not just for PicoScope.  I once knew of a guy that smoked his MTS5100 scope that way because the charger was plugged in.

The only safe way to do this is with a differential isolation probe.

http://accessories.picotech.com/active-oscilloscope-probes.html
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