Oscilloscope Mod for the Blues

Roughly 8% of males and 0.6% of females are red-green color blind, and yet many common oscilloscopes use yellow and green for the traces for their two-channel readouts. Since [Roberto Barrios] is afflicted by deuteranopia, a specific form of red-green colorblindness that makes differentiating between yellow and green hard, if not impossible, he got to work hacking his Agilent oscilloscope to make it more colorblind friendly.

Starting with a tip from [Mike] from the EEVblog forums, [Roberto Barrios] set out to rewire the LCD interface and swap the red and green signals. That way yellow will turn bluish (red component replaced by blue) and it could be seen as “very different now” from the green trace on the readouts. Sounds simple right? Well, slight issue: the 0.5 mm pitch of the connector. He did not want to design a PCB and wait a few weeks to receive it, so he decided on using 0.1 mm wires held together with Kapton tape to route each signal individually from one connector to the other. After an hour under the microscope, it was done. And boy, his work is impressive, go check it out.

Voila! It worked splendidly. Now [Roberto Barrios] can use his scope. And, the stock UI is mostly grey or white, so swapping the red and blue channels did not change much the appearance of the interface. Moreover, the switch had a small unintentional bonus, the loading screen is much cooler now with an edgy red sky. Further, [Roberto Barrios] “would not be [himself] if [he] could resist changing the CH1 button backlight LED to blue, to match the new trace color. So, no [he] couldn’t.”

This was a well done and very functional oscilloscope mod, but if you need more frivolity in your life, fear not: we’ve got your back with real-time Quake played on an oscilloscope.

Filed under: misc hacks

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