EEVblog #159 - Oscilloscope Trigger Holdoff Tutorial

One of the more obscure controls on an oscilloscope is the Trigger Holdoff control. A dedicated control on most high end analog oscilloscopes, and a main menu option in modern digital scopes, yet often poorly understood. What does it do and how does it work?
(the background noise is crickets!)

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• oscilloscope
• analog
• digital
• scope
• rigol
• agilent
• hameg
• infiniivision
• trigger
• holdoff
• control
• tutorial
• crt
• sweep
• cro
• horizontal
• vertical
• timebase
• retrace
• blanking
• knob
• instruction
• how-to

[ttk1opc]

What is that cricket like sound in the background?

[EEVblog]

@ttk1opc Actual crickets!

[truhlikfredy]

I think you choose very bad example to showing this feature. But at least bad example than none :) BTW: I think not bad practice is to take the scope and just poke with it, feature by feature learn and look up theory and then try to practice (because when you just read it and didn't try it out, then you can forget about it much easier). For example if somebody gave me new camera before holidays, I would experiment with it for while before taking any shots on holiday to have minimum experience.

[EEVblog]

@truhlikfredy What example should I have used then?

[Nermash]

Great video, always great to learn new stuff! Holdoff trigger was always a bit in the dark side for me:) BTW, that Agilent looks better and better every time I see it. Too bad that grey dealer Niatel in my country asks 4x regular US price.... Regarding the crickets, it instantly reminded me of warm summer nights, keep them on for every video:)))

[EEVblog]

@Nermash x4 the US price really sucks :-( Can you import?

[neutron7]

awesome, you taught me something, I have the same rigol thanks to you :)

[TheSatanicJews]

I reject your reality and substitute it for my own.

[Tamimorabi]

O Bingo! Here you go!

[ChrisMP1]

Thank you! I both had no clue what the holdoff dial does, and needed exactly this!

[slowertech]

Crickets!

[denimjeans2007]

@dave: thanks for all you efforts and videos. For advanced users this might be all boring, but for beginners it's really great to understand. Again: THANK YOU SO MUCH !!

If there is a wishlist for your videos, I'd like to ask you to add following topics on oscilloscope ( :-) )

- "missuse" Oscilloscope as an logic analyzer

- Triggering (video, pwm, etc)

- what else interessting stuff can be done with an oscilloscope. (I got one tekway dst1062b, so I am wondering what all can be done with this..)

[SigEpBlue]

Love hearing crickets while the snow's falling here.

[SquarishLink]

MAGIC

[sheeptrik]

Hi and thanks I finely find a verry good tutorial site ! It's hard to find sommething usefull on YouTube !

[BombriderKong]

Hi Dave,

with the help of you I now really understood the holdoff functionality. Recently I tried to measure some burst PWM on the high side of a half bridge of a RC 3-phase motor controller. I only have seen a lot of data garbage. With your tut now I was able to see the details at the the waveform of the p-channel MOSFET. Thanks!

Greetings from Germany, Joachim

[simonspiers]

Thank you again for answering a question most scope users don't know!