#48: Basics of Lissajous Patterns on an Oscilloscope

[@danielzdanowicz6899]

You are a really good instructor. Your information is presented in a friendly logical manner and is easy to follow and very well explained and fun to watch. I can easily then go back and compare to my scope. Thank you for putting your time into these topics and the well made videos.

[@iainmackenzieUK]

great movie. as a teacher of physics, I enjoyed your style, clarity and down-to earth approach. great for students. thanks iain

[@sollykhan2385]

Thank you so much for this EXCELLENT tutorial, awesome 11 minutes, considering I spent 40 days reading up in a book that made NO sense, as the old saying goes. 'A good teacher is worth more than ALL the books in the library'. please post more cool videos, Bless 😇

[@jeriellsworth]

This takes me back. I spent hours making lissajous patterns on my homebrew oscope as a kid.

[@aurkom]

I am low key jealous that you had an oscilloscope at home as a kid.

[@shivankitss8396]

@@aurkom that too 8 years back

[@aurkom]

@@shivankitss8396 that too yes

[@tonyclifton265]

yup, me too. I felt so badass Physics ninja when i could make a lissajous figure

[@sollykhan2385]

you mean you GREW up DOHHHHH,,,MORE FUN STAYING A SMALL KID 🙂

[@ehaaland]

Thank you for this! I'm a first year PhD student studying postural control and instability and we're learning about movements between the hips, knees, and ankles, and how they're coordinated. Many studies have used Lissajous figures as feedback for people to tell them how they're moving. This video really helped me grasp what was happening in reference to 0° and 180° measurements of relative phase between components of the body. Thank you, thank you, thank you!

[@nelsonwalker7105]

Thank you I love lissajous figures and I just remembered doing these in engineering school back in the mid 1980s and just wanted to relive it for few moments. Thanks for this very informative video.

[@tomwhipp3245]

the pattern at 9 minutes in can be seen as rotating towards or away from you. if you concentrate enough, you can purposefully switch between the two!

[@lingcod91]

Great video. This indeed proves: a picture is worth a thousand words. Finally enabled an understanding of Lissajous patterns . . . and how to pronounce them. And no English accents that so many 'bloks' refuse to give up. Before anyone fires hate mail at me, I've spend a lot of time and study comparing their's vs. mine. I love England, but they lost in this category.

[@w2aew]

Well, I don't know if my pronunciation is correct, but it is how I was taught.

[@drumnotdrum9262]

This is an absolutely crystal clear explanation. Helps me understand some things. Cheers!

[@debasmitade3474]

Really helpful , at a frequency difference 4 kHz , the Lissajous patterns look just like a crown ! And it's beautiful to watch .

[@curtvincent3728]

I have not seen this done since college back in the stone age. This is a great refresher! Thanks!

[@sollykhan2385]

You Mean fred flinstone had a scope ??🤔 well I'll be damned !!

[@billmoran3812]

As a teen, I had the use of a very well equipped electronics lab in the high school ham radio club. I learned about these figures through experiments with signal generators and oscilloscopes. I learned about phase angles etc this way. I have used these concepts all my adult life as an electric utility engineer.

[@evanwolfe2525]

Very Cool Video. My instructor in school pointed me towards looking into what happens when 2 waveforms of close frequency are plotted on the xy axis on an oscilloscope. Your video helped explain the o-scope display. Thanks. Just another ham operator here...Keep It "ReeL",Evan Wolfe

[@cjh0751]

Very cool. I've been trying to work out how to make these patterns on my new scope. Thanks for the demonstration.

[@ovalwingnut]

Dazzling coherent description of lissajous pattern generation. COLOR ME IMPRESSED 🤓 You rock ❤

[@g0fvt]

As I child I found it was fun creating lissajous figures on an oscilloscope, in adult life they were a superb way to observe frequency errors. One such application was adjusting 5Mhz crystal oscillators used as equipment master oscillators to correlate with the 10Mhz output of a rubidium frequency standard. Although the rubidium standard could be used to clock a frequency counter it becomes tiresome using a counter with a 100s or 1000s gate time in order to achieve the necessary resolution. An excellent video once again.

[@effectrode]

This is great - thank you.

[@paolonervi2208]

Thank you for the time you dedicate in preparing this tutorial..I found it very useful.They make me come back in my mind all the electronics i've learned when i was young... Thank you again.

[@maxpolaris99]

very cool. cant wait for my 2nd bnc cable to come in so I can hook up my 2 channel function generator to my 4 channel scope! Oh boy it's gonna be fun!

[@fredgenius]

Thanks, greight explanation! I used that technique, many years ago when I was repairing guitars - 440Hz in one channel and guitar in the other, to adjust the intonation. Interesting to note, you can see the harmonics dancing around the circle.

[@andybrown3674]

Thank you. Been trying to find this information for over a year.

[@Orcinus24x5]

This function is used to adjust tape heads in reel-to-reel and cassette tape decks, to get the phase between the channels perfectly aligned.

[@chrisingram7277]

Ahhh, I'm just starting to play with a scope for automotive diagnostics and I was curious what the xy function on the scope would have been used for other than fun. Thanks for your older comment:)

[@WI9LL]

At 8:40 there is an optical illusion similar to the rotating dancer illusion. You may see it rotating vertically or horizontally depending on how you look at it. (also sorry for the random comment, I'm shopping o-scopes for much simpler uses, and stumbled upon this video)

[@juanmontague7106]

Super educational, thanks for sharing!

[@monkeyxx]

Just got my first Oscilloscope today... looking forward to getting more in depth like this

[@ThePhiCode]

just wanted to say thank you cause you`re the only one who made me understand this finally, i needed this for an idea in my B.A project in audio en gineering... you basically saved me

[@RanHam]

I went through an electrical apprenticeship and at one point during ac theory we went in the lab and generated these things on an oscilloscope. But they just gave us directions on how to hook up the scope and what settings to put it on. When I asked the instructor what was I actually seeing on the screen he just replied "a circle." But thanks to you I actually know what the xy mode does. Thanks for posting

[@caravanken1]

I am very new to scopes and your wonderful presentation helps me become familiar with the scope and SigGen controls and what they do. I am a ham also and I want to get my Extra but did not want to just bone up on the Q & A's. So, I am opening a new hobby for me into electronics. Thanks for the tutorials and keep them coming.

[@elraymaker]

Fantástico !!!! Gracias por tu tiempo !!!

[@manvendrasingh5853]

Great Explanation Sir! It was wonderful seeing how you explained everything this quick. Thank you.

[@Stefan_trekkie]

Every video there is a new scope.. And always a nice ones.. kudos That 90° pattern is what drives AC motors, induction motor in particular

[@ny1t]

Good description as usual. I remember using lissajous patterns for component testing back in the 70s.

[@davidjesse8689]

Your video reminds me of the good old times when I was PMEL tech in my youth... I even caught a glimpse of a Simpson 260 on your bench.

[@dustinhunter6669]

This was a very good explanation of Lissajous patterns. As a college student in a physical chemistry class, this helped quite a bit.

[@arthurmead5341]

What do they use it for in chemistry?

[@donmoore7785]

Great exercise. I troubled through the math of a sequence of L-figures back in the 80's, and enjoyed coming to an understanding of what was going on. I wish I had this equipment at the time to validate my work.

[@Youssef-t3p]

The best 11 min on lissajou figures. Straight to the point

[@camdflage]

Thanks heaps for this. I'm just an enthusiast, so videos like this one are really helpful and informative.

[@apollonavas1860]

Excellent video, great sound, very well explained, you Sir are a great instructor. Thank you.

[@whocares.20]

Very good explanations. Was trying to explain this to someone, and fired this video up for them. Worked much better than my explanation, lol.

[@serginietor]

Great! I did this in university last week and didn't really understand it until I saw this video. geez, you should have more views.. thanks!

[@chopper680]

I'm old school, used to calibrate, and test those tekrronic scopes Loved the 400 series

[@mikem0898]

got this topic on my metrology course but we lacked time to cover it properly. it looked like a fun thing to do and watch but i haven't understood it very well. this video made it clear for me. thanks

[@PeterWMeek]

A favorite pastime - experimenting with lissajous patterns. My father had a polar oscilloscope - a set of secondary deflection "plates" were a center pin (right in the middle of the screen) and a ring around the edge of the circular CRT. The input signal would move the trace towards and away from the center pin. The basic trace was (of course) a lissajous pattern made by a set of 90˚ out-of-phase sine waves on the normal XY deflection plates. I didn't see it among his things, so I suppose something terminal happened to it (maybe the irreplaceable polar CRT died) and it was disposed of. I expect such a display could be synthesized by running the polar input signal into a pair of multipliers - one multiplying the polar input signal with a 0˚-phase X drive-signal and the other multiplying it with a 90˚ phase Y. The outputs of the multipliers would be fed to the X and Y inputs. If my "thought experiment" is right, this should create a circular trace which changes by getting closer to or further from the invisible center by the amount of the polar input. (I leave trace speed and sync as an exercise for the reader.)

[@ernavk31]

Excellent tutorial! Just got an XY scope and was only getting "static" (in phase) patterns. You achieved animation by varying one channel's frequency slightly. Can't wait to try it out!

[@Fr0zen14]

The company I work for still has this specific scope. Thanks for the video!

[@starboylik2]

9:27 This Lissajous Pattern Used As An Australian Channel Called "Australia Broadcasting Corporation/Commission"

[@-riddle-]

Interesting shapes come out after adding AM/FM modulation. For this purpose, I use, for example, a two-channel software function generator on an android phone, which I connect to an oscilloscope.

[@mikezike1]

I really enjoy your videos. I always come away learning something, even on topics that I think I know well. Great job, as always! 73 de Mike (K2ZAD)

[@aurkom]

This video is evergreen.

[@Antno]

Just bought that oscilloscope can't wait to use it yours looks great

[@BobDarlington]

Woah, I had a DuMont CRO as well. Big heavy rack mount box with banana jacks that I converted over to BNC when I was about 14. That thing was a crash course on calibration. Spend an hour warming up and calibrating to take a 15 second measurement. Can't say I miss those days!

[@ThatMontmorency]

The primary purpose of XY (Lissajous) mode on an oscilloscope is to facilitate two-channel phase analysis on a single-beam scope. Single beam was the limiting property of 80s-era CRT scopes. And XY mode was a _lifehack_, intended to work around that limitation when one heeds to work with two channels at once. Today we are no longer limited by "beams" since there are no beams in digital scopes. For most applications we no longer need XY mode. In fact, people realize for many of the former classic XY applications the "multi-beam" XT mode works much better than XY mode. So, Lissajous mode today becomes something of an interesting and entertaining gimmick. It still has its applications, but they are few and far between.

[@michelangelop3923]

Thanks! I am having an experiment for the school and I could figure out what I was doing wrong! This helps a lot!!

[@mrdouble]

Holy smokes that's too cool. I had no idea what that butting was for. Only that it always made a diagonal line. Thank you

[@StanHemphill]

That Tek 465B brings back memories.

[@robvegart]

This and trying to find out what that Fijian guy said to that American guy who called the wrong number on an AT&T commercial some 30 years ago have now given me closure. Thank you! BTW.... Bula vinaka Lissajous!

[@adrianacarvajal6212]

Thank you! I really enjoyed the video and actually learned how to do it, how it works and why it works!

[@mrjohhhnnnyyy5797]

Thanks for great educational video! I found the fact that pattern will move if there is phase shift very useful. Because now I can tell if there is phase shift or not with my single channel scope.

[@marcoscruz6107]

loved your video and aproach. i learned a lot, thanks

[@johnnygogo7773]

This was perfect. Very informative, well explained details, to the point and delivered exceptionally well. Thanks! *** Subscribed *** and 👍

[@walterbunn280]

Huh... so Lissajous patterns exactly match polarized light patterns. This is giving me some ideas. If I ever need to use light as my carrier signal, all i have to do is polarize the light.

[@intotheblue50]

Excellent, first time I,ve really understood it. Thank you.

[@auen80]

Thanks for showing us all this stuff. I have the same OScope. It was purchased working, but alas, not the case upon arrival. Any leads on service?

[@adamwolfram6126]

Nice video. Thanks!

[@AdmiralQuality]

You mean monaural, not monochromatic (which means one color).

[@jacksondelahunt3919]

or rather, monotonic.

[@AdmiralQuality]

That means all the same pitch. Monaural is the opposite of stereo. One channel of audio.

[@AdmiralQuality]

Aka "mono".

[@deepakchaudhary6092]

a nice and self explanatory,thanks for this.

[@riccardoiii9882]

This is just fantastic. I wish you could make it with a stereo input such as a rock song or so. It would be amazing! Thanks

[@yjwukt88]

Very instructive demostration! One question: my Tektronix 2467B only shows Lissajous pattern very briefly before it shut itself down. Is this due to the self protection of micro-channel-plate CRT and is it normal? Then how can I get a stable X-Y mode display? This scope pass all diagnosis thought the beam intensity and readout intensity seems to automatically reset to higer value after "auto measurement", which was quite annoying.

[@hennypennypoopoo6536]

thank you, I was performing a Michelson interferometer quadrature experiment and I wasn't sure what the signal on the ocilloscope meant. your video was very helpful

[@yjwukt88]

Thank you very much for your hint. Now I got the pattern on 2467B by turning the intensity control up. All of your series of video are extremely informative. Do you have any plan to do some video on Tek's TM500/5000 modules, or 7000 series mainframe? How about the options of staying connected using obsolete GPIB controller with modern PC with only USB port, laptop computer without PCMCIA card?

[@junkman2758]

Worth every minute of the 11 minutes

[@RODALCO2007]

Excellent demo, you got a new subscriber. I tried to do this at high school many years ago but forgotten how to.

[@biblestudyman2293]

Excellent. Would have loved to see the stereo music thing you mentioned.

[@donmoore7785]

+Multirotor Fun There are stereo receivers that have an O-scope built in. I have one - Marantz 2500. Marantz made a straight tuner that had one, and there was a larger version of mine - the 2600. It works exactly as the author said - the better the separation, the more deviation from a line with slope of 1. The trace dances around, creating a bit of a ball.

[@sandeepkapoor2249]

You know what, you just told me how to make a rotating magnetic field by using 2 signals out of phase by 90 degrees. Thanks for sharing.

[@keithostertag]

Yea, I experiented with that a little but got mixed results, so I'd love to see some useful examples of using Lissajous patterns to view curves of various components. One thing I found out was that on my 465B scope channel one controls the "Y" and channel two controls the "X", opposite of many illustrations I've seen. (I think I remember that correctly...), which is OK, but a little confusing when it doesn't conform to conventional use.

[@rickvia8435]

Not since '70s HS Electronics have I messed w/ Lissajous displays - only briefly then. Thanks for the refresher.

[@melomania2637]

I was interested in buying an oscilloscope to play music through and your videos have been absolutely knowledge jam packed! Ive learned so much watching your just 10 minute videos. But I was wondering, If I wanted to plug a guitar running through an amp to an oscilloscope how would I go about doing that, or lets say a synthesizer through one. Also how would you make it into a to wobble around. I could show you some videos for example of what Im interested in doing. Anyways, amazing videos man and I appreciate them!

[@w2aew]

To get a wobbly lissajous pattern like this, the X and Y inputs need to be different from each other (like stereo). If you have a single source, then just use the scope in normal mode. For audio, horizontal sweep times of 1 or 2ms / division work out best typically.

[@melomania2637]

***** Thank you! And how do I go about putting an amped guitar or synth into one? Sorry about so many questions haha

[@w2aew]

Connect a probe to the speaker terminals

[@melomania2637]

***** Alright, its gonna be a journey learning all the ins and outs of one of these boys, and what I an do and its potential so your channels gonna help a lot thank you!

[@jrdubois112277]

Great video!

[@LestonDr]

I finely understand! Thank you!

[@mangeshmalgi279]

great video. thanks. can you also post a video demonstrating how to measure phase difference by measuring the XY pattern?

[@beingbad1870]

Very Neat and Clear...... Thank you for sharing

[@JimRussell440]

Very well explained; thank you Specifically, this was done with two separate signals. When you showed the 2:1 ratio waveforms together in the time domain, it occurred to me: Would there have been any difference in the curves if the two input waves were superposed into a single input waveform?

[@bitemyshinymetalass7393]

i think i owe you a beer (or two..cases of) . you've got good content.

[@W1RMD]

Thanks! Great demonstration!

[@Omnomnious]

This is really a great video, great explanations as well. I really, really want an oscilloscope at my place but I don't know where to get one or how to get one without spending more than 150 bucks or so.

[@IsaacOLEG]

Hello, thanks for the tutorial. Is it mandatory to use a 2 channels signal generator ? (May I put 2 probes on the same signal ? does not seem to work well with a simple generator)

[@ivyssauro123]

Great video, very informative, and nice equipment!

[@adoinstru]

for a stable display on screen, vertical input and sweep generator output must be synchronized. Its all good, then why do we need another circuitry like "trigger circuit" and that too from specially schmitt trigger??

[@ebrkic1981]

This is very educational video, tnx for sharing!

[@Ducktility]

Awesome explanation

[@zoolkhan]

another excellent lesson i was able to copy on my really old fleamarket oszilloscope...

[@louiskatzclay]

I had not heard this word since 1972 or so, "Lissajous" . Thanks.

[@bobisyouruncle1]

Great explanation.

[@tomboyon259]

Love ir videos, could u design tuner and connect to oscope to show tv? Or AV in

[@TonyButchT]

Thank you for this video and sharing your knowledge!

[@timma87698]

Are you using any sort of trigger on this setting, or is it just a constant scan readout?

[@mosfet1780]

You are doing excellent presentation. But let me ask if you can tell me if we can draw using XY mode a effciency diagram of a power supply with on X axis the load we apply on the output of the power supply.

[@w2aew]

XY mode will work with any waveform that can be displayed normally on the scope, regardless of what that waveform represents.

[@skycarl]

Thanks on another good video. Always interesting. 73

[@TheEtbetween]

Thanks, really appreciate it!

[@ajanki34]

That's awesome! I think I have that (x-y) function on my old o-scope, but I got to go see.