[ebarker]

The 1st thing you have do so when shopping for test equipment is to adequately specify its performance. Measuring things really small, really big, or for a long time / lot of samples run up the price.

So to bring it home you could probably use something with a bandwidth of less than 5 or so MHz to do basic robot debugging.

If you can look around and find something like a Hitachi V-212 scope (about 25 or 30 years old) it is a great beginners scope with straightforward controls and just a great place to start to learn how scopes work without getting bogged down in a thousand features, plus it has a nice bandwidth.

An alternative is one of the new handheld devices.

Personally I still like the green glow.