I've been reading about how to connect an oscilloscope to the mains power so I could see its waveform, but I'm confused with the answers.
I read I could just use some transformer and see the waveform on the new amplitude - and I'd have to ground the transformer too, but the voltage was less, so it would be safer, if I understood correctly the idea of using a transformer in this case. I have one here that gets 230 V to about 4 or 5 V, but suppose I didn't have one.
- Could I just connect the positive of the probe to the live terminal on the outlet and the negative (ground) to the outlet ground and that's it?
- What if I connect the probe ground terminal to the neutral outlet wire? What about that? No problem since earth ground and neutral are connected anyways? (Even though there might be a small potential difference between the 2, but I guess that would be fine.)
- What about which probe I'd use? Above I'm talking about an oscilloscope normal passive probe (probing terminal and ground terminal,) but does it have to be special? Like, must it be a 10x attentuation one? Can't it just have no attentuation at all? I don't have any differential probes nor will I buy one (amazingly expensive and I'm just a hobbyist student, so not much money.)
- Could I just make a direct connection in this case? Would it be dangerous somehow? I'm also not floating the oscilloscope. It's a very old one. If any cable gets loose inside the scope, I could be doomed and I still like being around.