Pico Technology aims PC scope at bench engineers

PicoScope 3000D series PC oscilloscopes have up to 200MHz bandwidth, two or four analogue channels, plus 16 digital channels on the mixed-signal models, and an arbitrary waveform generator.

Maximum real-time sampling rate is 1Gsample/s, memories range from 64 to 512Msample, and PC connection is via USB 3.0.

“Even at 1Gsmple/s, you can capture a 500ms waveform – that’s half a billion samples – while hardware acceleration keeps the display updating smoothly,” said managing director Alan Tong.

For analysing signal bursts separated by long gaps, the 512Msample buffer memory can be segmented to acquire up to 10,000 individual waveform segments of 50,000 samples, with less than 1µs re-arm time between each segment – useful for CAN busses, said the firm.

There is a spectrum analyser mode, and software allows serial bus (I2C, UART/RS232, SPI, CAN, LIN, FlexRay and I2S) decoding, mask limit testing, maths channels and filtering.

Triggers, which are all-digital, include pulse width, interval, window, window pulse width, level dropout, window dropout, runt pulse, variable hysteresis, and logic. Mixed signal variants combine digitised analogue triggers with edge and pattern triggering on the digital inputs.

Screen size and resolution are unrestricted, and depend on the PC connected.

The accompanying PicoScope software now has a fast persistence mode for updates of around 100,000waveform/s, while the math channels have been expanded to include configurable filters.

For those wishing to hook into the software, there is a free SDK (software development kit) with example programs in C#, C++, Excel, LabVIEW and MATLAB, and it can be used with any language that supports C calling conventions.

PicoScope software and the SDK are compatible with Windows (XP to 8), and there are beta versions for Linux, Mac OS X, Beaglebone Black and Raspberry Pi.

Prices range from $576 (two-channel 50MHz) to $2,385 (four-channel 200MHz mixed signal) with probes and a five year warranty.

PicoScopes are made in the UK.

steve bush

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via Yuichun