ANN: Open Instrumentation Project

P

Peter Hiscocks 19 years ago

This announces the Open Instrumentation Project (OIP), which has been formed to support open-source software and low cost hardware for electronic instrumentation.

The objective is to make electronic instrumentation readily accessible to students, hobbiests, engineers and scientists. This then allows independent circuit development and project-based learning in electronics.

Three instruments have been completed:

- dual channel, 20MSample/sec oscilloscope - 100kHz waveform generator - low-frequency vector-network analyser

Screen shots and the software for these instruments are available from sourceforge at:

formatting link

The software is licensed under the GPL.

Low-cost hardware using this software is available from Syscomp Electronic Design:

formatting link

The software uses the Tcl/Tk language without extensions, which makes it simple to install and maintain. The current cross-platform implementation runs under Windows and Linux operating systems. We are currently testing the Mac OS-X version.

Tcl/Tk is a scripting language that is interpreted text. It is simple for non-experts to add features to the graphical user interface.

The hardware uses the USB interface with drivers and hardware that emulate a high-speed serial port, which simplifies programming. No USB programming is required. The Windows and Mac drivers are available from FTDI at

formatting link

Linux drivers are available in the Linux kernel from version 2.4 onward.

Invitation

---------- The current releases of software provide basic features for the instruments, but there are many that could be added. For example, the oscilloscope would benefit from 'waveform math' commands. The waveform generator could be configured as an audio sweep generator. Contributions are welcome and will be shared with the user community.

Peter D. Hiscocks Professor Emeritus, Ryerson University ----- Phone: 647-839-0325 Email: phiscock@ee.ryerson.ca Academic URL: http://www.ee.ryerson.ca/~phiscock Business URL: Syscomp Electronic Design Limited (USB Oscilloscope and Generator) http://www.syscompdesign.com

Vote

W

Winfield Hill 19 years ago

The hardware is proprietary? No schematic, etc., etc.?

Thanks, - Win

Vote

M

miso 19 years ago

My thinking exactly. This is not open source. If it can run GPIB instruments as well, I would let them slide.

Vote

N

Nico Coesel 19 years ago

If you look at it from a wider angle, then the idea is not bad. There are tons of DIY / cheap measurement devices available. Each of them has its own user interface. A 'universal' GUI saves a lot of work.

I wonder if the author of OIP has considered a universal layer which collects data from devices and makes the data available in a unified format so it is easy to handle and display. Without such a layer, OIP is not going to be very usefull.

Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.) Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

Vote

P

PeterH 19 years ago

(I'm reposting my answers here so they will be visible to the group. Peter)

The hardware and firmware are proprietary.

We looked at doing this as a kit but decided that there wouldn't be any cost saving to the end user. The size of the unit is much larger because you have to use through hole components in a kit. Size is an issue for students, who are likely to be carrying the unit around in a backpack. The parts in the assembled unit are SMC's and the pinout of chips like the FPGA is pretty frightening for manual assembly. But if there is a lot of interest, we would consider doing a kit.

The API is available, so someone else could develop hardware and use this software to drive it.

The block diagram is in the user manual, and it's not all that different from the schematic, given the amount of integration these days.

development of the open-source software.

Peter

Vote

P

PeterH 19 years ago

The software is completely open, so such a 'unified format' for data wouldn't be hard to add. The data is currently contained in a Tcl array. It would be trivial to add an option that ouputs data in a delimited list suitable for import into a spreadsheet.

Peter

Vote

A

azdflora 19 years ago

Could this program be adapted to support chemical analysis instrumentation ... or has that already been done in some other context?

Vote

ANN: Open Instrumentation Project

Join the Discussion

Didn't find your answer?