I was reviewing the list of options that are available for some of our scopes and found voice control. It seems like a good idea but how well does it work in practice?
If the scope is trained to recognize A's Brit accent will it still work when B, a Chinese dude, borrows it?
I noticed a lot of our engineers often drop a probe, adjust the scope and then try to find their test point again. Their other hand is holding another probe. Often just getting a diff browser to stand still takes both hands anyways on our tiny finicky boards, so the voice control might be useful.
It's a great way to go rapidly insane. I suspect (guess) that the original plan was to use it for a production or test environment to quickly change setups while keeping both hands on the device under test. I did something like that with an ancient HP RF test system in about 1990. With a headset, it worked fairly well for simple commands like "pass", "fail", "macro 1", "test 1", and such.
However, the latest incantation looks like you could use it to also setup the measurement. See command list and pretzel diagram at:
I've never actually played with an Agilent scope using this option, but it looks like the vocabulary expansion exercise alone would be daunting. Say the wrong words and all the settings go awry. Memorizing the buzzwords and structure may take time.
There's also the problem of feedback. Such a system may free both hands to do other things, but still requires ones attention to be fixed in the direction of the scope when speaking commands. If such a system were 100% reliable, and the user 100% confident, then one could speak commands without looking at the scope. However, I suspect that this is not the case and it would be necessary to watch the scope when mumbling commands to see that it actually did what it was commanded.
In the 1980's, I also ran into an unexpected problem. There were some test techs that just couldn't organize themselves sufficiently to say commands clearly. They would mumble, fumble, stutter, or otherwise cause recognition problems. It's like public speaking. Take a perfectly normal individual, and put them in front of a recorder or an audience, and they get microphone fright. This didn't happen with engineers and engineering techs that were familiar with the technology. However, it was a problem with some production line employees.
Anyway, I'm a big fan of the "auto" button on most intelligent scopes. Punch the button and it tweaks everything so that the display looks reasonable. Using the result as a starting point, I then can zoom in with delayed triggers and such. It saves considerable time. It won't do complex setups, but certainly handles the mundane every day scope setups.
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# Jeff Liebermann 150 Felker St #D Santa Cruz CA 95060
# 831-336-2558 jeffl@comix.santa-cruz.ca.us
# http://802.11junk.com jeffl@cruzio.com
# http://www.LearnByDestroying.com AE6KS
Could be problems. Maybe not my British accent but common words I'm likely to use when getting to grips with the Infinium's f*****, c******, sh**** menus. Engineered by f***** m***** and programmed by f*****, w******.
And saying this will likely switch the 50R input load on while you're looking at that 400V signal just because it'll mistake f****** sh** with f****** psh****.
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