a PC Based Oscilloscope?

around $7,000. I am sure we can save much money if we

scopes? Do you recommend them for serious work?

You left out a vital part of information, what do you need the scope for? What kind of requirements do you have?

r needs is

ased unit,

=BF=BDDo you

No, more so if you need a $7000 scope. Look on ebay if your that short of cash.

I don't really like them, no matter what the spec. It ties up a PC, for one thing. It makes it super non-portable. Just too many 'bits' floating about.

We are developing a board with a DSP, some logic, and some analog circuitry. The scope will be used to debug the circuit, make sure signals are clean, make sure timing is correct. We should get a 4-channel 350 MHz scope, yet these start at $7,000. So, I thought maybe a PC-based scope would do the job for less money. I do not know, I never used PC-based scopes.

I am sorry, I did not understand what you are telling me.

Which Picoscope are you looking at:

At $11,990.00 or $2,390.00, the price or specs are better with the $7,000.00 scope, which ever scope that is.

donald

Please do not remove attributions. Those are the initial lines that say "Whozit wrote". In addition avoid losing all quotations from previous messages by top-posting. Your answer belongs after (or intermixed with) the quoted material to which you reply, after snipping all irrelevant material. See the following links:

(taming google) (newusers)

You seem to be hung up on price.

The picoscopes are ( see link) much higher or much lower then the $7,000.

You have yet to mentioned which $7,000 scope you are looking at, so we can not compare the specifications of it with the picoscope devices.

So, I ask outright, which scope are you looking at for $7,000.

donald

I've used Picoscope but I think they are crappy. There is no peak-detection which makes high frequency signals dissapear at low sweep rates. The number of sweeps (screen updates) is around 3 or 4 per second. Way too slow. And their software crashes every now and then.

Those are things you need to think about before you even commit to making a board. The scope won't help you if you do major mistakes in the design from the start. You need to simulate stuff before, never mind the scope.

People who use Outlook Express to read newsgroups should read this:

This page tells you what *you* have to do MANUALLY to compensate for that TERRIBLE software:

Outlook Express has MANY, MANY flaws:

is

it,

They just aren't convenient, ideally, you want something small so it can easily be moved from lab to lab to thermal chamber etc. battery powered is even better.

I've used a few different PC based scopes and some regular Tektronix standalone scopes as well. The PC based scopes are fine as long as you understand their limitations and are prepared to work around them.

Advantages of PC based scopes:

- Low cost

- Smaller box

- Much larger screen

- Longer recording length (on some models)

- Easy saving & exporting of the captured waveforms

Disadvantages:

- Slow screen updates

- No peak detection on the cheaper models

- Might limit your choice of PC operating system

- Not very portable

One model that I have used is this one:

Thanks, this is nice, yet I wished it had a higher sampling rate. Are you aware of any others?

Most low to medium end PC based DSO's are all a similar sample rate, i.e. a few hundred MHz. Because they all use off-the-shelf FPGA's and memories in their design, and that's about as high as you can go cheaply. When you start talking 1GS/s+ you are into the high end domain of the big manufacturers of professional oscolloscopes.

Agilent make a PC based DSO that might suit you if you *really* want a PC based scope:

Stop being cheap, you *need* at least one real bench scope for your lab, even if it's a lower end mixed signal scope like a Rigol:

Dave.

I have a SDS 200A from softDSP. The windows software is crap. The FFT feature is basically unusable. The triggering is unreliable. The claim of a

OTOH, the unit is small enough to go with your laptop in the same case, and is useful therefore as an onsite scope. It can store a fairly large buffer, and allows the possibility of doing things like line monitoring with a very slow signal (like 1s per division).

It was also very cheap, less than $1k.

I'm not sure I'd buy it again. It does have an SDK (for $200 extra) that allows the possibility of doing special kinds of monitoring with a custom display.

$0.02

Regards, Bob Monsen

Thanks Bob. I will stay away from that unit.

In other words, it's a paper weight to be used at the site as things are blowing around!

s is

nit,

I have also used the PicoScopes. The update is not as the other poster says, I think I have like at least 50 times per second.( on a USB 1.0 connection)

That being said, some of the SW is buggy. But I live with that. The great thing is that my 12bit scope can be programmed and I can then use it for a test system also and even better when it is connected to the PC the documentation of measurements are a charm.

Also the FFT is quite good

Regards

Klaus