??? 06/27/09 08:15 Read: times |
#166519 - Maybe there are - but may even be irrelevant Responding to: ???'s previous message |
Erik Malund said:
.. that can 'see' a 10ns pulse?
Erik Maybe this one: http://www.picotech.com/picoscope9200.html But the main reason for sw scopes is probably not to compete with the better hw scopes, but to handle the 90-95% of the day-to-day requirements. It should be small and simple to use, and also allow you to quickly grab a laptop and the sw scope and get mobile. In many situations, you could replace a Fluke ScopeMeter, while gaining a lot of extra features. In some other situations, you could use an old laptop and a sw scope instead of a data logger, if you need to make long-time measurements on a power-supply solution or similar. In some situations, you may not have room for a scope on your desk, so you settle for a sw scope, and only get the trolley with a high-end scope when you get stuck with the sw scope. In some situations, you may consider the high-end scope probes much to expensive to use for measuring on blinking diodes, so you do your loop speed measurements with a low-cost sw scope with cheap probes, and gets the hw scope only when you have - or suspect you have - a hardware error. Because of the PC interface, you may be able to get the sw scope to make use of the high USB bandwidth to allow you to sample very extended sequences of SPI or CAN communication, that you may later write an application on the PC to analyze. A reasonably priced hw scope may only have a RS232 port for transfer of captured data (often not real-time) to the PC. In the end, a sw scope is not a replacemetn, but a complement. But to be really useful, the manufacturers must still make sure that the GUI is designed in a way that you don't waste huge amounts of time fighting with the controls. It doesn't take many hours of frustration with the GUI until you can afford to buy one more good hw scope. |