Cool Oscilloscope Software You Might Not Know Exists

With all of the recent advances in oscilloscope capability, it can be hard to keep up with the latest features and enhancements available. However, what you don’t know may hurt you since many of these were developed to make your job easier. Two recent examples of these types of enhancements are offline analysis software and MultiScope software.

Offline Analysis

Keysight engineers work closely with their fellow engineers to understand their needs and what makes their job difficult. This helps them decide what to work on next to help Keysight oscilloscope users like you. One example of this is the N8900A Infiniium Offline Oscilloscope Analysis Software. When the Keysight development team spoke to engineers, they heard three main reasons for wanting the ability to analyze data captured by an oscilloscope offline:

• Documentation – The number one thing we heard from customers was the need for a more efficient documentation process. Many of them were fine in terms of using the oscilloscope and making measurements, but found documenting on the oscilloscope painful. It usually involved taking a bunch of screenshots, saving them off somewhere, importing them into a word processor, and then taking notes. The top request from these customers was to make offline software a tool people could use to document more quickly and easily. So, when Keysight engineers designed the N8900A offline software, they worked to accomplish just this and included many features that make documentation a breeze.
• Time Savings – Oscilloscopes are expensive pieces of equipment, so the ability to use the oscilloscope just to capture data and then freeing it up for another team member while the data is analyzed on a PC or laptop saves a lot of time and makes the group more efficient. Plus, it can be easier to do all of your analysis from your laptop or PC instead of your oscilloscope.
• Team collaboration – Teams that are geographically dispersed can find it difficult to share data. With offline software, one person can easily capture the data and then send it to anyone else who has the offline software so they see the exact same data, measurements, etc. Additionally, the offline software enables bookmarks and annotations that can be used to point to specific parts of the waveform as you share the data.

The Keysight N8900A offline software gives you the entire oscilloscope’s GUI on your PC, allowing you to easily analyze, document, or share data from the comfort of your laptop or PC. If you have not heard of this capability before, I highly encourage you to look into it. Learn more about how offline software can help you with your job in this application note: Three Reasons to Complement Your Scope Investment with PC-based Analysis Software.

 

MultiScope Software

Another request Keysight’s engineers heard was the need to use more than four channels with an oscilloscope. For example, engineers or technicians working on three phase power required more than four channels, but the oscilloscope industry lacked this capability. Two approaches emerged in the recent past. One approach was to create 8 channel oscilloscopes. The second one was to create oscilloscope software, known as MultiScope, where you could connect multiple oscilloscopes together. Keysight opted for the second approach for several reasons.

1. We found that while engineers wanted the capability to use more than four channels, they did not always need this many channels and would often prefer the flexibility to bring oscilloscopes together when they needed them and split them apart when they did not. This allows better use of their equipment.
2. Many customers needed even more than 8 channels and using MultiScope enables them to connect together up to 40 channels.

In other words, MultiScope software offers an engineer or technician more flexibility in terms of how their equipment is used. They can bring the scopes together when they need more than four channels (up to 40) and split them apart when multiples people need an oscilloscope.

After talking to many engineers, the Keysight Keysight N8834A MutiScope Application was developed. This software enables you to connect up to 10 oscilloscopes with any combination of 2000X, 3000T, 3000A, 4000X, 6000X, 7000B, 9000A, S-Series, 90000A, 90000X, Q, V, or Z-Series. The signals can be viewed on a single display either using the offline software described above or on the leader scope. This can be an incredibly powerful tool if you need more than four channels.

Here is the MultiScope data sheet for more information.

 

Summary

It is extremely useful to stay up-to-date on the latest capabilities of any test and measurement gear. Our engineers are constantly talking to fellow engineers regarding how we can make their lives easier or enable measurements not previously possible. Having access to this software, measurement, feature, or enhancement can enable you to finish your job quicker or perform it better. We will continue to update you on this blog when exciting new capabilities are available, and feel free to comment with your suggestions or feedback!

 

 

Capturing Intermittent or Infrequent Events?

Why You Should Care About the Update Rate of Your Oscilloscope

Oscilloscopes have a lot of specifications – some more readily understood than others. One specification that has recently become more frequently discussed is update rate. Despite its importance, there may still be many oscilloscope users who do not understand update rate nor why it impacts their measurements.

When you debug new designs, waveform and decode update rates can be critical—especially when you are attempting to find and debug infrequent or intermittent problems. These are the toughest kinds of problems to solve. Faster waveform and decode update rates improve a scope’s probability of capturing elusive events. To understand why this is true, you must first understand what is known as oscilloscope “dead time”.

Every oscilloscope has an inherent characteristic called “dead time” or “blind time”. This is defined as the time between each repetitive acquisition of the scope when it is processing the previously acquired waveform. Unfortunately, oscilloscope dead times can sometimes be orders of magnitude longer than acquisition times. And during this dead time, any signal activity that may be occurring will be missed by the oscilloscope, as shown in the figure below. The waveform update rate specification tells you the number of acquisitions by the oscilloscope per second. The larger the waveform update rate, the more acquisitions per second, and the shorter the dead time.

This issue of large dead times becomes particularly problematic when capturing random or infrequent events as you are essentially rolling the dice on whether you will capture these or not. The shorter this dead time, the more likely you are to successfully capture an elusive event. As an example, many of the Keysight InfiniiVision oscilloscopes have waveform update rates of up to 1,000,000 wfms/sec. When capturing an infrequent metastable state (glitch) that occurs approximately 5 times per second using a oscilloscope with an update rate of 1,000,000 waveforms per second, this scope has a 92% probability of capturing this glitch within 5 seconds. In comparison, other oscilloscopes in this class may update waveforms only 2000 to 3000 times per second. These scopes would have less than a 1% probability of capturing and displaying an infrequent glitch such as this within 5 seconds.

It is also useful to understand how an oscilloscope’s update rate is impacted by other features or functionality. For example, some scopes spec a best-case scenario, but when features such as MSO, protocol decode, or math functions are turned on, the update rate can drop significantly. Therefore, it is important to know how the features you will be using for your applications impact the update rate of your oscilloscope.

Want to learn more?

Here is an application note that goes into greater depths on this topic, including how to measure your oscilloscope’s update rate: Oscilloscope Waveform Update Rate Determines Ability to Capture Elusive Events

See update rate in action with Keysight’s video on debugging infrequent events.