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Tool Cute Little Audio Frequency Oscilloscope

Tool
Not trying to come across as a know it all, just don't want anyone to get burnt.

Your comments could mean LOTS of things, but ALL OF THEM are GOOD!

Great analogy with cars and speed. I'm gunna use that......
 
Recall I mentioned the Digilent analog discovery kit in msg#4.
Thats why I bought that. Now there's a version 3 which is even better.

I had a look at V3 just now. It says it has a USB-C interface and works with Windows. Is that all versions of Windows or just the latest? Seems like there is a lot of optional stuff. How much of that stuff is required to actually use it?
 
I had a look at V3 just now. It says it has a USB-C interface and works with Windows. Is that all versions of Windows or just the latest? Seems like there is a lot of optional stuff. How much of that stuff is required to actually use it?
I have no idea if it would work with WIN-7 for example. Perhaps not even WIN-8. You'd have to ask them. The Pro Bundle version with the scope probes is equivalent to what I got. But at $593Cdn from Mouser it's not exactly cheap and if you don't think you need features like logic analyzer and waveform generator etc. I'd think twice.
After when you can buy something like this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006122528723.html And it's not dependent on Microsoft Windows versions.

I bought the digilent in order to analyze serial uart output messages and timing. It was 1/3rd the price of the Tek Scope add on. The work I did with it paid for it. Haven't used it since. Meant to give it to my son Misha.
 
I have no idea if it would work with WIN-7 for example. Perhaps not even WIN-8.

I was actually more concerned about win 10 & 11. I hate getting locked into a really old version (even if they were better). I assume you mean it does work in the latest Windows versions like 10/11.

After when you can buy something like this: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005006122528723.html And it's not dependent on Microsoft Windows versions.

I already have several REALLY GOOD Tektronixs digital scopes plus the cheap 1014D I recently got. I'm looking for an analyzer not a scope (although I recognize the similarities). Something that will decode various communication protocols too.
 
I was actually more concerned about win 10 & 11. I hate getting locked into a really old version (even if they were better). I assume you mean it does work in the latest Windows versions like 10/11.



I already have several REALLY GOOD Tektronixs digital scopes plus the cheap 1014D I recently got. I'm looking for an analyzer not a scope (although I recognize the similarities). Something that will decode various communication protocols too.
The newest one will certainly work with WIN-10 and WIN-11. So I plugged it into my WIN-10 system. Never been plugged into this one before.
Went online and downloaded the latest OS for 64 bit windows. And here it is. Looks like it will also work on Linux.

1722301856257.webp
 
Thanks John
Their site isn't the easiest to navigate to get to where to download.
This one shows what devices it supports and my now very old Discovery2 is still on the support list.
https://digilent.com/reference/software/waveforms/waveforms-3/start

This is the part that's interesting. A Pi5 can work with Waveforms and the unit. That implies if you can set up a dedicated small system much like your scope. How well it works would require some research.

And systems designed to work with keyboard and mouse don't always translate well to a small 10" touch screen and no keyboard/mouse which takes up way too much space on the lab bench.
 
And systems designed to work with keyboard and mouse don't always translate well to a small 10" touch screen and no keyboard/mouse which takes up way too much space on the lab bench.

That's actually a fairly big problem for me. I don't have a computer of any kind in the barn (also known as my shop), and I'm not about to move my electronics to the house.

It's a long complicated story that you would really have to see. My wife and I are opposites. She is a filer (neat freak), and I am a piler (organized chaos). I let her keep the house neat and tidy and she avoids going to my shop because she gets heart palpitations just looking around.

I have one room in the house (my man cave) in the basement where I can be messy. But that room is mostly hunting and fishing stuff and the door gets locked. My computer is on a neat and tidy desk in one of the bedrooms upstairs.

Ideally, I would want the scope smarts to be on an android tablet not a windows computer. But old laptops are not expensive so I'll get one for the barn if I have to. But right now, I think a stand alone logic analyzer is probably better for me.
 
One of the HeathKit pre-built items I had and got rid of 29 years ago was their digital scope (A to D): required a WinDoz machine and Heath software (I used Parallels - this was before Boot Camp). Narrow bandwidth, but a neat idea considering it was the 80’s.
 
I bought one of these last year with the intention of attaching the Raspberry Pi4 to the back and running LinuxCNC since there are user interfaces for touch screens.

However for my eyes a 10" screen for LinuxCNC is just too small. However, the idea of a Pi4 or 5 anchored to the back with a display that has touch buttons and information for say Home Assistant is likely where it will go.

Looking at the Digilent software, it's really designed for a PC screen. The idea of 'soft keys' like we have on our scopes (or my ELS) to have the buttons along the screen change what they do based on what is on the screen isn't there for the Digilent software. So finding an older $100 laptop that runs WIN-10 would work better than that touch screen I bought.
 
One of the HeathKit pre-built items I had and got rid of 29 years ago was their digital scope (A to D): required a WinDoz machine and Heath software (I used Parallels - this was before Boot Camp). Narrow bandwidth, but a neat idea considering it was the 80’s.
I had a 32 channel logic analyzer that used the 'PC Card' interface. It's shoved into a box somewhere because the only laptop I had with the PC Card interface died and the software for it was never upgraded to newer machines. What made it useful back then was I could write C code to analyze the data it captured every 8 nano-seconds. So now where you can buy a scope that does CAN bus protocol analysis I had to write my own.

Had the same issue with a parallel port EPROM and PAL programmer. One day it works. The next day the OS is updated and it no longer works.

Therefore although I'm impressed that the Digilent Discovery still works on my newest PC Tower I think we have to think hard about those kinds of systems. A 25 year old logic analyzer is just as good as a modern one if all you are doing is examining TTL based digital signals.
 
My high end scope can probe CAN bus, SPI and I2C messages and decode the analog wave forms into the digital messages.

Can't justify it, but I'd love to have a relatively painless way to decode Canbus messages. In my last job before I retired a couple of years ago, I spend a dozen years working with Canbus - but since it was all our equipment we defined the messages, the most I had to do was translate the hex message to something that made human sense to present to the UI. (Did a lot of this on the BeagleBone Black.)

My current fantasy (waaay down the projects to do list) is the read the speed limit and vehicle speed reported by the vehicle's computer (it reads the speed limit signs and displays them), then present these values in real time on a rear facing display for tailgaters:

Car's computer says:
Speed limit is [XX]
My speed is [XX]
Sorry for driving so close in front of you!


Or perhaps something less diplomatic, if they persist.
 
Can't justify it, but I'd love to have a relatively painless way to decode Canbus messages. In my last job before I retired a couple of years ago, I spend a dozen years working with Canbus - but since it was all our equipment we defined the messages, the most I had to do was translate the hex message to something that made human sense to present to the UI. (Did a lot of this on the BeagleBone Black.)

My current fantasy (waaay down the projects to do list) is the read the speed limit and vehicle speed reported by the vehicle's computer (it reads the speed limit signs and displays them), then present these values in real time on a rear facing display for tailgaters:

Car's computer says:
Speed limit is [XX]
My speed is [XX]
Sorry for driving so close in front of you!


Or perhaps something less diplomatic, if they persist.
I have some Arduino code and I bought a shield for an Arduino from Sparkfun. Also made up a patch cable that brought the CAR CAN bus out to a standard CANopen DB-9 format.
1722310135480.webp


I've been working with CAN for more than 30 years and have some of the original 82S200's. Tested the prototype Microchip SPI CAN chip and found two bugs in it. They gave me 100 production devices for that. Used those in my CANRF project. So much fun. Sometimes it didn't really feel like I was working.
 
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