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PC based instruments

Seems we are in a great time for electronics hobbyists wrt to
instruments.

What PC instruments do you use and are you happy with them? I refer
specifically to lower cost USB type things, and not old-school big
boxes with a GPIB interface.
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
Seems we are in a great time for electronics hobbyists wrt to
instruments.

It largley depends on where your area of interest lies. For low-speed
digital, yeah, absolutely, but for somewhat more sophisticated desires I'd
yet to see anything like:

* A USB o-scope that competes with mid-level commercial offerings.
Something like 500MHz+ bandwidth, 2+ GSps, 8 bit resolution, 4 channels,
decent triggering, etc.
* (As Joerg has mentioned on occasion) A USB spectrum analyzer with decent
bandwidth and dynamic range, e.g., 1GHz upper-end frequency, 80+ dB dynamic
range and bandwidths of, say, 3kHz or better.
* A USB TDR box.

All of these would have enough demand that I think you could make money
building them, although it's hard to say for certain. One thing that is
clear these days is that you might easily spend more time on software than
hardware, since everyone expects a nice GUI -- possibly a good reason to
build boxes like these as open-source.

The list above is ordered from "almost available" to "not at all available:"
There are plenty of USB 'scopes out there, just not with the specs listed.
There are some spectrum analzyers (even a handful of 2-port network
analyzers), but they're often sound card interfaces and hence quite
restricted in upper-end frequency. (And with both of these types of
instruments, it's very common to see the designers state that... hey!...
they're using, e.g., a 14-bit ADC and therefore they have 85+ dB dynamic
range, which very often isn't the case due to analog front-ends that don't
quite cut it.)
What PC instruments do you use and are you happy with them?

I think the USRP from Matt Ettus for use with GNURadio is a pretty cool
board. There's a *lot* of effort invested in that project.

Commercially, I like National Instruments' USB to GPIB adapter. I also like
a USB to SPI adapter I designed myself. :)

---Joel Kolstad
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joel said:
It largley depends on where your area of interest lies. For low-speed
digital, yeah, absolutely, but for somewhat more sophisticated desires I'd
yet to see anything like:

* A USB o-scope that competes with mid-level commercial offerings.
Something like 500MHz+ bandwidth, 2+ GSps, 8 bit resolution, 4 channels,
decent triggering, etc.
* (As Joerg has mentioned on occasion) A USB spectrum analyzer with decent
bandwidth and dynamic range, e.g., 1GHz upper-end frequency, 80+ dB dynamic
range and bandwidths of, say, 3kHz or better.

Where is it? Where?

< drool .... pant ... >
 
R

Robert Lacoste

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joerg said:
Where is it? Where?

Hi all,

While surfing we found this supplier from Germany, which has what Joerg wish
: http://www.aaronia.de/. Seems great on the paper, however we would be glad
to have feedbacks from actual users. Any reading this newsgroup ?

Cheers,
Robert
www.alciom.com
 
It largley depends on where your area of interest lies. For low-speed
digital, yeah, absolutely, but for somewhat more sophisticated desires I'd
yet to see anything like:
* A USB o-scope that competes with mid-level commercial offerings.
Something like 500MHz+ bandwidth, 2+ GSps, 8 bit resolution, 4 channels,
decent triggering, etc.

I dault USB is up to the latency/speed requirement.
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
I dault USB is up to the latency/speed requirement.

Sure it is; the idea is that the high-speed digital smarts are in the USB box
and that you only transfer the results. Many digital scopes only have VGAish
or even QVGAish display resolutions, so you only need to transfer some
"handful of bytes" (depends on how fancy you want ot be with "digital
phosphor" or similar enhancements) for a "many hundreds of pixels" wide
display fast enough for a real time display (some "dozens of updates" per
seconds)... so you're probably not even looking at 1MBps and could easily do
this over full-speed (12Mbps) USB.
 
J

Joerg

Jan 1, 1970
0
Bonjour Robert,
While surfing we found this supplier from Germany, which has what Joerg wish
: http://www.aaronia.de/. Seems great on the paper, however we would be glad
to have feedbacks from actual users. Any reading this newsgroup ?

That's a great start but these are units with their own display. What I
was looking for is cheap USB pods, stuff that won't cause much tears if
damaged, lost or taken away by airport security.

If you want to know more about these Aaronia analyzers you might want to
contact Oliver Bartels. He participates in the German NG
de.sci.electronics and understands English well.
 
N

Nico Coesel

Jan 1, 1970
0
Joel Kolstad said:
It largley depends on where your area of interest lies. For low-speed
digital, yeah, absolutely, but for somewhat more sophisticated desires I'd
yet to see anything like:

* A USB o-scope that competes with mid-level commercial offerings.
Something like 500MHz+ bandwidth, 2+ GSps, 8 bit resolution, 4 channels,
decent triggering, etc.

I'm working on something like that, but the bandwidth isn't anywhere
near 500MHz, more like 40MHz. A version with a bandwidth of 500MHz
would cost more than a used oscilloscope on Ebay or an auction house.
A few weeks ago I came across a Lecroy LC584AM (4 channel 1GHz) for
only 1500 euros.
 
J

Joel Kolstad

Jan 1, 1970
0
Nico Coesel said:
I'm working on something like that, but the bandwidth isn't anywhere
near 500MHz, more like 40MHz. A version with a bandwidth of 500MHz
would cost more than a used oscilloscope on Ebay or an auction house.

Agreed; I'm looking for instruments that are significantly cheaper, new, than
what you'd spend on the equivalent box, new, from the likes of Agilent or Tek
or LeCroy (where a 500MHz scope is still >US$10k = 7500 euros). I think many
people (and small businesses) would purchase the "new" model with the bonus of
having a physically small box that could hook up to the laptop over the
alternatives of used eBay stuff or some of the (usually Korean, and actually
often pretty good) imports.

Of course Joerg is wanting that USB spectrum analyzer to be something like
US$100 :), whereas I'd be thrilled with something like US$1k.

---Joel
 
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