RichardK,
I am not seeing the most important reason to get a Hantek 6022BE fixed with this software.
Look at all the reviews that dave has done on stand alone DSO's. When you connect one of them to a PC. Only two modes are really possible, Video mode or Data Collection mode.
Video Mode:
For this mode the stand alone DSO acts like a video camera source. A cheap DSO would just send the picture frame data over the USB buss. To get higher resolution &/or a higher frame rate the DSO would have to do video compression. The Hantek 6022BE can not do this.
Data Collection mode:
For this mode the stand alone DSO acts like a analog data capture source. Here the stand alone DSO would capture a block of samples. In addition to the actual ADC data samples the DSO would need to inform the PC of what format the data samples are being sent over the USB. Some of the extra information would be how many channels, Sample rate for a channel, The real time that this block of data samples started and how many samples the data block contains, The analog settings used to collect the samples. In this mode there would be blocks of data with time gaps between the blocks. The time gaps would only become 0 when the sample rate became slow enough that the PC side could keep up with the incoming data. Because the rate could change it would be important to know when a time gap did happen. The Hantek 6022BE while poor is a analog data capture device. As some of the above is set by the firmware loaded into the Hantek 6022BE I see the PC data collection software needing to add the additional information to the information that travels over the USB buss so that the viewer will then have the needed information to properly display the data.
The software first needs to turn the Hantek 6022BE into the best analog data capture device it can be. This is where the Hantek 6022BE could be better than the stand alone DSO. Unlike the DSO the PC could use a lot of buffers, You could buffer samples to ram &/or buffer samples to disk. And while the data collection is happening you could then look at the captured data. Where a DSO would have to use a One shot mode to acquire data the Hantek 6022BE could switch from continuous to disk sample speed with no time gaps to one of many burst speeds where the samples would have time gaps.
The analog data capture software could do some auto ranging by looking at the sample data. To make this really nice and usable there would need to be a lot of easy to use settings.
With the low cost of the Hantek 6022BE, the software should allow for adding an additional USB interface card to the computer so that many Hantek 6022BE's could be used at high speeds.
Even as poor as the Hantek 6022BE is it could be very nice to have the ability to look back at what happened.
The existing software is a start of a data viewer and has parts of the data capture side needed.
If the data capture side was done well it should be possible to run many viewers. Someone that has many displays connected to there PC could have one viewer showing the real time data collection while using an additional display to look back through the collected data on a second display.
So RichardK,
How far do you want to go with this software? With a good software foundation it could become more than just a little better than what Hantek supplied. As a separate data collection program that talks to a data viewer program it could become the thing to use with any DSO on a PC.
C
The scope is limited but useful, and it seems like you are making the assumption that I am trying to turn a $75 20Mhz USB scope into a thousand dollar 200+ Mhz scope and I am not... I am only correcting the flaws in the stock software and providing features that should have been in the stock software.
I am only correcting the flaws in the stock software and providing features that should have been in the stock software.
The scope is limited but useful, and it seems like you are making the assumption that I am trying to turn a $75 20Mhz USB scope into a thousand dollar 200+ Mhz scope and I am not... I am only correcting the flaws in the stock software and providing features that should have been in the stock software.
Is it really a $75 scope? When your software is running would it not be fair to include part of the PC's cost in the result?
For all the limits imposed by the $75 hardware this could be very powerful due to the attached PC
For some uses a 20Mhz scope is a lot more than what is needed.QuoteI am only correcting the flaws in the stock software and providing features that should have been in the stock software.I guess that you and I just looking at things differently. I am looking at a great stand alone DSO and asking the question what has to change due to the $75 hardware used & what improvements can be made to that great stand alone DSO because a PC is being used.
C
The scope is limited but useful, and it seems like you are making the assumption that I am trying to turn a $75 20Mhz USB scope into a thousand dollar 200+ Mhz scope and I am not... I am only correcting the flaws in the stock software and providing features that should have been in the stock software.
Is it really a $75 scope? When your software is running would it not be fair to include part of the PC's cost in the result?
For all the limits imposed by the $75 hardware this could be very powerful due to the attached PC
For some uses a 20Mhz scope is a lot more than what is needed.QuoteI am only correcting the flaws in the stock software and providing features that should have been in the stock software.I guess that you and I just looking at things differently. I am looking at a great stand alone DSO and asking the question what has to change due to the $75 hardware used & what improvements can be made to that great stand alone DSO because a PC is being used.
C
The possibilities of the scope are not limited by me, but by the community using it. Like I said before, if people want to improve it more than I have, they can put as much work into my code as they want, that was my second goal of this project, giving others a good launching pad to start from.
I have updated some more sections in the Open6022be user manual. I have also included some of the findings by members in this forum thread. I hope it is in order with you that I did that.
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Hopefully I get more feedback from the forum crowd!
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I see now that the "Hantek strategy" has paid off handsomely. Aka, "reverse outsourcing". We started it by outsourcing our electronics knowledge and manufacturing expertise, years ago, to get cheap hardware. Hantek has provided that. And by not investing any time or money in decent software or documentation, Hantek has now outsourced them back to the US, and obtained both, free of charge.
I haven't had time to read the entire manual in detail yet, but I'm very impressed with what I have seen. You've done a very good job, especially tying explanations to screen captures of displays and menus. This isn't only better than Hantek's docs, or any Chinglish docs, it's also superior to many US manufs. professionally produced documents. Very well presented, informational, and educational. Excellent for a product of this type.
I did note a couple questions in red, on Page 39. Here's the info you requested:
- the max sample rate in Burst Mode is 48 MSa/s
- the max sample rate in continuous mode is 16 MSa/s
I tried to use Open6022BE on my laptop and everything works except the waveform doesn't render. If I have the scope connected to a signal I see triggering indicated. If I do a print preview I see a waveform. If I put the software in XY mode I can see a trace. Just no trace in YT. Grid, cursors, zero and trigger level gadgets all show fine. I have Hantek's 1.04 version installed and it runs normally, and I've tried Open6022BE on a netbook and it works great there. This laptop is running Windows 7 Pro 32 bit and it has both nVidia 310M and Intel onboard video, which it defaults to. I tried running it off the nVidia side and no difference(the laptop is able to switch video chipsets on the fly). That was the only thing I could think of that's out of the ordinary. I am using the PR17 version and have not tried anything earlier. I also tried moving the copy of msvcr100.dll that came with it so it would use the one already in the computer. If you have any insights please let me know. Thanks!
I tried to use Open6022BE on my laptop and everything works except the waveform doesn't render. If I have the scope connected to a signal I see triggering indicated. If I do a print preview I see a waveform. If I put the software in XY mode I can see a trace. Just no trace in YT. Grid, cursors, zero and trigger level gadgets all show fine. I have Hantek's 1.04 version installed and it runs normally, and I've tried Open6022BE on a netbook and it works great there. This laptop is running Windows 7 Pro 32 bit and it has both nVidia 310M and Intel onboard video, which it defaults to. I tried running it off the nVidia side and no difference(the laptop is able to switch video chipsets on the fly). That was the only thing I could think of that's out of the ordinary. I am using the PR17 version and have not tried anything earlier. I also tried moving the copy of msvcr100.dll that came with it so it would use the one already in the computer. If you have any insights please let me know. Thanks!
I don't know if I've just discovered another small bug...
I just tried exporting waveforms for both Channel 1 and Channel 2 but I don't see any evidence of Channel 2 in the exported file. I first tried this using the .bewf format but when I only saw one channel appear on import I tried the .txt format export so I could view the contents... and there is no reference to CH2 in the file.
I've not tried including any of the other elements in the export file (Math, Reference, FFT) so don't know if they are missing too.
Is this a known problem?
Exporting more than one channel (or source) is only supported for Image exports currently, I'll have to modify the data formats for exporting more than one source (I will eventually). Right now you have to export them separately.
Exporting more than one channel (or source) is only supported for Image exports currently, I'll have to modify the data formats for exporting more than one source (I will eventually). Right now you have to export them separately.
Noted - thanks for the quick reply Richard.
One other thing I forgot to mention before, totally unrelated to exporting!... I've noticed problems at times with the "waveform context area" above the waveform view. I can't say what conditions this occurs under but at times the T appears way over to the right of the context area and clicking and dragging only brings it back so far. The waveform view scrolls as you drag but it's not clear where exactly in the timeline you are. Again, is this a known problem?
Rick and Richard, thanks for the replies. I tried math right after powerup and got no trace there either, but thinking about the remote desktop prompted me to think about my monitor configuration. I have an external monitor plugged in(HDMI) using dual view mode. Switching out of dual view to either single monitor or laptop display, or to cloned display on both screens made the traces appear instantly! So at least I know how to make it work and perhaps it will be repeatable on another computer. I'll try it on another computer if I can. I can't try it on my netbook because it runs Windows 7 Starter edition which only allows cloned display externally, not dual view.
Thanks again for your help.