Easiest way to convert oscilloscopoe waveform to binary data table

[DaveHardy]

I'm interested in capturing a waveform on an oscilloscope, normalizing it, and then down sampling one period of the waveform into roughly one thousand samples.   Any ideas?  I'm sure that there are some fancy oscilloscopes out there that can do this but I've never used one.  Is there software somewhere that can do this? 

I found a website that created a sine wave for me here but I want other common mathematical waveforms:

http://www.daycounter.com/Calculators/Sine-Generator-Calculator.phtml

[DaveHardy]

Matlab?

[Smokey]

Python?

[Nirios]

+1 for Python.  Also look into the python libraries: NumPy and SciPy; matplotlib for visual graphing.

[alm]

Export the signal from your scope as CSV. You can import this CSV in almost any mathematics package (eg. MATLAB) or programming language (eg. Python). The learning curve for both will be quite steep if you've never used them before. If you're into NI products, you could probably do this in SignalExpress. Including capturing it from the scope and down sampling. You could even import it into the abomination called Excel.

You could skip samples or do some averaging to sample it down to the desired sampling rate. Fancier algorithms might first reconstruct the signal and resample this reconstructed signal. It depends on the ratio between original sampling rate and desired sampling rate, and the desired fidelity.

[DaveHardy]

Hey thanks guys.  Python looks really tough.   Do all digital scopes have CSV output capability? 

[DaveHardy]

NI Labview looks the most promising.  How long do you think that it would take me to learn it?  I'm a complete novice.

If I give detailed instructions, would anybody be interested in processing the data that I provided them from a simple scope like a Rigol 1052?